October 15, 2005

The Four SEO’s

by Brian Turner

(being a spoof of Monty Python’s “Four Yorkshiremen” sketch)

FIRST SEO:
Aye, very passable, that, very passable bit of ranking.

SECOND SEO:
Nothing like a good ranking for a competitive keyword, eh, Josiah?

THIRD SEO:
You’re right there, Obadiah.

FOURTH SEO:
Who’d have thought a year ago we’d all be sittin’ here with high rankings for competitive keywords, eh?

FIRST SEO:
In them days we was glad to have any kind of ranking.

SECOND SEO:
A non-competitive ranking.

FOURTH SEO:
Even if it were just on Lycos.

THIRD SEO:

Or Devilfinder.

FOURTH SEO:
Oh, we never had any high rankings. We used to compete for five-keyword strings at best..

SECOND SEO:
Five-keyword strings? We were lucky to get ranked for anything with twenty keywords in it.

THIRD SEO:
But you know, we were happy in those days, though we had poor rankings.

FIRST SEO:
Rankings didn’t matter to us then. My old Dad used to say to me, “Good rankings doesn’t buy you happiness, son”.

FOURTH SEO:
Aye, ‘e was right.

FIRST SEO:

Aye, ‘e was.

FOURTH SEO:
I was happier then and I had no rankings. We used to struggle just to even get listed on Google.

SECOND SEO:
Google! You were lucky to get anything listed on Google! We used to manage one single listing, for just one single page, on AllTheWeb.

THIRD SEO:
Eh, you were lucky to have something on AllTheWeb! We used to struggle to get just one page on Dogpile!

FIRST SEO:
Oh, we used to dream of having a page on Dogpile! Would ha’ been a palace to us. We used to have a single reference from another site on Gigablast. And even that was delisted.

FOURTH SEO:
Well, when I say Google it was only a 404 redirect error on Google Mozambique, but to us it was a listing.

SECOND SEO:

Our 404 listing was removed from AllThe Web; we ‘ad to try and become DMOZ editors just for a listing somewhere, and even then the meta-editors would blacklist our submissions for fun.

THIRD SEO:
You were lucky to have a 404 listing! Dogpile wouldn’t list us unless we deleted all our pages and propagated our domain into obscurity.

FIRST SEO:
Domain?

THIRD SEO:
Aye.

FIRST SEO:
You were lucky to have a domain. We used to have to open a Geo-cities account, and even then they would take our site down whenever we used HTML.

SECOND SEO:
Luxury. We had to become our own ISP just to even upload to the internet, and even then we were never allowed more than a 4 kilobyte line to connect with.

THIRD SEO:

Well, of course, we had it tough. We used to ‘ave to write our own operating system, written in BASIC on Commodore 64’s, just to even access the internet. And even then we were only allowed to connect once every three months for a second…if we were lucky!

FOURTH SEO:
Right. I used to have to create a new operating system coded entirely in Mauritanian, create an ISP network by plugging an electric kettle into a toaster, and then build a website entirely in binary that was only accessible via arpanet.

FIRST SEO:
Website? We never had a website. I built my own hosting server out of nothing but a large wooden fork and a tin of apricots, and coded the operating system using nothing but ticker tape made from egg batter. And then when we tried to connect to the internet, ICANN would send electric shocks directly to our buttocks whenever we tried using FTP protocol. In the end our pages were rendered as nothing more than random text accessible only from the moon. But…it were a ranking to us, and we were happy.

SECOND SEO:
Aye.

FIRST SEO:
And you try and tell that to the young SEO’s of today…they won’t believe you.

ALL: SEO:
They won’t!

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Story link: The Four SEO’s

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