Archive for April, 2009
A4U Expo Amsterdam Feedback
After the success A4U Expo London last year, I decided to make the trip to Amsterdam and wasn’t dissapointed.
Once again the conference was expertly organised and the sessions I attended were both entertaining and informative. The conference was held at RAI in Amsterdam which was an excellent venue.
My favourite session was by Al Carlton on blogging strategies which was great and goes to show the value of fresh content and what can be done by regularly updating a blog. Top session.
I was also very impressed by Sri Sharma and how his company operates in over 20 different countries - his session on PPC was very interesting and I will be implementing some of his tips into my PPC campaigns which will probably be worth the whole conference fee.
The last session by Gary Beal from Vanguard SEO touched on some new strategies to make rapid SEO progress and in other regions and languages. It is sessions like these that are worth going to A4U.
Finally Amsterdam was a great venue and I look forward to returning. The city has some great bars, restaurants and nightlife. The Ledisplein is a top quality place for a booze up :).
Quick Update
Not blogged for a while therefore thought it was neccessary to do a quick update on some of the changes in Google in the last month or so.
Those of you searching for specific long tail phrases in Google may have seen the search results now show 3 or 4 lines (above) of text instead of the usual 2 lines. This is to give the user more idea of the contents of the site before clicking through. My advice is to optimise those meta descriptions to include calls to actionto increase CTR (click through rate) on your site.
I see local search has now been integrated into the main Google search (previously only appeared if a Geographical phrase was used e.g. Liverpool). Getting listed in Google Local Business Search is now essential for those businesses targeting customers locally. However those sites which have worked hard to get top ranking for certain terms can now see themselves behind the Local Search Listing. Frustrating!
Finally, I’m looking forward to A4U next week in Amsterdam. Should be a good laugh 
