Today, after listening to the gorgeous and incredibly intelligent, Sarah Bird, General Counsel for SEOmoz, on Webcology at WebmasterRadio, I decided to file an official notice of opposition (NOO) against the poor schmuck that’s trying to trademark SEO. That’s right, someone is trying to trademark our beloved acronym, SEO!

Sarah discovered the evil plan a few weeks back after updating some SEOmoz trademarks. To her and the greater SEO communities’ dismay, Jason Gambert, unsuccessfully filed for trademark registration of SEO in May of 2007, but in January of 2008 he convinced a no-doubt weary judge to approve his application. Today was the last day to file a Notice of Opposition before publication. Eek!
continue reading "SEO Trademark - Notice of Opposition"

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For anyone out of the loop, Yahoo just got even cooler!

1. Yahoo acquires IndexTools, web analytics software
2. Flickr now lets you upload 90 second videos - The YouTube killer buzz is going nuts.
3. The Yahoo! Live team went out of their way to befriend me and say thanks for the feedback. Cool!

I heart Yahoo! Unfortunately, I rarely use their search engine except to see how my clients and personal projects are doing. Actually, that’s a lie, I really like the Search Assist feature for keyword research, but even then I don’t always click beyond the suggestions. I know, I know, I should be ashamed of myself for inflating Google’s market share. Oh well.

What I do use daily from Yahoo! are these tools for personal and professional reasons:

• Flickr
• Yahoo! Site Explorer
• Yahoo! Mail
• Yahoo! Pipes

I can’t wait to see what the future holds especially since the few insiders I’ve met are some of the most genuine, creative and intelligent people in the industry. Keep up the good work amid drama.

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After my post on Yahoo! Live for SEO and my own channel creation at RheaLIVE, I’ve been keeping tabs on a few things and it looks like Jason Calacanis just created his own Yahoo! Live channel, JasonNation. I’m sure this has everything to do with my story! 

Perhaps not, but the his attention will surely bring more users.

Also worth noting, a local contact, Ben McDonald (aka Beebe4), just created his own channel as well.

And, I found my favorite channel so far, CartmanTheDog. He’s a beautiful golden retriever that’s been licking peanut butter out of a jar for a solid half hour. It doesn’t get better than that!

In all seriousness, the potential is huge. Now if Yahoo could just make some changes before they lose us…

Requests for Yahoo! Live:

• Ability to befriend or subscribe to channels.
• A portal where I can see which of my friend’s channels are live at any one time.
• Improved channel tracking. Besides the number of viewers, I want to see referrers to my channel and where viewers are located. Also, how long did they stay on the channel?
• An option to save a copy of the message board after a live show.
• I would also like the option to save the show itself.
• The option to customize the way the page is laid out. Maybe I only want to see the channel screen and no one else in the room. Or, maybe I want to see up to eight channel users at a time.
• Increased channel protection. The only two options seem to be “find me in search” or “send a link out” but I would like to see a security feature that requires a password or other verification before viewing.
• Definitely the option to delete or clear a message board after a show has ended.
• I’d also like the option to get notified via Twitter or IM when a friend goes live. Conversely, give users the option to turn notification on/off.
• Increased profile customization. Besides the channel name and description can I have a little more meat? Likes, dislikes, location, age, website, social network links, etc.
• A channel bulletin board would be fun to post important notes about the show as well as a schedule/calendar feature.
• A lot of this could be shuffled into a paid versus free account and I’d like to see more corporate solutions (not just personal channels).

There’s a ton more I’d like to see, but I’ll leave things as is for now.

Thanks Yahoo!

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Not less money, but the company. After a short stay with the MPS Group, I’m moving onto Less Everything, an incredible design and ruby on rails development company.

Why? Didn’t I just get a new job?

It isn’t news that I got married in November and my husband, Brad, has been working full-time with the local school system. He loves teaching, but with his background in TV production his dream job is researching and writing for documentaries. Since my career was more lucrative it made sense for us to follow that path, but after several heart-to-hearts it became obvious that he needed more. And, I need him to be happy and my equal if I want our marriage to be a priority. So, I’ve metaphorically picked up the Jacksonville anchor and if the right wind comes we’ll be able to follow.

continue reading "Rhea is Working for Less"

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What is Yahoo! Live?

Essentially a LIVE streaming video chat room. The last part probably has negative connotations for many of you, but it’s the best way to describe the product. It’s still in experimental release, but with recent layoffs I wouldn’t anticipate a ton of expansions. For details on the Yahoo! Live product launch, check out the official release or read Danny Sullivan’s coverage at Search Engine Land or Arnold Zafra’s at Search Engine Journal. TechCrunch did the best job of assessing its strengths, weaknesses and functionality and you can read about it here.

Now that we’ve covered the basics…
continue reading "Yahoo! Live for SEO"

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I had no clue what to write about, so I turned to my husband, Brad, for inspiration. I grilled him on the fundamentals of SEO in hopes that my insight would have rubbed off on him proving that I’m an amazing teacher. Sadly, he barely passed, but it’s an amusing look at out how the outside world views SEO (if they know about it), websites and search engines.

Check it out here.

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The moon taunted me for forty minutes this evening! From the time I got into my car and drove out of the parking garage, all I saw was the biggest, most beautiful moon of my life. Unfortunately, I was camera-less, which put me into a grumpy mood. As my husband has pointed out, “you don’t enjoy places. You take photos of them and then enjoy the pictures.” How sad is that? Fortunately, I’m not alone! This seems to be a common complaint for all photographers.

Anyways, here’s the moon from our porch (it looks like a sunrise!):

It’s still early, so I don’t have the eclipse shots, yet, but will hopefully snap them before I get heavily absorbed in my Guestwhore post for Sugarrae.

Edit: snapped some of the lunar eclipse and it was awesome. Also, just finished the guest post, so check it out tomorrow.

Good night!

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I’m home sick today (again) and it’s really starting to tick me off. I know, I know… you don’t get better unless you rest, but I can’t seem to pull myself away from it [work]. I get bored and boredom drives me nuts. So, I’m going to write a quick blog post about recent Rhea news and then I’ll go back to the couch and watch Oprah. If only I’d stayed home yesterday, I could have seen Rand and Geraldine at Harpo.

For anyone that missed it, I finally gave Loren another blog post for Search Engine Journal, this time it was on the Death of SEO Transparency. It got some terrific feedback and more than 100 votes on the poll. Thank you to each of the SEOs that contributed to the article including: Andy Beal, Aaron Chronister, CK Chung, Liana Evans, Jonathan Hochman, Debra Mastaler, Jill Whalen and Chris Winfield. I always go through fits of anxiety when it comes to blogging because the last thing I want to do is contribute to the overabundance of noise. This means my posts are few and far between for personal projects, but I appreciate everyone’s support when I jump to it!

Amazingly, miracles do happen and I will be blogging twice (counting this post, three times) in one week! SEO consultant and business owner, Rae Hoffman is about to work on her tan in the Dominican Republic, which means it’s time for Guestwhore Week! Fortunately or unfortunately, I’m one of this years guestwhores and will be at the mercy of Graywolf, our babysitter, while Rae soaks up the sun… and some fruity beverages. Look for the post on February 21st!

In other news, I just received my copy of Jerri Ledford’s new book, the SEO: Search Engine Optimization Bible. Along with several dozen search industry experts, Jerri interviewed me on the current state and future of SEO. I haven’t had an opportunity to really dive into it, but hope to have a full book review soon. Meanwhile, check it out for yourself.

Finally, one of my favorite Jacksonville geeps (geek peeps), Steven Bristol, and his co-founder, Allan Branch, just released a really cool site, Less Memories, and at my ridiculous recommendation turned that baby into a social network. The site is like one big library of sticky notes. You can use it to record, edit and search for your memories or connect with others… kind of like spying on your coworker’s desk.  Check it out and if you have any recommendations post ‘em here or on their Ruby on Rails blog at Less Everything.

Alrighty… back to feeling nauseous and reruns of MTV and VH1 reality shows.

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Do you follow 10? 50? 100? 300? 1,000? 5,000? The sky’s the limit and you’re a social whore?!

This week, I reached my limit, which is just shy of following 100 twits. Of course, my limit is a delicate balance of hyper-active and inactive posters. Over the course of several months, I whittled off the Guy Kawasaki and Robert Scobles of the the world with great appreciation for their work, but extreme frustration with their tweets.

(Why do we call them tweets instead of twits anyway?)

I’ve also done some serious soul searching with regards to following SEO rockstars versus SEO noobs. At one time (and perhaps still), I was an SEO noob. Somehow, I ended up dining with SEO rockstars and friendships were formed. Does that make me an SEO rockstar? No, it makes me a part of their entourage (read: really lame).

So why does it matter? Because I feel guilty when I don’t follow a SEO noob since I was a noob just one year ago. Why do I do it then? Because I simply don’t have the time or patience to follow that many unknown individuals. When I know you (or have even had a handful of substantial exchanges via the web) it’s much easier to care about your opinion of Cloverfield, the story you just Sphunn and whether you think Heath Ledger overdosed or was killed by Elvis.

At this moment, I have 69 follower requests (entirely because of Andy Beal’s “75 Internet Marketing Gurus on Twitter“) and no time to slowly sort through each weighing whether I know the individual or their post rate will be a burden. In time perhaps my threshold will expand, but for now I can’t hold anymore and feel like a failed marketer for cutting off potential networking opportunities. Forgive me great SEO Whore God of Marketing!

*Please note - I use follower almost interchangeably with someone I follow because I have a private account and if I let someone follow me, I’m instantly following them. I know I could simply go public and not have this problem, but I don’t want that many people I don’t know reading my stream of consciousness, which is primarily how I use Twitter.

Thank you Rae for pointing out the reference error.

________

On a personal note:

I’d like to post more frequently over the coming months as I dropped off the planet after Pubcon. For those that weren’t aware, I took a two week honeymoon to Barcelona, Andorra and Paris over the holiday break. Upon our return we moved to a new home in Neptune Beach, FL and then work and First Coast Surfrider hit me like a ton of bricks. Growing up is overwhelming.

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There is so much going on right now I needed a Friday recap (for this week only) as I have no lofty goals of ripping off The Lisa’s massive and beautifully (often sarcastically) written recaps for Bruce Clay.

Without further ado here are some cool finds:

The Happy Webbies store is finally open for business! The store currently has four shirts (and several buttons) with major web development and standards guru faces and sayings on them. For example, Jeffrey Zeldman’s bold yellow shirt says, <you>dumbass</you>. It doesn’t get better than that and I can’t give enough props to the boys at nGenWorks. They continue to be one of the most innovative and talented web design and development companies in Jacksonville… arguably the entire East Coast!

Michael Gray is laying down the law, yet again, this time to Download Squad’s Christina Warren who took a nasty jab at the entire SEO community in her article on Google removing thousands of malware sites. I wholeheartedly agree with everything Michael had to say and continue to be floored by the negative responses of educated Internet marketers, developers and reporters who still consider all SEO’s to be one step below lawyers.

Get your very own TPS Report from Initech! That’s right, now you can spread holiday cheer to your coworkers by printing and filling out your own TPS Reports from Office Space. Thanks JohnOrg for a terrific stumble that’s reduced this week’s productivity by 7 minutes and 52 seconds.

Can they build it? Yes they can (and did)! After some discourse on Twitter with Tamar, she dug up the following oldie, but goodie from Gina Trapani at Lifehacker on how to create and manage multiple Firefox profiles. Why would anyone want to do this? Because all of those extensions add up! And, if you live with a less tech-savvy user they might be a little intimidated by those customizations, so besides having a sparse browser that you can check, help your spouse or roommate out as well and go mutli-profile.

Go Global with Google! RedFly Marketing, Ireland’s top search engine marketing firm has released the second version of their Firefox extension, Google Global, which allows you to see both organic and paid search results as they appear in virtually every location on Earth. This is a terrific extension for search marketers and anyone running a global ad campaign online.

Webmaster World’s Pubcon 2007 Search Marketing Conference in Las Vegas!!! That’s right, it’s almost here. I leave Monday afternoon and return Saturday. This will be my first Pubcon and I’m beyond excited. The keynote speaker lineup alone is a force to be reckoned with and it’ll be refreshing to see sessions that break the Search Engine Strategies mold. I’ll be covering several sessions for Loren Baker’s Search Engine Journal. The posts will be less live blogging and more analytic. If we haven’t met, yet, I’m the redhead up front with a computer that’s probably dying a slow battery-deprived life.

Besides this being my first Pubcon, it will also be my first conference as a married woman. In honor of that event, Brad Cornelius, my husband will be flying out on Wednesday to meet my home-away-from-home. While I’m there two other MPS Group employees will also be there for a pharmaceutical conference, so we should be one happy Jacksonvillian family!

When I’m not busy blogging and jotting down notes from the 8am until 6pm or later conference sessions, I’ll be having fun in Vegas baby. Currently on the books: Tuesday night I’m going to see Blue Man Group, Wednesday night is the SEOmoz Werewolf Game and Thursday night is the SEO Charity Poker Tournament.

My husband has entered the tournament as a paying player and I’m hoping to win one of Pat Sexton’s (of SEOish and FeedTheBot fame) generously donated three free seats. If I win, I will be sporting Bond Girl, Xenia Onatopp attire and preparing to kick some serious SEO rockstar a$$. Other notable SEO’s at the table include Dave Davis, Neil Patel, Carolyn Shelby, Brent Csutoras, TheMadHat (aka Aaron Chronister), Aussie Webmaster (aka Frank Watson) and the James Bond to my Bond Girl, David Mihm.

On a completely non-SEO note and in addition to the Pubcon fun, First Coast Surfrider has also been ramping up. We have two major issues that we’re preparing a formal response to:

1. Beach Erosion in Ponte Vedra Beach
2. Huguenot Park access issues that stem from the new management plan

I won’t speak to our reaction just yet, but stay tuned.

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