There’s a prevalent dichotomy on the Internet, when it comes to search engine marketing in general and search engine optimisation (SEO) in particular. “Content is king” and “common sense rules”, scream the amateurs, and, shame upon them, not too few SEO agencies. A blatantly naïve approach, suggesting everything will work out just fine, once you heed a few simple rules: nice, relevant and non-spammy (or, in American’s ‘favourite usage: “ethical”) content on the site; tend to your meta tags; and hand submit your pages to the search engines - bingo! It’s a classical case of “the good guys will always win in the end”. But will they really?

And then you have the hardnosed techie crowd. They subscribe to a rationalistic, empirical and very often statistical approach, fundamentally attempting to reverse-engineer and exploit the search engines’ ever changing ranking algorithms. Here you will discover a lot of highly esoteric tips and tricks, many if not most of which will stultify the average punter. In other words: it’s the pro crowd talking shop, squabbling amongst themselves, speculating, testing, demolishing or endorsing each others’ findings, just as peer groups of experts are always wont to.

None of this is particularly surprising and neither would it be detrimental per se to the craft of search engine optimisation. However, you can’t well overlook how incomplete, dated and downright false information regarding the complex SEO process abounds. One characteristic example is the ubiquity of admonitions and warnings catering to the time-worn technique of fear, uncertainty and doubt: “Don’t do this”, “never try that”, “cloaking is evil and will get you banned”, “only hand submission works”, “avoid products X, Y and Z”, “adhere studiously to what the search engines themselves tell you to do on their web sites”, and so on.

All this attitude achieves, however, is to promote search engine optimisation to a black art of sorts. This distorts the picture and causes a whole lot of (incidentally: very easily avoidable) grief amongst those who rely on this type of erroneous if well meant advice in their attempt at actually making a living off their Web presence.

Certainly the time has come to do something about it! That’s why my partners and I decided to organise a conference on these issues - with the declared agenda of focusing only on hands-on, practical information. This should be presented by people who have researched the matter not only in theory but in actual practice for many years. Rather than waste attendees’ time on mere theorising or vague, sanctimonious “ethics” fluff of no import to real life successful search engine marketing, this conference should offer true insights into what the insiders are really doing, which tactics and techniques actually work and which don’t.

So, now it’s on: Search Engine Marketing Tactics 2002 (Amsterdam) will take place on September 23 and 24 in (you guessed it!) the Netherlands.

However, allow me to discuss some of the scheduled speeches and their speakers by way of an overview of the true complexities involved in search engine marketing these days.

For one, we are extremely happy and, yes, proud, to have mustered the support of Mike Grehan. His recently published second edition of “Search Engine Marketing”, a best-selling e-book is a true blockbuster of relevant, well researched and immensely usable information. It’s no exaggeration that it sets new standards in the field. His speech on “How search engines really work: Crawler to search results” is expected to debunk many fond myths abounding in the SEO industry.

Dirk Brockhausen, my partner and CTO at, will speak on “SEO and log file analysis: your hidden marketing goldmine”. Logfiles, when viewed from this perspective, are a veritable eye opener for anyone targeting Web audiences. Among other things they can reveal the discrepancy between what webmasters may believe people will search for and what they actually enter in the search boxes.

Personally, I have chosen the topic “Cloaking with Shadow Domains - all tricks revealed” in which I will hopefully dispense with the common myth that cloaking or IP delivery is something to be avoided at all cost: quite the contrary, in fact, as IP delivery is the only chance very many web sites stand to get indexed, not to mention well ranked, at all. Obviously, some safeguards have to be put in place before employing this technology effectively. All this will be covered in detail.

In another workshop I will cover the tricky issue of cloaking for Google - something all SEO artists should know about if they don’t want to lose their clients’ sites before they can say “index run”.

Well known SEO expert Jill Whalen (US) will contribute her workshop on “Submitting to Directories: How to get your listing accepted and ranked well”. Paying up is simply not enough: while an all-important directory like Yahoo! will happily take your money for a review of your site, actually getting included and, preferably, in a good position at that, is quite another story. And Jill will tell it all.

Other highlights include speakers such as Ammon Johns, Jim Banks and Graham Eden, all from the UK, covering a variety of issues ranging from what to do about Google’s PageRankalgorithm to Pay-Per-Click (PPC) options as an SEO testing ground, and doorways as hosted domains: a new, highly efficient technique you won’t have read about elsewhere yet.

Covering the whole wide spectrum of efficient search engine marketing, further workshops will tackle: typical SEO mistakes to avoid; the real life cost-per- click; PPC and reasonable ROI expectations, and content as a major SEO factor. There will also be a slot on “Writing search engine friendly content with your human audience in mind” with no less than SEO legend Robin Nobles (US) from the Academy of Web Specialists.

And of course the search engines themselves shall have their say as well: on the Search Engine Panel which will close the conference, you can listen to what they are doing to combat spam and what PPC strategies to pursue. What’s more, you can ask them all those tricky, controversial questions you may have wanted to air for years in vain. Here, you will get it all straight from the horse’s mouth.

There’s yet more, but take a look at the full conference agenda for yourself. This event, finally, goes way beyond the mystique still surrounding much of search engine optimisation and marketing, making the process transparent and - most important - workable.