Right it’s not often you happen across an absolute and total numpty of this magnitude, ..and we get to meet quite a few on our travels.

<< — Meet Dick, Dick is a proper numpty.

We’ve had the “pleasure” of “working with” this particular prima dona for coming up to a year now, he is (was) the incumbent flash designer on a client SEO project.

During the course of our work we get to meet and deal with lot of web designers, on both new build projects, and existing sites, and after long experience of the problems non-communication between designers and SEOs can cause we wrote “an open letter to web designers“as a humorous attempt at getting this message across before the problems start..  (Dick, go read it now )

& We meet all types, from the good to the ugly and the whole spectrum through, but today’s numpty (for the purposes of the story lets call him Dick, it suits him) really takes the biscuit and is actually our

2008 Numpty of the Year.

The highlights of “working with” (and we use the term in the loosest possible sense) this self-absorbed, self important Dick over the course of an ongoing successful SEO campaign during 2008/09 were to prove to be:

• Waiting 4 & 1/2 months initially, for a domain & hosting transfer, before being even able to start work after Dick shot himself in the foot by denying us access to do the work on his server, at which point client upped and left his hosting and took over her own. – always good idea, there are Dicks everywhere.. (metaphorically speaking )

• No direct working courtesy communications whatsoever, beyond occasionally being included into his petulant whining to the client about the need for SEO work in the first place.

• Random site deletions (three in total) of the whole HTML mirror site, the last time he did it, he did at least email to say he’d done it, the first 2 times we saw it on the link scanner or (missing from) the SERP some time afterwards.

• Replacing the modified index page with a brand new one, missing our tuned Titles footers & tweaks

And this is where it gets good. Dick had recently been asked to do a quick visual overhaul on his previous site, but gleefully decided that he could now use the opportunity to update the Flash version and set it to show over 100% of the page, then those [nasty mean ol] footer links at the bottom of the page leading into the alternative HTML site wouldn’t show and all would be well in Numpty-Flash-World.

We of course only learned of this whilst trying to reinstate his aforementioned site deletions after noting SERP falls from missing pages.

On Dick’s being asked to reinstate the footers, after several thinly veiled ego driven attempts to thwart their reinstatement failed, he deteriorated into a semi-neurotic mess over the course of an afternoon’s group email conversation between us and the client.

We were not just being pedantic about this, as anyone with the faintest clue knows, Google will potentially ban any site that has hidden links, ie links that Engines can see and users can’t, and that’s exactly what we had. They clearly and specifically state in the Google webmaster guidelines on hidden links

If your site is perceived to contain hidden text and links that are deceptive in intent, your site may be removed from the Google index and will not appear in search results pages. When evaluating your site to see if it includes hidden text or links, look for anything that can’t be easily viewed by visitors of your site. Are any text or links there solely for search engines rather than visitors?

Despite having been sent the Google Webmaster Guidelines link (twice) and having the paragraph quoted in bold red in the 3rd email, below are quoted some of the things Dick sent to us (and client whilst trying to convince them of our ineptitude) via email yesterday as he slowly unraveled, our comments in red

• You wouldn’t get banned from google [for hidden links] that’s overkill / paranoia / absurd / a joke!

• As said before he is wrong re google… you’ve been on it for years before he came along!!!!!!![ranked for company name only and had no hidden links]

• It has no impact re google – not rowing about it – I know that is the case – don’t have to prove anything! Have lost over an hour already on this now – times up!

• I know what i’m up to but not quibbling as said before. ..Nothing to prove

• don’t know why you’re advocating this clunky approach???? It’s just confusing [client name] and making my life stressful!

• You are 100% wrong about these links / google / flash.

• you don’t see the best flash sites in the world looking like this! [as if he makes them]

• All done… looks terrible and totally unnecessary!

• The html site looks shocking. Totally shocking!!!! What if people click the links???? [shock horror - people click links on a website]

• What a waste of my VALUABLE time……… NEVER AGAIN.

• U dropping that cash off today too as agreed? [to client cc-ed to us]

• Cash today, not asking. [to client cc-ed to us]

and our personal favourite, oh the irony..

• I AM F**KIN TECHNICAL DIRECTOR AT [STRUGGLING AD AGENCY] I KNOW MORE TECH STUFF THAN LITTLE WEB GIMPS LIKE U. THINK BEFORE U SCITZ LOSER.

And when we offered him some internet exposure here to see what the general (and SEO) public thought of his assertions he said all plastic gangster stylee..

Its a deal…. do whatever pathetic tricks turns u on and want and watch your little world come crashing down…..

Think ur tough – a blog – what a gansta!

You’re fu**ing with something far greater than u could possibly fathom little man….. stay away or get a slapping.

….BWHAHAHahahahahaha!!!!!!!!  ..It goes on but you probably get the idea.

Now neurotic instability in itself is not so uncommon in creatives without a clue, but from an IT Contractor who is allegedly the Technical Director of a large very well known ad agency, and according to his own amateur-looking (Flash) website has allegedly worked for Nokia, The BBC, T Mobile, United Media, blah blah blah, so you really would expect Dick to be a bit less of a numpty.

Hopefully he isn’t “advising” all his “corporate clients” that hiding links on their sites will be fine, or having neurotic jealousy attacks if anyone suggests using an SEO firm to bring traffic to his numpty Corporate Flash sites, because after all:

“they are all at the top of Google” anyway..

..yea course they are Dick, just like your own site  is

The irony of it all is that before he had his semi-public email nervous breakdown, he had also emailed us just prior to this asking if we would like to be his SEO partner for his long-time-coming company launch, and amongst other things how we could go about removing the SEO HTML from the site and replacing with.. ..well, you try and work out what numpty was on about..?

Also, would love to chat re the logic of seo, and how ultimately i can modify the structure of her files to increase awareness of content pages – surely if you’re recreating .html pages for seo purposes i could put some magic in the .html source files of her flash site and connect those as well. Flash obviously will ignore any .js and .css refs in the html so surely we could just add a seo.js file to the site and all would be easier…..

Lolwut? ..you want to do what? ..can we just put some SEO “magic” in a javascript file, & show HTML pages through flash?

“all would be easier…..” ..has since been shown to mean

“remove the alternative HTML site,  (for disabled users & users without Flash , as well as SE visibility) and the footer links to it”

…er yea, it doesnt quite work like that. Dick.

what a numpty.

so.. Dick, here you go, when you read this do feel free to put your side of things in the comments, and if you really want a taste of the power of “SEO Magic” let us know and we can include your name in the title tags here and put this post in the top 3 right under your numpty LinkedIn profile above your  own numpty site

If you decide instead to skulk away and remain anonymous, good luck with your upcoming company launch, with the levels of professionalism and concern over customer care and satisfaction and their general online business prospects you demonstrated yesterday (and for the previous year in fact) it can’t possibly fail

..and everyone else, we’d love to know your thoughts on whether Google would ban you for hidden links?

Update 8pm Dick has seen the post, it ranks #1 & 2 for Numpty of the year (of course)

Instead of responding he chose to email the client whining some more  (cced us in ) and asking them to call us off and making vague threats of legal action (about an anonymous post on the internet lol!!)

Interesting ..  ..this is “our little world coming crashing down” is it? Our “slapping”?

We’ve offered a conditional surrender. He apologises to both the client and us and we will delete and forget. Very fair under the circumstances.

will keep you updated..