Wonder Woman and the SEO Killer
Image by bbaltimore via Flickr
Last week a remarkable thing happened… Rhea Drysdale (aka Wonder Woman), a twenty-something entrepreneur, managed to hold off an attempt to secure the trademark for the term ‘SEO’ by one Jason Gambert. Who knows what Jason might have done with the trademark had he won, but at this point we’ll never know.
(Read about the whole sordid thing on Rhea’s blog.)
Thing is, while Gambert may be the ‘bad guy’ in some people’s eyes, he isn’t the SEO Killer in this story. Let me explain…
I came into SEO in a weird way. Back in 2003 we’d produced a handful of websites including College-Cram.com, a student resource library. At the time I didn’t know much about SEO, but in fiddling with analytics software began to notice interesting connections between stuff I was doing on the site and traffic patterns. With some trial and error I began to figure out things I could do that would result in better traffic. Lo! – I had discovered SEO.
Eventually, I stumbled across SEO as an industry phenomenon. I began reading about it in various SEO blogs, and guess what I found? Lots of folks parroting stuff that I already knew didn’t work. (I mean, really, keyword stuffing? In the 21st century?) At this point I realized that I’d come at SEO backwards, and it was a good thing too.
Most folks start out wanting to know about SEO and begin by reading up on it. This exposes them to a host of crap content – speculation, outdated suggestions, and downright baldfaced lies. I, on the other hand, started with the trial and error approach of the mad scientist so I had a basis of fact to fall back on. I figured I was much better off most SEO folk for this.
Then Rhea took down Gambert, and I thought “boy, was I wrong.” I’d never even heard of this case before yesterday…
Sure, a litigious third party owning the SEO trademark would have been a problem, but I realized that the real SEO Killer is ignorance. It’s a devious foe with a strong foothold in the SEO industry, always ready to catch you when you least expect it. You see it in the crappy SEO blogs, battle it daily in your presentations to potential clients, and when you least expect it, it slaps your face to remind you it’s still around.
I’m very thankful that Rhea took the stand she took, and pleased that she was victorious. I only hope my own battle against SEO ignorance turns out as well.
