
The Web Developer and His Wife (A Fairy Tale) - ajbatac
http://blogoscoped.com/archive/2008-08-07-n53.html
======
Harkins
This is obviously a fairy tale, no SEO consultant would ever give a
quantified, testable prediction of the effects of their work.

~~~
wmeredith
Oh, bullshit. I'm an SEO. You'll find a link to a downloadable pdf case study
right here: [http://www.voltagecreative.com/search-engine-
optimization.ph...](http://www.voltagecreative.com/search-engine-
optimization.php)

True, many SEO are snake oil salesmen, but not me or my firm. We back our SEM
program with results.

</mild-overreaction>

~~~
alex_c
I'm sorry to say, but my first reaction was "How much are they charging for
the PDF?"

There are a LOT of SEO snake oil salesmen out there. Or maybe there aren't
that many, but they're bad/loud/obnoxious enough to give the majority a bad
name. Unfortunately, the result is the same...

~~~
wmeredith
"How much are they charging for the PDF?"

:-) It's FREE

~~~
Hexstream
You mean like the iPods? Over time I've been conditioned to be dubious of some
words such as "free", especially in capitals.

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BigZaphod
Yikes. I feel like I just wasted a part of my life looking for some punch
line. Bah.

------
Tichy
The interesting lesson is that this trivial story made it to a high spot on
Hacker News. It is just as with that satire of xkcd: just put some stick
figures on whatever you have to say, and people will love it. Obviously it
works with fairy tales, too.

Then again the lesson is not that interesting, it was known before.

~~~
pchristensen
Unless it was not known and storytelling is a good way to communicate a
lesson.

~~~
Tichy
To be honest, I thought the story was rather stupid. The lesson about SEO
would have been more digestible as a "top ten SEO tricks list", and there
really is nothing wrong with continuously trying to improve one's site. It is
not an unavoidable consequence of trying to improve one's site to end up using
black hat SEO tricks. So the story was plain wrong. Maybe the one moral is to
not rely on SEO consultants because they might do stuff to your site that is
not really beneficial - OK. But to make that single point, the story was too
long.

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jcapote
Wow. How is this number 2? Bad HN!

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robfitz
that made me sad (that i spent the time) =(

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geuis
umm ok. What was the point of that story.

~~~
amjith
Too much SEO is potentially harmful.

~~~
benmathes
There's a more insidious meaning in that article: Men are reasonable and don't
want more than they need but have no balls to stand up to a wife that keeps
wanting her husband to get MORE MORE MORE. The SEO stuff could be abstracted
over and it would just be a folk story.

~~~
ph0rque
I assume it's based on "The Fisherman and His Wife", a Russian fairy tale with
virtually an identical plot.

~~~
huhtenberg
By Mr. Pushkin no less :) Here's a translated version for everyone else's
reference - <http://home.freeuk.com/russica4/books/goldfish/gfish.html>

~~~
d0mine
Here's a soviet cartoon film "Сказка о рыбаке и рыбке"
<http://rutube.ru/tracks/749406.html>

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AndyKelley
mmm, candy

