Here’s am updated schedule of where I’ll hang out and/or speak in the next months

Now that the really awesome Seo De Janeiro in Rio, Seo Campixx in Berlin and SES in NYC are over,

I thought it’s time to update my event schedule for the next weeks… Looking forward to you meet you

on any of these conferences!

The two top things I’m looking forward to most at the moment is my speaking engangement in Amsterdam

and our SEO Roadtrip which will be a trip with some top notch SEOs to combine the SMX advanced in Seattle, an affiliate bar camp in Vancouver/.ca A TON OF FUN on a luxury RV, some sailing, a beach house on the west coast, and of course the FOUND Alternative conference in San Francisco.

Rio / Brazil	SEO de Janeiro	Feb 18-27	The frickin best event the whole industry talks about read more and only 16 days left
Berlin	SEO Campixx	Mar 6-7	more a BarCamp - looking forward to meeting a lot of german friends and clients – not been to Berlin for 5 years or so!
New York City	SES NYC	Mar 21-27	after two years I decided I have to add New York to my schedule again – after all I met so many great guys in 2007 there that I just can’t miss out again this year again! Looking forward to see you all there, especially at the great IM Charity Party of Todd Malicoat & co
Munich	SMX Munich	April 22-23	a must do event – might even speak there – Rand Fishkin is going to do the keynote …
Amsterdam	A4U EXPO Europe	April 27-28	The best european conference for sure, since the start in 2007 Matt did an awesome job putting this show together! I’m going to speak on advanced linkbuilding and how to find and get those real juicy links in 2009, reveal some of our internal tools and methods… This will be the first time ever I speak on a conference in the online marketing world and SEO scene, altough I did already speak in my last career in IT …
Amsterdam	Amsterdam Affiliate Conference	April 30-May3	The iGaming conference is something relatively new to me but there are a lot of clients, partners, fellow SEOs there, also speaking, so I HAVE to see it (and it’s a perfect match with the A4U and QueensDay in Holland!
Hannover	SEOSEO	May 15	but only for Networking
Seattle	SMX Advanced	Jun 2-3	The classic SMX Advanced and I’m getting there, since we combine this with the SEO Road Trip with a bunch of other cool guys anyway. SMX did drop the “give it up panel” this year, which was THE main selling point for many – so this might really be the last time for a lot people visiting rainy ugly Seattle there (does anyone really like that place?)
Toronto	SES Toronto	Jun 8-10	The SES Torontoe would be a favorite show to visit, especially since I’ve never been to Toronto before to meetup with local marketers. Unfortunately I can’t go there, despite an invite I got in favor of the O’Reilly Found, now Found Alternative Conference
San Francisco	Found Alternative	Jun 10-11	After O’reilly cancelled the original FOUND confernece, some cool old-school SEOs that were supposed to speak there are doing an alternative conference in a barcamp style for Jun 10. It’s a must-be-there because of the small group IMHO
London	Pubcon	Jul 4	Classic PubCon in London
Budapest	Budapest Affiliate Conference	Sep 10-13	I will be speaking at the Budapest Affiliate Conference on Friday, September 11, on 13:30. Have a look at the other SEO and affiliate experts that will speak during the event and the Q&A site about me.
Munich	SEOktoberfest	Sep 21-25
London	a4uexpo London	Oct 12-14
London	SEOMoz Pro Training	Oct 19-20	At the moment it is not sure if I will be speaking at the event.
Berlin	SES Berlin	Nov 23-25	I will be speaking at the event in Berlin and there will also be a link building training day.

And you know what’s best about meeting good ole’ friends at those events? Yeah, meeting them, having booze and getting introduced to THEIR friends… it’s about networking and actually the non-plus-ultra is if your friends actually do the “elevator pitch” for you, so all you have to do is stand there are smile, hand out some cards and then get back to those folks actually

Shimon Sandler was introduced to me, and while I didn’t recall the name I found that this is actually a really respected SEO consultant in the scene … well- in fact I read on his blog and a ton of this comments eg on Jim Boykin’s link building blog.

One of Shimon’s interesting posts on his blog is that Job-Definition of what an SEO actually does… I love those posts (just like Todd/Stuntdubl also ALWAYS releases those posts where I just think RESOURCE… it’s a RESOURCE… man, it’s great and I’ll be back)

You know when I look at Shimons definition of what an SEO consultant does I actually have to remind myself to finally revamp, rewrite and (hell) get rid of the typos in the copy of my own SEO company site – and yes sure – I want to sync the content in AT LEAST two languages english and german, after all that’s one of my USPs here… and I even got some spain and italian domains for Cemper.Com as well last week …

Shimons’ definition will serve me well as a blueprint, an information architecture for my new copy… 16 points that describe the basis SEO process… very nice..

and best of all, Shimon even gives away a “standard proposal” he sends out to his clients, including specifications for deliverables and EVEN the charging model … he starts with a retainer fee of $2000 for his services, that’s 20 hours work … but still charges what is above that.. I think that’s pretty cool to buy… after all that’s just 4-5 hours a week … half a day… I bet he spends HALF of that already for communication and reporting on some clients…

(hint hint hint to all clients and managers – let your people work

What I’m missing there is some detailled spec on WHAT/WHEN Shimon reports on his link building, link buys, etc… my impression in general is that link building is a bit under-sized in the whole post – after all links are 95% of the game, once you made sure in the first month that the site-structure and content does not suck as it usually does in the beginning when an “agency” created that nice ALL-FLASH loaded site…

But where do these clients come from? … hehe.. Shimon is a nice guy… giving away a “sales blueprint” with some sort of checklists to ask prospective clients is definately worth a read…

The “questions for SEO clients” are even a bit sophisticated… assuming you KNOW you have an SEO client… you know which question saved me HUNDREDS OF WASTED hours over the last 3 years?

Nice site you got, promoting all your products, services, etc. blabla

So – what would it do in the bottom line for your business when you get from NOWHERE to number1 in Google? do you know much you actually make per sale? and how much can you spend to increase the number of sales?

Oh – you don’t know?

Frankly, I met/got called up by so many folks that do “internet marketing” just for some sort of “branding value” or their ego to be up in ranks that they have NO CLUE if they can spend 1000, 10,000 or 100,000 EUR per time interval… well – that’s where I usually end the call… sorry – but people that got no idea on their spends usually have no idea on their goals, or just don’t care… neither of these is a reason to do business…

But anyway, you know it’s REALLY funny – bumping into friends on conferences is one thing, but getting to know the next “indirection” of the network just by chance is in fact the MAJOR reason for me to go to these conferences and to to spend $350+ a night for that sneazy little room in the hilton… Staying as close as possible to the even gives you those extra 15 minutes AT LEAST twice a day where you can meet up with a lot more people that if you would stay ANYWHERE…

Too bad I’ll miss out on the SMX in June and the SES In August – but I’ll then have my studies and master’s finished (be sure to checkout the online survey !)

After this bit longer break I’ll do these

- DrupalCon in Barcelona (September) – NICE weather

- SMX social media special (October) in New York City again, YEAH - rocks

- WMW in Las Vegas (the classic in November)

and then maybe even some SES in chicago… or I might just hang out with my friends there… not sure

Then I’ll sing – “I just can’t get enough…”