LifeinAsia - 7:01 pm on Jan 2, 2008 (gmt 0)

What's even worse is the "My competitor made this change and now he's #1 on Google. I have to do the same thing."

One of the hardest things to make clients understand is that cause and effect are not so cut and dried. Chances are that the competitor amme numerous other changes at or around the same time and the one item the client points out may have had very little (if anything) to do with the results.

In fact, in many cases the results were achieve IN SPITE OF that change, not because of it. Or the change did indeed cause the results, but the results may not be long-term, especially if the change was black hat.