Managing expectations for SEO

On e-consultancy this week the following post - names changed to protect the possibly innocent:

We started to work with Xxxx and received no results. Our Googole Page-Rank is lower then before. (sic) We payed in advance and trying to get the money back. ...

My response:

I have never heard of them before, but according to their web site Xxxx will do things like:

• Keyword analysis
• Create a sitemap
• Submit to search engines
• Submit to directories
• Optimise web pages (headlines, link structure etc)
• Check for compliance with standards
• Rename html files

This all sounds like standard SEO good practice. They don't suggest that they have some magic new technology. The problem is that even doing all this, Google can change its algorithms so that you drop in the rankings.

Question. Did they promise
(a) to do the above or
(b) to improve your rankings?

If (b) then your were mis-sold because nobody can guarantee to get you top ranking. The rankings are a moving target. You can justifiably ask for your money back on the basis of mis-selling.

However if they just promised (a) to optimise your site using SEO best practice and your rankings got worse, then you have a much harder job of work. Maybe you would have dropped even further down the rankings without their efforts. You have to prove they were not competent in what they did.

The IBM PC Myth

The IBM PC was 25 years old yesterday.

Happy Birthday!

On the BBC the announcer introduced the story by telling us that IBM invented the PC 25 years ago and how Microsoft was so clever in inventing the PC operating system.

Not exactly as I remember it!

We had a Syrius PC in the office - and a great box it was. When it became obvious that the IBM PC was going to be big ,Syrius announced a 'downgrade card' that made the box PC compatable. We all nodded our heads - how true that was - and bought the card.

The Syrius, along with just about everything else in those days ran under the CP/M operating system from a company called Digital Research. That included the Apple II for which I think Apple could be justified in claiming to have invented the PC mass market. And Digital Research could have been said to have invented the Micro operating system.

You had run CP/M because Visicalc - the killer app of the time (they invented the spreadsheet) ran under CP/M. I went to the announcement of the IBM PC in New York and the presenter was downright sheepish about the PC DOS operating system they had provided. It is received wisdom that IBM provided the inferior PC DOS operating system because the authors of CP/M thought that they owned the market and could dictate terms to IBM. How little they knew about the marketing muscle of IBM in the 80s. Anyway we were assured that CP/M would be provided in a few months as an option, and PC DOS looked a bit lilke a stopgap.

Well respected comentators shook their heads and said that without CP/M the IBM PC would never fly. Then Lotus 123 was announced and suddenly CP/M didn't seem such a big deal.

Digital research went on to develop a multi-tasking operating system which would run multiple PC DOS sessions and a graphical user interface. All to no avail. Whatever happened to Digital Research - I think they went bust.