Reputation, Agency Ownership & the Fight Over 'SEO'

Moz's legal counsel Sarah Bird found an approved registration for the word 'SEO' (after the applicant had even edited Wikipedia to call himself its founder). At ~24–25, Rhea joined Moz, Jonathan Hochman and others in opposing it, which became a three-year legal battle costing ~$18,000. Hers was the last active claim, and the applicant lost after missing filings and deadlines.

Asked by Sara · answered by Rhea Drysdale

The applicant planned a certification program that SEOs would need to complete to use the term. He likely would have sent cease-and-desists and damaged some companies, though long-term enforceability was doubtful. Industry standards aren't bad in principle, but they should come from an organization, not one individual.

Asked by Nik · answered by Rhea Drysdale

The start is hard: insurance, payroll, workers' comp, infosec policies, leases — 'I'm a business owner, not an SEO'. She loves operations, client programs and growth but not reporting. She initially focused on people over systems; strong systems let you replace and train people. It took about a decade to get good at it.

Asked by Nik · answered by Rhea Drysdale

Focus on what you're certain about — a resilient team and client trust. Clients now ask her to build agentic AI workflows that encode the agency's processes and guardrails (e.g., for an international e-commerce company after layoffs), with the agency still overseeing strategy and QA. Small and mid-size clients are leaving to DIY with AI; she compares it to phones disrupting photography — accessibility means accepting lower quality.

Asked by Nik · answered by Rhea Drysdale

Sara: good-enough AI output has a place (just as Canva didn't replace designers) but executives over-rely on it; QA reveals missing and incorrect information — 'this is a car that needs a driver.' Rhea: AI generates volume that still needs legal, fact and tone checks, so it hasn't really saved time; enterprise agentic content workflows need strong governance.

Asked by Sara · answered by Rhea Drysdale & Sara

She admits she's bad at bizdev and has spent almost nothing on sales and marketing; leads come from word of mouth, referrals and returning clients. A PayPal email once featured their blog post and brought ~150 leads in 24 hours, but only four were qualified. Building a real pipeline is her goal this year.

Asked by Nik · answered by Rhea Drysdale

They're a disclosed paid Wikipedia contributor — working with editors to propose changes or new articles rather than editing directly. Wikipedia matters more than ever due to the Knowledge Graph and AI. They've moved from reactive reputation cleanup to proactive work that helps people and brands become recognized leaders in a category.

Asked by Nik · answered by Rhea Drysdale

In 2016 she used a Medium post to debunk claims that Google autocomplete favored Hillary Clinton. Now, Google shows no AI Overviews or Gemini answers for election queries, which she argues borders on voter suppression; a voter-registration client can't benefit from natural language, FAQs or structured data and needs exact-match pages like 2006-era SEO.

Asked by Nik · answered by Rhea Drysdale