I was just starting to recover from the marathon of Internet marketing conferences: Think Tank, Scary SEO, SMX East and Pubcon when Jim Boykin did the unthinkable, he decided to stop buying paid links. This comes as a huge surprise to anyone familiar with the history of We Build Pages, which is rooted in paid link building. For those of us that work there we knew what was on the horizon, which is why they hired Patrick Sexton, QualityGal, Lisa Barone and myself.

The responses to Jim’s post have been mostly congratulatory with a few optimistic competitors who think we won’t be able to compete without paid links. To those competitors, all I can say is, hold onto your nutz! We’re fat, crazy squirrels and we’re here to steal your nutz.

1. I’m going home to Florida! Who knew it got so cold in upstate New York?
2. David Snyder is my hero. Thanks for putting this entire thing together!
3. Jordan Kasteler is going to teach us black magic. How else can he get 57 posts a day hot on Sphinn?
4. I get to carpool for six hours each way with not just amazing SEOs, but some of my favorite people of all time: Carolyn Shelby, John Santangelo and Todd Weise.
5. My diet will consist of something other than pizza… YAY! (I blame Lisa and Pat)
6. Did I already mention it’s in Florida? Sweet tea and grits here I come!
7. Amazing speakers: Jeff Quipp, David Snyder, Jordan Kasteler, Martin Bowling, Loren Baker, Brandy Eddings, Pamela Lund, Carolyn Shelby, Brian Chappell, John Carcutt, Ross Dunn, Brian Carter and Chris Hart
8. I’ll be speaking in costume… that’s right, it’s Scary SEO. Who’s with me?
9. There’s something unique about this conference, but I can’t give it away, yet.
10. Another IM Charity Party, reserve your spot now.
11. I’ll get to catch up with Loren Baker on politics, assuming Google restores his life by then.
12. Ninjas are invading Boca Raton (help me, they won’t leave me alone, did you see their violent threats on Twitter just for dinner?)
13. Amazing sponsors: Search & Social, Agency Web, Bruce Clay, Fuel Interactive, SearchEngineWatch and SEOmoz
14. Martin Bowling will probably be on post-op pain killers, which has to be amusing.
15. We’ll probably learn a lot.
16. We’ll probably make a lot of business deals (have to say I’m still seeing the return from Think Tank, I hope Scary SEO can live up to it)
17. It’s in FLORIDA!
18. Brian Chappell is always the highlight of every conference I go to, so I can’t wait to see what legends are born this time, right Mute Lion?

This is the third conference in a month amid a cross-country move and job change… whew!

More important (to me at least) is that she is my new neighbor and I don’t mean cubicle neighbor, my actual house neighbor! Now I can torment Lisa endlessly about her cat falling from windows and I can forget to invite her to things like pumpkin picking every day of the week.

All joking aside, I’m giddy with excitement about working with Jim, Pat and now publicly, The Lisa! Her decision was one of the strongest factors in mine. So, Lisa, welcome to the team (and Troy, NY bawhahaha)!

The leading cause appears to be a sudden migration of sexy SEOs from Hawaii and Florida to the colder, northern climate. It remains to be seen whether the effects will cause significant damage including obsessive link building and staggering improvements in visibility.

They’re getting reports from the field now: Rhea Joins We Build Pages.

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Hopefully that wasn’t entirely lame.

Personal note: The past year included a marriage, a move (now two), a new job (now two), thankless non-profit work, travel, conferences, a terrible death in the family, a breast cancer battle for an immediate family member and more. My family and friends are stronger than ever despite everything and my husband and I know this is the right decision for both of our goals.

I’m beyond excited to work with Jim, Pat and the ninjas! And to settle into cold upstate NY… brrrr!

I used Quadro from Elegant Wordpress Themes. Then I customized it with my She-Ra colors from Twitter. Who says red and pink clash?

Next I upgraded Wordpress, my giant heap of plugins and my content. The new theme required a Thumbnail image for each post, so click through the categories and enjoy, I had fun making them.

When I nervously asked my good friend, Matt Inman, the genius behind a certain notorious online dating site, if he could review my blog he asked if he could design a custom RSS button for it. Um… duh! I don’t think it gets better than that. I’m one of Matt’s biggest fans (regardless of what all of the widget haters have to say), no one makes unicorns farting glitter cooler.

Below are Matt’s initial designs based on my infatuation with tea and when you look to the right to subscribe to my blog, you can see the final concept.

Love it? Want your own badass custom RSS button? Matt wants to make more of them (because they’re fun!), so shoot him a message on 0at to hire him. Yes, I said hire, despite his charity with my blog, you probably aren’t BFFs (yes, we’ve had a pillow fight… no, that’s really a terrible lie)! We have had some embarrassing moments together though, like this one:

After Matt graciously donated my rocking button, I spent a couple of days stumbling through design tweaks after Tony, Michael, Aaron and Cameron took the time to give their thoughts on ways my blog could not suck. Thank you for your expert feedback! I’m still making numerous adjustments from alignment to site architecture, but while the changes trickle in amid spare time, it became apparent that I could no longer keep the new look a secret:

Jeez Brian, way to out me for actually paying attention to my blog! Google Analytics and I were under the impression that no one visits - look, I even wear my low RSS subscription count with pride:

Have any ideas on ways I could make the blog even better (besides actually blogging, something I truly detest)? I’d love everyone’s thoughts and if nothing else, your subscription if you aren’t already making love to my silence on the blogosphere.

In the coming months you can expect to find me:

Guest Blogging at Bruce Clay

Lisa Barone is taking a vacation and for some ridiculous reason she handed the reigns of the Bruce Clay Blog to some of the smartest women in SEO. I made the cut, but for comedic value rather than smarts, why else would I be on Friday if only to stir things up? ::sigh:: Lisa already made me promise not to treat it like Sugarrae’s Guest Whore Week. So, mark your calendars, I’m crashing Bruce Clay on Friday, August 8th.

Attending Think Tank 2008

Dr. David Klein, the amazing brains behind the SEO Texas Holdem Tournament at Pubcon 2007, is working his event planning magic on a few good men (and women) at Think Tank 2008. Set in Del Mar, California, I’m still not sure if this is a vacation or a conference, but with the beautifully black talent that’s attending I couldn’t pass it up! Better yet, dk has me hard at work on a TOP SECRET mission that’s going to make this an amazing experience for all involved.

Speaking at Scary SEO

David Synder is organizing a mini search conference, Scary SEO (it’s the week prior to Halloween), in Boca Raton that is probably the best deal you can get for $200! What started as a fun little gathering of Floridian SEOs has blown up with some truly amazing speakers and sponsors including SEOmoz and Agency Web. Want to go? Register online for Scary SEO now.

And for some truly scary SEO, here’s a horrifying scene from ACCM… an interview with me on Realistic Link Building. I’m still a little newbie, so I haven’t perfected the sound bite. The interview is basically me rambling on about my intro to link building fifteen minutes a day, but I didn’t get into any of the real meat like the practical methods of how, where and when, which I did discuss during the presentation. I’d share them now, but I think my imperfect interview presence is a blessing in disguise… why give for free what others can pay $200 to hear at Scary SEO?

Here’s mine:

“Twitter is over capacity. We’ll try to lighten the load and have things back to normal soon.”

A refreshing break from something is technically wrong!

Runner up:

Now if everyone would stop blaming Ruby on Rails for Twitter’s problems…

The session was “Secrets for Getting More & Better Links for Higher Search Rankings,” catchy huh? It was actually a really fun topic and I need to thank one of my SEO idols, Stephan Spencer, for the opportunity. He moderated the session and gave everyone a brain overload with the introduction. That set the bar really low for me, because everyone was drooling from too much mental stimulation. Other panelists were social media expert, Neil Patel, and Seth Besmertnik, CEO of LinkExperts. Seth wins for best presentation since my computer-challenged husband exclaimed, “I learned some things!”

The session was covered by WebProNews.

I only got to attend one other session, but it was Online Reputation Management for Direct Marketers featuring Lee Odden and Rob Key. They did a phenomenal job and interestingly covered a lot of the companies I featured in my Less Everything blog post on “The 5 Most Hated Companies Online.” I’ve been on the fixing and causing ends of reputation management issues, either way it’s frustrating. Lee and Rob did a great job with the subject as two of the industry’s leading experts.

So, what’s next for Rhea?

This weekend is Brad’s family reunion in Panama City Beach. It’s the usual… food, beach, family, food and more food!

The week after next I head to Seattle for the now SOLD OUT SMX Advanced where I’ll be covering sessions again and interviewing experts for Search Engine Journal with the amazing Eric Lander. I can’t wait to spend time with some of my favorite SEO buddies (you know who you are and that statement leaves things open so I don’t offend anyone like Matt who I can’t really stand).

After SMX Advanced I’m heading to Glacier National Park for a week and a half to spend time with my mom and step dad who are working at the park over summer. Brad flies out to join us for the last half. Should be amazing and I’m trying to convince some SEO friends to join for the first part… interested? The campground has free WiFi!

If our paths are going to cross, hit me up rhea [at] lesseverything.com.

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!

So, what does any of this mean for the greater SEO community? If Mr. Gambert is successful in registering he would assume exclusive rights to the word and have the ability to limit usage. If you’re currently selling a SEO related service and use the term, he would have grounds to require you license (i.e. pay for) it from him. Also, this would give him enough ammo to go after competitors bidding on SEO related terms on the various pay-per-click channels.

(Sarah, feel free to correct me if any of this is incorrect.)

I personally think it’s a genius move and it almost went undiscovered, but it’s also in my opinion, a ROYAL ASS move and he needs to be stopped. To register an acronym that’s been widely used by this industry for more than a decade is completely ridiculous. I’m one of the youngest SEOs in the crowd, but I’ve been providing SEO services years longer than Mr. Gambert’s claim.

To my knowledge SEOmoz, ArteWorks, Jonathan Hochman and myself were the only parties to file a NOO against Mr. Gambert. Am I missing anyone else out there? My Notice of Opposition was tiny and no doubt incoherent with such little time to discuss with my lawyer, but I’m hoping it’s enough to lend support to Sarah’s exhaustive case for denying registration of the SEO trademark.

More SEO Trademark details can be found here:

> Listen to full Webcology podcast on the SEO Trademark with Sarah Bird.

> Read the gory details of the SEO Trademark status at SEOmoz.

> Read my copy of the Notice of Opposition to Trademark SEO.

Update: I’ve been going through Jason’s new blog (which I also won’t link to… Google it) and this just made me ill:

My goal in owning the trademark for the word SEO is not to try to force people to change their SEO process, but rather, prevent companies from selling “SEO” as a service under false pretenses.

The last time I checked we didn’t need a SEO dictator. This is beyond disturbing to me and the only similar situation I can think of is labeling food “organic,” which actually has some value. We (PEOPLE not Produce!) don’t need to be regulated, there’s an inherent system of checks and balances, just like every other professional industry. From my understanding of the situation the only two possibilities I can see are that Jason is either filing the registration for personal gain or he has an unhealthy complex that he should be the governing body for all things SEO. I understand he’s asked other bodies to help draft “standards” for best SEO practices, but if standards is what he wants he should have created a certification program, rather than going after a commercial service.

Power to the SEOs! UNITE!

Edit: Daver just called the ArteWorks NOO to my attention. There are some heated disputes going on that you can read about on the ArteWorks blog.

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.