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Presentations from SAScon

Joost de Valk — Sun, 22 May 2011 06:32:57 +0000

This thursday and friday was the time for SAScon in Manchester, where I gave 3 formal presentations, I've embedded them here (using an updated SlideShare plugin, more on that in the next post):

Feeds & Microformats

This panel, together with Richard Baxter of SEOgadget and James Lowery of Latitude, contained some great discussion on how to use microformats for rich snippets in the Google SERPs. I mostly discussed hReview & hReviewAggregate:

Tools, tools & tools

Next was a session with my buddy Dixon Jones from Receptional and Majestic SEO (who by the way just launched the Majestic Million) and Ross from Ad Insight, a pretty cool call tracking platform. I discussed 22 free tools that I use regularly:

WordPress SEO

The last session of the last day (yeah that's a painful spot) but still a decent turn out of people listening to me and how I think they should optimize their site's structure using categories, tags and custom taxonomies more, and some other geeky stuff:

Presentations from SAScon 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!

Fusion Marketing Experience in Brussels

Joost de Valk — Thu, 24 Mar 2011 10:56:47 +0000

Yesterday I gave a presentation about Content Marketing & SEO at the Fusion Marketing Experience conference in Brussels. It was more of a high level presentation than the technical kind of presentation some of you might be used too, but I thought it would still be worth while to share here. Also, below that, some interviews I did while at the show.

Bas van den Beld interview Olivier Branchard, aka The Brand Builder, and myself on Search & Social:

And Chris Tompkins from Go Media interviewed me as well:

Fusion Marketing Experience in Brussels 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!

Video: Making sure your content is found

Joost de Valk — Mon, 31 Jan 2011 10:14:13 +0000

So as you might now, I was in Sofia in October 2010 for WordCamp Bulgaria, last week the presentation I gave there was put on WordPress.tv, so now all of you can enjoy it. It covers SEO and how being remarkable is important for proper SEO. The presentation is titled: Making sure your content is found! Check it out:

Click here to view the embedded video.

And you might want to have the slides as well:

Video: Making sure your content is found 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!

SEO Royale: conference + party in Amsterdam

Joost de Valk — Wed, 26 Jan 2011 09:35:38 +0000

There's nothing like a small conference and party with a bunch of SEO rockstars, with so few people around that you'll get the chance to really go in-depth on your topic. I've learned this myself while attending the fabulous SEOktoberfest, by far the most valuable conference I go to each year. It's small and has only a few spots, exactly the kind of intimacy that gets the top dog SEO's and online marketers to give out their latest and best tricks.

When Roy, Richard & his wife Sharon and myself decided it was time to do something together, and get a good SEO conference going in Holland, we looked at that model and decided that we'd be sincere in our flattery and copy them. We've got a few assets of our own: the conference will be held in Amsterdam, one of the best party cities in the world, during Koninginnedag, the best party in that city, held in honor of our queen.

We've also attracted some top dog speakers. So far, we've got a few names:

Frank Watson, aka Aussiewebmaster, forum editor at SearchEngineWatch and one of the original PPC experts.
Marcus Tandler, aka Mediadonis, German super affiliate and all round online marketing hero.
Bob Rains, what to say about Bob... He worked in high-profile leadership roles for Everest Poker, Betfair, Karmaloop.com, PUMA, and many other top-tier organizations, and is a global super affiliate.
Dennis Goedegebuure, the Director of SEO at eBay.
Me and my buddy Roy will speak as well, but we'll be joined by a couple more industry luminaries, names to follow soon :)

Want more info or can't wait to sign up? Go to the site, seoroyale.com.

SEO Royale: conference + party in 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!

SEOktoberfest 2010: looking forward to it!

Joost de Valk — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 14:08:15 +0000

Marcus just posted the trailer to SEOktoberfest 2010, and it's going to be another awesome edition of this epic conference / party / network event. I wasn't there last year (my daughter was about to be born, seems a valid excuse) but I'll definitely be there this year! Check out the trailer:

Click here to view the embedded video.

You've seen it scroll by if you checked out the video, but here's the speaker line up, and do realize when you look at it that more speakers will be announced later on:

There will be 16 experts total, and only 18 attendees. That is what we call attention for our attendees! Now some of you might want to come, but... You can't buy tickets just yet...

SEOktoberfest 2010: looking forward to it! 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!

WordCamp NL Presentation

Joost de Valk — Sat, 05 Dec 2009 13:39:30 +0000

I recently gave a presentation at WordCamp NL, and that presentation was fully recorded, you can view it here:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Hope you enjoy it!

WordCamp NL 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!

Think Visibility II was a blast

Joost de Valk — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 17:57:12 +0000

Think Visibility by sk8geek

So I'm starting to wake up from Think Visibility, after flying back yesterday to dive straight into a family party. I can honestly say it was very cool, my presentation went quite well I think, judging by the average of the reactions. Julian's presentation after mine was very interesting as it was the first time I ever heard someone who actually works at a newspaper in Europe talk smartly about SEO.

Straight after that was the presentation by Judith Lewis, who did a great job as usual, but still felt she had to bribe the audience by handing out chocolates :). I've seen a couple of sessions after that, but one that's worth a special mention was Zoe Piper's presentation on the content network, which was well structured and had an awesome design. I think she's a better presenter than Patrick Altoft, whom she works for, so maybe Patrick should consider sending out Zoe in the future. (Kidding, but she really is a talent to keep an eye on!)

Joost de Valk presenting, by Caius

Both the night before the conference and the "after" party turned into great nights out, with a dinner in between the drinks and the conference which gave me a chance to catch up with Anthony Shapley, whom I met last year at A4UExpo and went on to work for Dave. He's a really cool guy to hang out with, so I hope Dave makes a habit of taking him to conferences too!

So, the conference was a blast. Everyone was in a good mood and a lot of people walked up to me to have a chat, which I really, really enjoyed. In all I must have met about 50-60 people I didn't know before the conference, that's what I'd call good networking!

View of the delegates, by Caius

Now there's a load of other reviews, I'll try to link to most of them:

Think Visibility II was a blast 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!

Newspaper SEO at Think Visibility

Joost de Valk — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 10:52:13 +0000

Julian Sambles from the Telegraph is up on stage here talking about Newspaper SEO. I've had a bit of email conversation with Julian before when he wrote an article in the Telegraph about the Queen's new website, and I know that he knows his stuff.

Hearing him talk about how they're optimizing the Telegraph, and how they've had to turn around their organization to do it and how they're event trying to educate their readers on Social Media.

I do hope he'll put his slides online later, but I'm also going to be asking Julian to come on Press This and talk about how the Telegraph is using WordPress and why they choose to do that.

As someone who's worked with quite a few news organizations in the Netherlands, it's very nice & refreshing to hear someone talk about all this stuff, with his own opinion and doing really well. We've had a recent debacle in the Netherlands with a newspaper moving over to a new site and forgetting completely about doing redirects, to see this guy show everyone the ropes on how this stuff should work is really cool.

I'll embed his presentation here when he uploads it!

Newspaper SEO at Think Visibility 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!

My presentation at Think Visibility

Joost de Valk — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 10:27:48 +0000

Here are the slides from my presentation here at Think Visibility. As I talk a lot more than I type on my slides this might not always make sense to you if you weren't there, but feel free to follow all the links and check it all out!

My presentation at Think Visibility 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!

Design for Conversion

Joost de Valk — Mon, 25 May 2009 20:08:57 +0000

In these times where everybody is low on cash, it's very important to make those new visitors convert. Conversion rate optimization is thus one of those markets that grow very rapidly, and it happens to be the market we're in the center of with OrangeValley here in Holland. But you can learn a lot about conversion rate optimization in just one day soon, on this awesome conference, called Design For Conversion.

It's rare that we get these types of conferences in Holland, that are of world class quality. This is one of them. My buddy Karl Blanks of Conversion Rate Experts is one of the keynotes, but the other ones are not in any way less interesting. What to think of Hannah Donovan, the creative director of Last.fm?

There are more, go to the site to read all about it. But: don't forget this: when you register, you are allowed to set the "Chi Member" button to "yes", just because you're a reader of Yoast.com, which will save you € 25,- on the already quite low registration price of € 250. I hope to see you there!

Design for Conversion 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!

An interview with Matthew Wood of A4UExpo

Joost de Valk — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 08:33:15 +0000

Next month Amsterdam will see the first A4UExpo Europe, the European counterpart of the highly succesfull A4UExpo conference series in London. I though it would be interesting for all of you to do an interview with Matthew Wood, the genius behind all of this.

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!

Coverage of SES Amsterdam

Joost de Valk — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 13:23:01 +0000

I'll try to list all the coverage of SES Amsterdam I've found online, please leave a link in the comments if I've missed one. Most of them are in Dutch, the first four are in English:

Coverage of SES 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!

SES Amsterdam

Joost de Valk — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 08:59:02 +0000

Today's the conference day of SES Amsterdam, the Dutch version of the internationally renowned series of search conferences. I've been actively involved in getting SES Amsterdam to happen, and have been the programming director, arranging speakers etc., so today is an exciting day!

Chaired by Henk van Ess, featuring speakers like Kevin Ryan and Anne Kennedey as keynotes, this should be a good conference. Next to that we have a lot of well known Dutch Search Marketers (and friends) like Eduard Blacquière, Wiep Knol, Peter van der Graaf, André Scholten and myself speaking.

I'm also very excited about the Site Clinic panel, which will feature Fili Wiese, Search Quality Analyst at Google, Roy Huiskes, Niels Meijssen and myself, and should be a nice session.

If you're going here, come and say hi!

SES 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!

A4U RoadShow Amsterdam

Joost de Valk — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 14:14:34 +0000

Upcoming March 4th there will be an A4U Roadshow event in Amsterdam. A great place to meet and network with the A4U crew, and other people interested in online and especially affiliate marketing!

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!

A4UExpo was great, yet again.

Joost de Valk — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 20:06:43 +0000

Matthew and his team at Existem have done it again. If people ask me, anywhere in the coming 12 months, which show they should attend on online marketing, I can only say one thing: A4UExpo. They're really giving all the other search and online marketing shows a run for their money.

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:

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

Joost de Valk — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 13:53:23 +0000

This is the presentation on WordPress Optimisation Strategies I gave here yesterday at A4UExpo London:

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!

SlideShare should get it’s SEO fixed

Joost de Valk — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 11:58:58 +0000

While I'm uploading my presentation of my WordPress session to SlideShare, I was looking for an upload client as my HTTP connection was bound to die. I searched for [slideshare upload] and found this result:

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!

Are you coming for dinner?

Joost de Valk — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 09:20:47 +0000

Next week it's time for A4UExpo and while we were doing Strike Point last night, Dave said he'd buy me and our mutual friend Mel Carson dinner. Now Marcus Tandler will also be at that dinner, which makes it a perfect dinner to attend if you want to learn some interesting stuff!

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!

SEOktoberfest

Joost de Valk — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 14:56:14 +0000

I was at SEOktoberfest in Munich last week. You should have been too. It was the best conference I've seen both content, networking and business deal wise. Ever. Be there next year.

Richard's quote is the best thing to say about the whole thing:

SEOktoberfest was the opposite of most webmaster conferences: no BS, no fakers, no newbies, no self-promotion. Just 25 or so serious internet entrepreneurs from the four corners of the world. Iâ€™ve never been to any webmaster conference where people speak so frankly: how they make money online, which traffic tricks work now, which strategies will pay off longer term.

SEOktoberfest starts!

Joost de Valk — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 06:11:55 +0000

So today it all starts, I'm typing this from Marcus "Mediadonis" Tandler's apartment in Munich, from which we'll leave in about an hour or so to meet with the attendees and the other speakers.

And when I say other speakers, I'm not talking about "little" people, I'm talking about industry people that make me feel inexperienced. Check out this list:

Quadszilla - BlackHat SEO
Bob Rains - White Hat SEO & Affiliate-Marketing
Brian Clark - Blogging & Copywriting
Brent Csutoras - Social Media Optimization & Viral Marketing
Greg Boser - Greyhat SEO & Linkbuilding
Barbara Boser - Buzz & Viral Marketing
Frank Watson - PPC Marketing
Martin Sinner - Investing & “Big Picture” SEM
Johannes Beus - SEO, Tools & Programming

Really looking forward to it, as I bet you can imagine!

SEOktoberfest starts! 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!