Overall:
There is no “one-fits all” internationalisation strategy suitable for all websites, the selected approach will depend largely upon the main target audience. However, there are certain things you can look to avoid to ensure you’re not reducing the strength of your website with duplicate content or missing out on potential traffic in countries which are important to your business.

Recently Ciaran Norris wrote a thorough piece on how the Guardian basically denounces SEO as scams and fails to grasp the whole concept of it, while facing the Google monopoly with all it’s ramifications. I took a closer look just to discover what the problem with search engine optimisation and the Guardian is: According to an article published at their own website the Guardian is not the leading UK online newspaper anymore. The Telegraph has outpaced them due to “hard technical work, SEO and increasing editorial content by as much as 50%”. As we know in the SEO industry content is still king and combined with proper SEO it can make a difference. So no wonder that the Telegraph managed to increase it’s traffic by 153.4%.

“To me it shows that some people high up in the publishing hierarchy are still stuck in the past, have a superficial expertise if at all in online publishing and blame a whole industry for their own failure.”

The folks at the Guardian better face reality and hire a solid SEO company. Newspapers are not bought solely on newstands anymore they are found via Google and read online for years now. If the Guardian is too slow to adapt they must face the responsibility themselves and stop badmouthing the SEO industry for their own lack of understanding of the new media environment.

It seems that most other established UK newspapers by now have grasped the concept of SEO with the exception of the Guardian. I already cited the The Times article predicting a huge SEO boom in the near future. The Independent has covered SEO only in a single a paragraph last year but the article was a sound one. Indeed The Guardian itself published a primer on SEO, as Ciaran correctly notices, and it was not only about scams. So it seems that it’s not The Guardian as whole but just an incompetent individual.

It’s a strange coincidence though that the publication of the outstanding SEO results of The Telegraph is followed by the denouncement of “SEO scams” by the Guardian a few days later.

Right now it is just the update with Del.icio.us working better. We will be releasing an update soon that will be adding Mixx and have some new options with StumbleUpon. Then after that we will be working on another Kick A version that will have all kinds of crazy stuff it is going to be rad.

When we release the next version I will be uploading a video on how to use it at all the different sites and how you really can use it to build top profiles. Last year I used it to build a good Digg profile, one of my friends is in the top 15 Stumblers and he used it to do that, and I have had literally hundreds of people say they have used it to help them build more powerful profiles.

Nearly 100k downloads of the old version can be bad right?

Stay tuned, make sure you subscribe to our feed for updates. Also stay tuned I have a really cool beta analytics product for blogs that is about a week or two away from release. If anyone wants to help beta post in the comments or email me.

Google Benchmarking Tool

Sometimes it takes a few days before I can test new features the engines offer. Such is the case with Google's new benchmarking tool. I got my notification of it's launch back on the 9th but unfortunately it was last night before I could actually do anything about it (darn those "pesky" clients for keep us so busy here :) Then - when I went to look into what other's thought of it I discovered that there are those out there (likely the same ones who use Google Analytics as their primary analytics tool) who've know about it for about a month.

So there we go, that'll teach me for using ClickTracks and relying on notifications from Google about new products. :)

Once I finally had a chance to login, let Google use my anonymous stats, and peek at the benchmarking data I have to say that while the date they are accessing is still VERY limited - you can definitely tell how powerful this information will be when more website data is included.

Basically what they're doing is allowing users to specify their industries, share their data anonymously with Google who will gather together people from the same industry, combine their data and present it to you as the benchmark average for your industry. VERY kewl.

I was going to put up some screenshots and then I thought, gee - do I really want my competitors coming to my blog and peeking on my traffic stats? Heck, it took enough thought just to decide to check that box that allowed Google to share my stats in a non-individualized way. :) So instead I'll send you to Andy Beal's blog where he shares some if you'd like a peek.

Jason Gambert Trademarking SEO As "A Process Not A Service"

This morning I had brought to my attention (by Daryl Quenet, Beanstalk's Director Of Optimization Services) a trademark application for - of all things - the term "SEO". Jason Gambert has filed for the trademark. After his initial applications were declined he's managed to wear down the fine folks at the trademark office and it's passed the initial stages.

As part of the application Jason has referred to SEO as a process not a service. He claims to want to establish standards and anyone who doesn't meet those standards cannot use the term SEO to refer to them. And who will dictate these standards? Why none other than Jason Gambert himself. Why do I have a hunch there will be a paid review fee to insure that your processes (not services) meet his "stringent" requirements (of course, this is just a guess).

Now one thing that REALLY irks me (well - one among many) can be encompassed by the question, "Who is Jason Gambert?" Before this issue arose I'd never heard of him, a number of other SEO community members had never heard of him so I have to ask, who the heck (the word I'll use in a blog post and save more colorful terms for later) is he to appear out of nowhere and claim to know the standards we should all live up to? While the term SEO is so obviously a generic one that my main objection is that he shouldn't be able to trademark it in the first place, my next opposition would be that Jason Gambert himself is not in a position of authority in the industry to set standards at all.

While I'd still object is it was Rand Fishkin, Danny Sullivan or the like - at least I'd be able to sleep knowing that the standards themselves would be legitimate ones. But Jason Gambert? I don't think I'm going to try to build my business processes around tactics from some guy I don't know and have never heard of.

But I digress. This is a HUGE issue. If you're at all involved in the SEO or Internet communities you NEED to file a complaint.

Sarah Bird, legal counsel for SEOmoz was the first to file a formal complaint. You can read theirs at http://ttabvue.uspto.gov/ttabvue/v?qs=91183449. You can also read an awesome summary of the issue, the history, etc. on the SEOmoz site here. It was a huge pleasure to have Sarah on the show to discuss this important issue. Now the work is up to you ...

To file your opposition to this act (and you certainly should) you can do so on the Trademark Office site at http://estta.uspto.gov/filing-type.jsp. If you need more time you can also simply file for an extension that will give you 30 days to complete the process.

It important that you do one of the two today at it's the last day to file.

On a slightly different note. Should this not work and should Jason Gambert actually get the trademark we're going to have to ready ourselves for battle. it's going to be important that the SEO community (I CAN still use that term for now) rallies together in defense of any companies charged by Jason. Beanstalk will commit to a $1000 donation to the first company taken to court in the event that Gambert actually get the right to do so to help cover the legal fees. I'd challenge other major SEO companies to do the same. We'll need to make it so expensive to fight these ridiculous battles against anyone involved that it's not worth it.

If you haven’t seen the official posts, Adobe has been working to make Flash more index-able by search engines. Google has recently rolled out better code for Flash, e.g. you’re now more likely to see useful snippets on Flash pages in Google’s search results.

I’m a fan of this change, and I’m a fan of Adobe in general. They get a lot of credit in my book for opening up the specifications for PostScript, Adobe’s font standards, and their Acrobat/PDF format. Very few companies have been able to open up their specs and still compete successfully against powerful opponents. I respect Adobe for that — not to mention providing one of the first widely-known “plug-in” mechanisms (in Photoshop). The idea of a plugin or extension has greatly affected how people view software from Firefox to WordPress. I’m glad that this most recent change by Adobe will make it easier for search engines to index content in Flash files.