17:30
Doors open
A drink and something to eat. No name tags, so no round of introductions and nobody has to say where they work before they are allowed to speak.
Amsterdam, every couple of months
Fifteen people,
three questions.
Tuesday evening in the back room of an Irish pub on the Amstel, first drink and food included. Nobody presents. One circle, and your questions set the agenda.
For the people who carry SEO inside a company: in-house marketers and SEOs, people who own a brand or a business, and the marketing leads they answer to.
6 seats left for 8 December Latest booking yesterday
- Seats
- 15
- A seat
- 15 euros
- Doors
- 17:30
The format
The evening
It moves slower than a meetup. That is the reason to come.
First
What happens in the Salon stays in the Salon
Nothing said in that room gets repeated outside it, and nobody is there to sell you something or to hire you. Agency side, in-house, freelance, first year or fifteenth: all fine.
Then
Your burning question
Everyone writes down one question they are stuck on, with enough context that the room can do something with it.
Together
We pick three together
We read them out and choose three between us, on the night. When an evening has a patron, one of the three is theirs.
Twenty minutes each
We work on it together
No slides, nobody at the front. We think it through as a group: what you already tried, what worked for someone else, what went nowhere. I keep time and stay out of the way, and pull the threads together at the end.
If you would rather sit and listen all evening, that is a normal way to spend it. So is saying you do not know something.
20:00
Stay as long as you like
Ask the things you did not get to, carry on a conversation, meet the rest of the room. There is usually a group photo, another drink, and on some nights music from the bar.
Past editions
What has been on the table
Real questions off the cards, with the names left off them.
A few of the questions people brought, not all of them. Borrow one, or bring your own: any question about search works, and there are many ways in.
The CEO wants to launch in 30 countries fast. How do you set up 30 new domains without getting hit by a spam update?
A client hires you for a strategy, then picks a different direction. Do you say no thank you, or carry on and try to prove them wrong?
CTR is down, rankings are up, clicks are flat. How do you keep adding value for the client?
How do you move a client-side JavaScript site with billions of URLs to a new domain when mapping them is impossible?
AI gets the budget, SEO gets an afterthought. How do I win buy-in when Google still brings the traffic but everyone assumes it is finished?
Should I panic about organic traffic?
More questions to borrow
- How do you get the CFO and CMO to fund SEO or GEO when revenue attribution is thin?
- Every major player in our niche is losing traffic. We are ahead on tech and content, and ours still falls. How do we grow?
- Nobody can hand-write every page on a large e-commerce site. Is AI-written copy the answer for the pages no expert will write?
- Should we invest in creating Wikipedia content?
- Our product information sits in a chatbot, not in text on the page. How does Google reach it to use in an answer?
- I went from 400 URLs of B2B SaaS content to half a million in e-commerce. How do I get technical fast?
- Walk us through one AI workflow you actually built. Where did it pay off, and where did it fall apart?
Amazing session! I was up all night trying to put so many of the things we discussed already into practice. Who knew that simply getting a few fellow SEOs in a small room could be more valuable than attending a large conference?
Salon, October 2026
Loved the setup and the conversations! It really felt like an open and safe space, which is truly a breath of fresh air in a community which is dominated by people who proclaim to have all the answers.
Salon, October 2026
The format and the frequency of the events is optimal, do not change anything.
Summer drinks, July 2026
Super fun drinks! I met lots of fun and interesting people. Thank you again for organizing
Summer drinks, July 2026
Good times! Where is the button to apply for the next meetup?
Summer drinks, July 2026
Great start! Nice event!
Salon, March 2026
The next three burning questions are not picked yet. Bring yours.
Take a seat on 8 DecemberThe flagship
Amsterdam
Next edition
8 December 2026
Tuesday, 17:30 to 20:00
Mulligans Irish Music Bar, Amstel 100
15 euros
First drink and food included
6 of 15 left
seats in the circle
In 40 days
Tuesday evening
Luma asks for your LinkedIn, to keep the room free of sales pitches.
After that
19 January 2027
Tuesday, 17:30 to 20:00
Mulligans Irish Music Bar, Amstel 100
15 euros
First drink and food included
15 seats
all still open
In 82 days
Tuesday evening
Luma asks for your LinkedIn, to keep the room free of sales pitches.
After that
10 March 2027
A fringe evening to the Friends of Search conference
Wednesday, 17:30 to 20:00
Mulligans Irish Music Bar, Amstel 100
15 euros
First drink and food included
15 seats
all still open
In 132 days
Wednesday evening
Luma asks for your LinkedIn, to keep the room free of sales pitches.
The Salon is not affiliated with Friends of Search.
After that
11 May 2027
Tuesday, 17:30 to 20:00
Mulligans Irish Music Bar, Amstel 100
15 euros
First drink and food included
15 seats
all still open
In 194 days
Tuesday evening
Luma asks for your LinkedIn, to keep the room free of sales pitches.
Also on the calendar: October and December 2027. Exact dates and tickets go up a few weeks before each one, and the list hears first.
Every edition and every ticket lives on the Luma calendar.
The list
Get the next date before anyone else
Fifteen seats go quickly. Leave your email and you get one message when a date opens, before it goes anywhere else. Nothing else, ever.
Patrons
Put your question to a room of practitioners
- Your question is one of the three the room works on that night. Keep it about the market.
- One person from your team sits in the circle: a marketer, a product marketer or a product owner. They hear in-house SEOs and marketers work through it for real.
- Nothing said in the room leaves it, so people say what they actually think, not what they would say on a stage.
- You are the only patron that evening.
- In return, you pay for the food and drinks for the whole room. No logo, no speaking slot, no attendee list: that is what keeps the answers honest.
Companies that have backed these evenings so far: Contentoo (Salon patron, May 2026), Morningscore (SEO Open Mic sponsor, 2025) and StartDock (SEO Open Mic venue, 2025).
Still open: December 2026, January, March, May, October and December 2027.
Questions? Write to me on LinkedIn and I'll send you the one-pager with the dates and the contribution.
Summer Drinks and the SEO Open Mic work with sponsors, on other terms.
Other cities
A Salon in your city
If you would want to run one of these where you live, write to me and I can help you set it up and share what I have learned from running them.
Who runs it
I'm Baba
In SEO since 2012, fractional Head of SEO for B2B SaaS companies, and the one who started the Salon. I keep time and take notes; the room does the work.
Other nights
Two other nights
Besides the Salon, I run two bigger, looser evenings for the Amsterdam SEO community. They work with sponsors, unlike the Salon.
