If you want to make your website as visible as possible there are a few ways of doing it. I stumbled across an old Blackadder DVD the other day and it got me thinking about how he would approach the subject. I certainly can’t imagine him hunkering down over a keyboard to find out about the latest techniques and then build a sustainable, long term strategy around them.

I had forgotten just how good this series was until I felt the tears starting to stream down my face again. In fact, I almost felt transported back in time to my parent’s house, where we would all watch this together over a family pack of crisps and a bottle of fizzy stuff.

As the shows carried on I started wondering how each of the characters would approach the task of SEO work. I mean, all it takes is one look at them to see that they aren’t exactly the respectable team of professionals you might be hoping to find.

Blackadder

What a wonderfully scheming and conniving man he was. If you handed over your website to him you could expect the worst sort of shabby black hat tricks on it. Anything which will make him rich without involving a lot of effort is his ideal way of working so you certainly can’t expect him to put a lot of time into the work.

I would boldly suggest that your site will be left an absolute mess while you are out of pocket and quite possibly being hunted down the law or maybe even by an angry bishop. The number of scrapes he gets into due to his lazy, conniving attitude means that I can’t really recommend his SEO services, I am afraid. He seemed to become increasingly clever as the shows went on, so I would guess that the incarnation from the final series would be the most intelligent one, but he never lost those family traits of cowardice and cynical.

Baldrick

It is unlikely that this perennial dogsbody would strike out on his own and offer SEO services, as he comes from a long line of downtrodden dogsbodies. He is, of course, famous for his cunning plans, which are usually about as cunning as a not very cunning thing if we are being honest.

If you decide to go with Blackadder’s SEO plans then you should be very worried if this guy comes in and says that he is in charge of, well, anything really. Oh, and if he ever offers you a cup of coffee I think you can safely decline.

Prince George / Lieutenant George

My wife isn’t from the UK and when the DVD came on she said that this guy’s face looked familiar. I tried to explain that he is now a global heart throb with an American accent but she didn’t quite seem to believe me for some reason. He was one of the best characters in the last couple of series and got a lot of the best lines in them.

Sadly, he was a complete fool and an aristocratic twit as well. He is unlikely to do much of the work himself, as there are always peasants to do that kind of thing for him.

General Melchett

With a guy like this running the show how could it possibly fail? Stephen Fry played the character to perfection and he really was pretty distasteful. His lack of modern strategic plans was shown up often, with his most famous perhaps being the idea that his men walk slowly towards the Germans as it is the last thing they would expect.

I really can’t see how a dinosaur like this could make your website a success, even if he had an infinite supply of workers at his disposal. Of course, Captain Darling will be there to help him out as well, although he isn’t exactly the ideal sort of SEO worker either, is he?

Written by JannWeb. Edited by Aritra Roy.

The best approach to SEO services is to look for reliability and professionalism over cowardly and conniving figures from sit com history.