40 WordPress Optimisation tips is a post by Joost de Valk on Yoast - Tweaking Websites.A good WordPress blog needs good hosting, you don't want your blog to be slow, or, even worse, down, do you? Check out my thoughts on WordPress hosting!

Hey Matthew, could you quickly introduce yourself and a4uexpo?

Sure, I’ve been involved in Affiliate Marketing for over 10 years. I started off by subsidising my university ‘drinking fund’ by developing, optimising sites for Google with a little Arbitrage, Google Adwords, Developing true Content Sites.

I even managed to travel a bit of the world whilst tweaking affiliate websites roving with my laptop through Australia, Asia, Fiji, Canada and the USA – Certainly a great affiliate lifestyle!

Things have become more serious though as I now employ a team of 7 who work from our offices in Bristol in the UK who develop more complex sites such as Pricecuts.

A4UExpo initially grew from our networking events that we organised alongside our forum for many years around the UK, with informal gatherings of affiliates, networks, agencies and merchants. However we realised we must change the format when over 600 people attended an event in London and we had to close registration early and limit numbers from each company!

This gave us the confidence to invest upwards of £100,000 in our first Conference at ExCeL in London back in 2007. Thankfully it was a huge success and we’ve since been back in 2008 and grown attendance by 30% - This April we boldly decided to expand the Conference into mainland Europe with our event at the RAI in Amsterdam.

You've decided to come to Amsterdam and make a "Europe" version of your conference, why?

We just love Amsterdam :-) Seriously though, after both the 2007 and 2008 conferences we were besieged with requests to expand into mainland Europe, and we felt the time was right to take our conference model to a neutral territory for a Pan European Event. We didn’t want to programme a light version of the conference either, which is why we’ve gone for the two full days, brining over 68 Speakers from around Europe to the conference and offering an astounding 46 unique sessions to attend. This is even larger than our show in London last year!

The internet and Affiliate Marketing in particular is also very strong with good broadband penetration in most countries. Our mission with a4uexpo Europe is to spread the word and gain increased publicity for the channel to media planners, agencies, merchants and the press.

It’s time that as a community we all shout to the world just how effective Affiliate Marketing is. That way more budget gets assigned to Affiliate Marketing as a channel and we all win.

Of course we’ll need to show those brands how to embrace the sector effectively to get the most from it – and that’s where we can help.

Affiliate Marketing simply put is not an out of the box solution; it needs hard work and effective management to make it a success.

What's the difference between the UK and the rest of Europe, from an affiliate's stand point?

The UK along with Germany is recognised as being the most mature within Affiliate Marketing. I’d say in fact they are even more advanced that the market in the USA.

This does mean that lessons have been learnt from Publisher and Advertiser activity, and this knowledge can be passed on, and new opportunities can be discovered by knowledge sharing.

Whilst similar opportunities exist in all countries they are at different maturity levels. For instance Cashback or Loyalty, accounts for a huge proportion of affiliate activity in the UK at 25% compared to just 5% in Germany. However what is common across Europe is that SEM remains the key driver within Affiliate Marketing based on both Organic optimisation within Google and Paid Search Activity being conducted on a Performance Basis.

Other than local nuances across sectors and verticals, the opportunities for cross country collaboration, standardisation, and monetisation are immense. This is one of the key reasons to bring the whole of the Affiliate Marketing Sector in Europe together in one place, at one time. The business and relationships that could be formed by pro-active delegates is what makes it all worthwhile.

What do you look forward to the most on A4UExpo Europe?

Everything! The agenda this year is awesome; we’re really proud and honoured to have attracted so many knowledgeable experts from within Affiliate Marketing, Search and Peripheral Channels.

Naturally I’m looking forward to your sessions Joost, and the numerous conversion optimisation and SEO panels we have scheduled, and also the famous networking opportunities that we offer.

This April for instance we have three parties in Amsterdam only open to conference delegates. Our gentle (ish) pre conference bash at the Rosarium, the middle evening party where we’ll be heading to a lively Central Amsterdam Venue and Club and finally our After Show Party where we are planning on hitting the Urban Beach and then offering everyone the opportunity to head once again into central Amsterdam to a special venue that will be announced very soon, just next to the canals for the Queens Day celebrations.

The networking at a4uexpo is what sets us apart, especially in an Industry where relationships really can make the difference between an Affiliate Programme being promoted, or not.

Anything else you'd like to share?

Well, it would be rude not to offer your readers a discount to attend the event, therefore ‘YOAST10’ will give everyone 10% off the delegate rate which starts at just 279 Euros.

An interview with Matthew Wood of A4UExpo is a post by Joost de Valk on Yoast - Tweaking Websites.A good WordPress blog needs good hosting, you don't want your blog to be slow, or, even worse, down, do you? Check out my thoughts on WordPress hosting!

Registration is free, so register now! I'll be there, so let me know in the comments when you're coming too and we can meet up!

A4U RoadShow Amsterdam is a post by Joost de Valk on Yoast - Tweaking Websites.A good WordPress blog needs good hosting, you don't want your blog to be slow, or, even worse, down, do you? Check out my thoughts on WordPress hosting!

If you're more of a reader than a visual type, try my article on WordPress SEO.

WordPress SEO video

<embed src="http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=5130637" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="400" height="300"></embed>

WordPress SEO slides

Here are the slides that go with this presentation:

WordPress SEO Video is a post by Joost de Valk on Yoast - Tweaking Websites.A good WordPress blog needs good hosting, you don't want your blog to be slow, or, even worse, down, do you? Check out my thoughts on WordPress hosting!

The last few days have been an absolute blast, speaking wise, I enjoyed both my WordPress session and the Extreme SEO panel on tuesday, and the Affiliate doctors panel on wednesday.

I actually wasn't supposed to be on that last panel, but had to fill in because Bob Rains went (and still is) missing. That last panel could have used someone like Ciaran to moderate too btw, that would have made it a whole lot better.

The new presentation Karl & Ben from Conversion Rate Experts did was one of the other highlights, content wise, as were the SEO howlers session and "Practical PPC Strategies for Better ROI" session.

In that last session Dixon gave a new presentation I'd never seen before, which was good, and both Mel and Tor from Microsoft showed why at some point in time Microsoft will own this market too. The fact that both Yahoo! and Google didn't even bother to show up for sessions like that only shows me that they're not at all interested in the people who are using their products.

Then, next to all the great content and the very well organized expo hall, there were the parties. The opening party was fun, the Thames cruise on the second night was great even though we could have used a bit more food, and the party yesterday was great as well. Before we joined that party though, we first had dinner with a couple of friends.

Dave had blogged asking who wanted to come for dinner, and picked Anthony Shapley, who turned out to be a nice guy! We had a load of fun and some good discussions with next to Anthony, Dave and his lovely wife Becky, these other great guys: Mel Carson, Todd Crawford, Marcus "Mediadonis" Tandler, Patrick Altoft, Al Carlton and myself.

So, the 28th and 29th of April next year A4UExpo will be coming to Amsterdam, and I can only say one thing: be there.

If you want to read some other reviews, check these out:

• Dixon Jones
• Roy Huiskes
• One Little Duck
• Affiliate Marketing Blog
• Codswallop
• Keith Bond
• Lammo
• Affiliate Stuff
• Befuddled Me?
• MediaWeek
• Peter Wanderson
• Peter Coles
• Blogstorm
• Self Made Minds
• Chris Bishop

PS the guys from Sunshine.co.uk released a pretty cool WordPress plugin to easily make vacation sites. I'll look at that a bit more and write about as I think it's a fantastic idea.

A4UExpo was great, yet again. is a post by Joost de Valk on Yoast - Tweaking Websites.A good WordPress blog needs good hosting, you don't want your blog to be slow, or, even worse, down, do you? Check out my thoughts on WordPress hosting!

A4UExpo Presentation is a post by Joost de Valk on Yoast - Tweaking Websites.A good WordPress blog needs good hosting, you don't want your blog to be slow, or, even worse, down, do you? Check out my thoughts on WordPress hosting!

PHP Session ID's in your URL? A presentation as the best result on your site for that term? Come on SlideShare, get a decent SEO and get it FIXED.

(I'm in the SEO howlers session on A4UExpo where Andy, Dixon and Kristjan Mar are showing off loads of typical stupid issues like this, and doing a damn good job of it. You should have been here!)

SlideShare should get it’s SEO fixed is a post by Joost de Valk on Yoast - Tweaking Websites.A good WordPress blog needs good hosting, you don't want your blog to be slow, or, even worse, down, do you? Check out my thoughts on WordPress hosting!

Now the good thing is, you can be there too! Read Dave's post on what you have to do, and maybe we'll be having dinner next week!

Are you coming for dinner? is a post by Joost de Valk on Yoast - Tweaking Websites.A good WordPress blog needs good hosting, you don't want your blog to be slow, or, even worse, down, do you? Check out my thoughts on WordPress hosting!

Upcoming events
We've got a couple of cool events coming up, and one thing I want to make sure is that all of you register for A4UExpo as soon as you can. For affiliates, search marketers and other online marketeers, it's one of the best conferences you'll ever see in Europe. Period.

In other news
I'm going through my feeds and want to share some of the cool stuff I've seen with you:

• First of all, Authority Blogger "soft-launched". For all corporate bloggers who read my blog, this would be a great way too get training from one of the best in the business, Chris Garret.
• My buddy Aaron Wall wrote a short e-book for WordTracker with "50 kick-ass keyword strategies", and I have to say: it's well worth the mere $39 they ask for it.
• Christian Hockenberger, the guy who did the logo for Yoast, launched his new site, Princeofdune, and it looks pretty cool.
• Smashing Magazine had a huge post called WordPress Developer's Toolbox, which is well worth the read.

I'll be working on some plugins in the coming weeks, and will try to get my WordPress newsletter out this week as well. See you all soon!

Back in business! is a post by Joost de Valk on Yoast - Tweaking Websites.A good WordPress blog needs good hosting, you don't want your blog to be slow, or, even worse, down, do you? Check out my thoughts on WordPress hosting!

SEOdays
My year started as a normal SEO, but got kicked in to high gear when I went on a trip to SEOdays, a Search Engine Optimisation conference organized by Jennifer Slegg and Dave Naylor. I loved every single minute of it, sharing tips and tricks with other, mostly English, SEO's. I made some new friends there, most importantly Dave himself. We started chatting on IM after the conference, and have been doing that on a regular basis since. At that time, hardly anybody had noticed me in the SEO world yet, but that would soon change...

SEOmoz ranking factors
Just a few weeks before I actually went to SEOdays, Rand invited me to join in the SEOmoz ranking factors research, which was released on the 3rd of april. At that point, people started noticing me and my blog, and I got in contact with more and more internationally renowned SEO's, learning from them and sharing with them.

WordPress plugins
In february, I had released my first WordPress plugin ever, a simple contact form with some added benefits, and over the year, I've been writing more and more WordPress plugins, getting great feedback from quite a few great people.

Google Analytics
Due to my work at Onetomarket, I got involved with and interested in Google Analytics more and more, I wrote a WordPress plugin, and published some hacks. This instigated some contacts from Avinash Kaushik and Justin Cutroni, and both of them have been inspiring my Analytics work greatly since.

A4UExpo and SMX Stockholm
In October, I went to two conferences, A4UExpo in London, and SMX Stockholm. There was a difference though with the SEOdays conference... These conferences were quite a bit bigger, and I went there as... a speaker. To be honest, I'd said to my colleague Roy half way through the year, that I wanted to speak on an international SEO conference within a year, at that time thinking that that was a tough goal to set. It turned out that it was a lot easier than I expected.

I had some great fun at both conferences. In London, I met up with loads of cool people: Marcus Tandler, Kris Jones and Aaron Baker from Pepperjam Search, my good friends from Conversion-Rate-Experts Karl and Ben, Jason Duke, Kevin Ryan, Dixon Jones and loads and loads more. This made the conference into much more than I could have ever imagined it to be... (and ow yeah, the Q&A session I was in was a blast)

In Stockholm I was in a few more sessions, and I finally got the chance to meet Rand Fishkin face to face, along with quite a few other nice blokes whom I made friends with, like Mel Carson and Mikkel deMib Svendsen. That conference too was great, and it seemed Chris Sherman, the conference host, thought I did a good job too, as I've already been invited to come speak at SMX Munich next year too.

CSS3.info
My other blog, css3.info, which has nothing to do with search and a LOT to do with web standards, grew immensely too this year. For most of that I have to thank Peter Gasston and David Storey, both now regular writers on that blog. We've now started officially partnering with the W3 to aid in the further development of CSS, and we've had the chance to interview loads of "big names" in the CSS world last year.

This blog
Well, need I say more than this:

Onetomarket
Though this was the year my first teacher into the SEO world, Remco Westerik, left Onetomarket, many, many exciting things have happened there. Our SEO team grew into what I now sincerely believe to be the best SEO team in the Netherlands, with great colleagues, new and old, keeping me focussed at all times. Working with clients like KLM, Wegener, Amadeus, Emagister, BookIt and many others is a privilege, and I really, really enjoyed it this year.

Our Spanish offices grew exponentially this year, and I've been there a few times and had numerous contacts with colleagues there, and I can honestly say that these guys have come up to our standards in a speed I would not have expected. It's great to be working in a multinational team with so many great people.

Conclusion
In all, I can say that 2007 was a wonderful year, and that my expectations for 2008 are even higher. I wish you all the very, very best for 2008, in your business life's but also in your personal life. I hope to see a lot of you, both in the real world and on this blog!

All that rests me now is tag another person to talk about his 2007 business highlights, and there's one person who immediately came to mind, as he has reached a lot this year, both with his blog and with the Dutch section of the IAB: Marco Derksen. But well, it turns out he already took part in this blog tag game... Sigh :)

So, I need to pick someone else, and the next guy I'd love to here of is Jorg Ruis, of Weekendje Weg.nl, so Jorg, take it away!

My 2007 business highlights is a post by Joost de Valk on Yoast - Tweaking Websites.A good WordPress blog needs good hosting, you don't want your blog to be slow, or, even worse, down, do you? Check out my thoughts on WordPress hosting!

So: Matthew Wood: you rock! I'll certainly be there again next year. And a bit of a shout out to all my (newly made) industry friends, (link)love you guys!

• Marcus
• Jason & Tony
  
• Dixon
• Ciaran
• Kris & Aaron
• Kevin
• Christoph
• Stefan
• Andre
• Pieter
• Paul

If I forgot you: sorry! Hope to see all you guys again soon!

A4UExpo Rocked! is a post by Joost de Valk on Yoast - Tweaking Websites.A good WordPress blog needs good hosting, you don't want your blog to be slow, or, even worse, down, do you? Check out my thoughts on WordPress hosting!

I never saw Kevin Ryan speak before, and he was actually quite funny, making jokes about the Pound to Dollars conversion rate, which really is a pain at the moment if you're earning dollars with some of your sites, like I am.

SES @ A4UExpo: Kevin Ryan and Mike Grehan is a post by Joost de Valk on Yoast - Tweaking Websites.A good WordPress blog needs good hosting, you don't want your blog to be slow, or, even worse, down, do you? Check out my thoughts on WordPress hosting!

The keynote is delivered by Guy Phillipson, the CEO of the IAB UK, who's mainly talking about marketshares in the UK, which is quite fun to look at because a LOT of money is spent here.

The room is wel filled, and I just saw that the session I'm in this afternoon is in this huge room as well, really looking forward to that. More updates later today when I find a British power adapter :)

At A4UExpo! is a post by Joost de Valk on Yoast - Tweaking Websites.A good WordPress blog needs good hosting, you don't want your blog to be slow, or, even worse, down, do you? Check out my thoughts on WordPress hosting!