Today I had a new experience. For the first time I took part in a jury for an award. And it was fun! I am one of the judges for the search engine marketing award in the Netherlands, which is being presented at Search Engine Strategies Amsterdam, later this month.

Being a judge is fun, it is a bit similar to looking at proposals, which I do for clients also. The big difference off course is that in this case the job is already done. When judging I took an extra good look at innovation. I believe its important that search marketing agencies innovate and  use the web to its fullest.

At the same conference I will be leading a panel on news and search in which amongst others Brent Payne. It will be a good conference by the looks of it. Joost de Valk together with BBP and Incisive Media has been busy with the program for some months now and I must say, it looks good! Bill Hunt, who I have seen several times this year, will come as will Dixon Jones and off course Mike Grehan. But don’t forget to look at some of the Dutch speakers like Eduard, and I am especially looking forward to hearing David Brinks & Ramon Eijkemans talk about SEO copywriting.

Are you going to be at SES Amsterdam? Come say hi!

At Search Engine Strategies I shortly met up again with Murray Newlands, a not only very smart guy and good affiliate marketing and social media blogger, but also a very nice guy. He did a ‘one minute interview’ with me, sort of like a pitch. He asked me what I was doing blogging-wise. Here’s my answer:

Thanks Murray!

Last week at Search Engine Strategies late at night in the pub Dave Naylor suddenly looked at his phone and looked sad. When I asked him what the matter was he told me his favorite football club Leeds United had just lost to Wallsall. In the First English Division. Leeds once was one of the leading clubs in English Football, being champions ‘only’ back in 1992, when Eric Cantona played in Leeds.

Dave and I talked a little about the football as I am a big Ajax-fan. Now Ajax has always been one of the leading clubs in Europe, but the last decade it has declined rapidly with the last championship in 2004. “Where are the days you could watch a game, sit back and know they will win” I said to Dave. Those days are gone. Tonight Ajax plays Juventus in the Europa League. With a 1-2 loss last week at home chances are they will be out of the cup by the end of the evening.

But as an Ajax- or Leeds fan luckily there is YouTube. The video-channel from Google. Although some Italian judges might ‘kill’ the website if they get there way with the conviction of some Google-bosses in Italy over a video, the site (for now) is a huge resource of historical material. And you can be back in those successful 90s within seconds.

I spend 15 minutes on the site and found loads of fun videos taking me back to the most successful period of Ajax in the last 20 years, one I was part of, living in Amsterdam and visiting many games of Ajax. I found some brilliant videos and some brilliant football. Like the best match I ever saw Ajax play against Real Madrid in 1996:

The beautiful thing about YouTube however is that you also can find a lot of ‘home made’ videos, which give you the exact feeling you had back then. This one for example is taken in the old Ajax-stadium De Meer where I spent a lot of time. The sound and the look of the pitch take you back immediately:

And finally this video from the semi-finals of the Champions League in 1995 against Bayern Munich. The position these guys were in is about the same position (I think I was two/three meters to the left) I was standing during that semi final:

You just have to love YouTube for this. And you have to love the web for this. Without that all I would have are memories. Those were the days. Lets hope that one day they’ll return!

To close it down, especially for Dave two Leeds United videos, just for fun:

As you know I have been working on Searchcowboys for the past 1,5 years. Only a short while ago I announced that I would stop doing that. After building up the brand to where it is now I wanted more time for all my other initiatives.

Last week I launched one of these other initiatives: State of Search. A website (blog) about the world of search. I launched this site with amongst others Lisa Myers and the help of other friends like Roy and Louis. At State of Search we try to take a look at the “why” in search. It’s not a news-site, its about the why of the news and how to react on it.

It might suprise some that I started a new initiative this soon after leaving Searchcowboys. After all, one of the reasons I left Searchcowboys was that I wanted more time. Let me explain.

Why I left

Running a website like Searchcowboys takes a lot of time. Especially if you look at the format of the site, and its sister-sites. Every day I was not only responsible for the marketing of the site (promotion through all sorts of channels, from Twitter to personal encounters) but also responsible for creating most of the content of the website. This meant 6 to 7 articles each day. Because on Friday I am with my kids that meant that Thursdays were even more crowded because I had to fill the site for the day after also. To get the articles I off course had to read a lot of other articles to select what I wanted to write about and then write these articles. You can maybe imagine that this costed me several hours a day.

Meanwhile I also wrote for Searchengineland, Searchenginewatch and was asked to do some other things for other sites. And I also had a day-job to fulfill, I have to make some money… So I decided to make more time for myself. One of the things I wasn’t going to do anymore was Searchcowboys. It was a difficult decision, but the best one to take.

So why  State of Search?

If you stop at one blog and start another, doesn’t that make you just shift places and don’t gain any time? Well, no, its not that simple. State of Search is a blog with a completely different angle, its not news-focussed at all and the articles are more in depth. On top of that, which is very important to me, it doesn’t take me hours a day. I don’t even have to write one article a day. I just want good content. And that saves me a whole lot of time.

Why not do this on Searchcowboys?

I was chief editor at Searchcowboys, so why not do this there? As said, Searchcowboys has a specific format. The way the site is set up, it is made for shorter posts and more posts, just like the other cowboys-sites. Maybe I could have changed that but I believe that is the way for Searchcowboys to go, also because it is so connected to the other sites in the network, which all have the same format. My contract even said that the site had to be in line with the cowboys-format. Even if that wasn’t the case though I still think Searchcowboys has to much of a news-image. It just isn’t the right place for these kind of articles. Maybe the new editors will think differently, from what I’ve learned from their posts they are looking at it with a different angle. I wish them all the best with that and hope they will keep the brand high, I worked hard for that after all!

Take a look

I wanted a place of my own where I could place the in depth articles. That was State of Search. Off course I invite you all to take a look at State of Search. You will find some high quality content there. We now are publishing some good stuff and will be doing that in different formats in the upcoming period. So put it in your RSS-Reader and start following it, also on Twitter off course!

As for the radio-show: we decided it was best to also rebrand that to State of Search, so there is no confusion about who is where and doing what. So tune in next week for the new show!

In a year there are a couple of months in which the search marketing industry tends to organize their events. The first couple of months are February and March. This week therefore my first period of traveling and speaking starts again. In London Search Engine Strategies 2010 starts. I will be speaking on the second day, but I am also very much looking forward to both the program and the fact I’m meeting up with a lot of my friends again.

Speaking

As said, I am speaking at SES London this year. Which makes me very proud. Only a few years back I visited SES London as one of the anonymous visitors, blogging for Dutch Cowboys. Now I am on stage. And I am talking about that route. How I got from sitting in the audience to being pretty well known in the industry by using social media. I will post the presentation here soon!

Program

If you look at the program there are many sessions which are worth visiting. I’ll be very busy, thats for sure. I will most definitely be present at Avinash Kaushik’s keynote. I’m now reading his book and writing a review on it and the book is absolutely fabulous. Other sessions which I most definitely will attend:

And many more

Friends

Finally one thing I’m very much looking forward to is meeting up with some good friends again. Off course Mr and Mrs Myers, (Jon and Lisa), Dave Naylor, Mikkel deMib, Louis Venter, Matt McGowan, Mike Grehan and many others. Good fun!

See you there?

Are you at SES London? Come say hi!

Last year I did a clinic search engine marketing for beginners for the DDMA, the Dutch Dialogue Marketing Association, for whom I’m currently also doing a strategic project. The clinic was a big success, both for me (I enjoyed it very much) as for the people taking the course.

Because of the success we decided to do the clinic again this Quarter. On top of that we are working on some more (related) clinics, but more about that some other time. For now the demand for the clinic is good, already a week after we announced this new clinic more than half of the available seats were already sold. But there is still room, so if you are interested you are more than welcome to register for the clinic. Even if you are not a DDMA-member. DDMA members do get a big discount! 

Check out all the information (in Dutch!) here.

This Monday I announced on Searchcowboys I will be leaving the website. After almost two years of "working my ass off" for the website and making it a big success I really felt the need to take new steps.

I’m not going to repeat the entire article from Searchcowboys (read it here) but I do want to highlight a couple of things.

Thank you cowboys
First of all I want to stress again how much fun it has been getting Searchcowboys to where it is now. It has been hard work but it has also given me very much. I’ve really made name for myself over the past year and I couldn’t have done that without Searchcowboys. Therefore I have to thank everybody involved in the website, especially off course Henk and Paul, the founders of Dutchcowboys.

What’s next?
If you’ve followed me over the past year you will know I really love blogging. And that means I won’t stop blogging, even though I won’t do that on Searchcowboys anymore. I will continue to blog on several places like Searchengineland, Searchenginewatch and others. I will off course be blogging here and I’m thinking of setting up a blog where I can put my ‘in depth articles’. Also the radioshow on Webmasterradio will go on as usual. The name will stay the same for now, though that might change some day, who knows.

At the end of last year I had a small problem. My N95 screen died on me, and then the entire phone. No phone in these days thats something you can hardly imagine. And immediately there was a dilemma: was I going to wait for the Nexus. At that time the Nexus wasn’t even launched and God knows when it will ever be available in the Netherlands… I was tempted to go for the iPhone but decided to ask my Twitter friends what to do:

I was surprised to get this answer:

It was an answer from someone working for dutch Press Agency Whizpr. One of their clients is HTC and she offered me the use of a HTC Hero, also an Android phone, until the Nexus would arrive. As you can imagine this was an offer I couldn’t and didn’t want to refuse! So now I’m the proud owner of a HTC Hero, which I really love, the only thing wrong with it is that its not a Nexus

Why do I think that newspapers will keep on existing, although they are doing everything to kill themselves these days? Because of newspapers like The New York Times. And not because of the business-part, but because of the quality of people working there. They make very good content, which you can only make if you put time and effort to it. This weekend The New York Times made a piece of content again which I like very much. It looks simple, but it has taken some time to make . See below the comparison they made between Google, Microsoft, Apple and Yahoo. Very handy!