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People in Russia are big fans of social networking, in fact they are the most engaged users in the world, according to a new study from comScore.


The study found social networking users in Russia spend 6.6 hours and view 1,307 pages per visitor per month.


Of the 1.1 billion people age 15 and older worldwide who accessed the Internet from a home or work location in May 2009, 734.2 million visited at least one social networking site during the month, representing 65 percent of the global Internet audience.


The Russian social networking audience had the highest engagement among the 40 individual countries reported by comScore. Brazil ranked close behind at 6.3 hours, followed by Canada (5.6 hours), Puerto Rico (5.3 hours) and Spain (5.3 hours).


“Social networking has become a popular online pastime not only in mature Internet markets like North America, but also in developing, high-growth Internet markets such as Russia,” said Mike Read, SVP & managing director, comScore Europe.


“In a country as geographically large as Russia, social networking represents a way of connecting people from one corner of the country to the other. The highly engaged behavior of social networkers in Russia offers significant opportunity for marketers and advertisers seeking to reach these audiences.”


Of the 31.9 million people who accessed the Internet in Russia in April, 18.9 million visited at least one social networking site, representing a reach of 59 percent of the total online population.


The most popular of these sites was Russian-based Vkontakte.ru with 14.3 million visitors, followed by Odnoklassniki.ru (7.8 million visitors), Mail.ru – My World (6.3 million visitors) and Fotostrana.ru (1.6 million visitors). Facebook.com attracted 616,000 Russian visitors, up 277 percent versus year ago.

It’s a fact that if your product or service is not appearing in the top 10 SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages) used to find your site, then your competition is there taking all the hits. SEO or Search Engine Optimization techniques are not rocket science; they can be implemented by anyone requiring increasing the exposure of their web site business.


You may have decided to pay an SEO company to do the legwork here. It’s actually possible with just some simple application to do the work quickly and effectively by yourself. SEO is all about optimization and is crucial for success on the web.


By optimization I mean two types of organic methods: On-Page Optimization and Off-Page Optimization. This can be achieved without using PPC plans (Pay per Click) which can cost a lot of money.


On-Page optimization involves editing the web site code and content – keyword research, choosing the best keywords used to find your business and coupling this with relevant content that is useful to your readers. In the code, the keyword and key phrases form part of the Meta tags and should also be in the Home Page title bar. Each page should be optimized according to the keyword that matches the content.


Off-Page Optimization involves back linking from quality sites that sell or display information related to your business. This is best achieved through contextual one-way links to your site from a high traffic site where your target audience will browse for information on your products. One-way links shine bright in the eyes of Google, if they are relevant.
Be aware of these 10 points in order to avoid a bad SEO plan or worse a bad SEO company, or even worse again – getting banned by Google:


1. No black hat techniques, don’t buy into link farms that just send traffic, you will not receive converting visitors.


2. Ensure you have your own web site domain rather than relying on free sites and article directories like Squidoo and Hubpages. These are good but use them to drive one-way traffic to a landing page on your own web site domain.


3. Ensure your Meta tags contain relevant descriptions. These should contain your keywords derived from your keyword research. Use Wordtracker to find out what daily searches contain those keywords, you may need to optimize further.


4. The content must be original, avoid duplicate content. Notice I am using the word ‘relevant’ a lot here, the reason being is that it’s often overlooked in favor of keyword density – forget it, you risk being banned if you use keyword stuffing techniques. Generally 3 to 5 key phrases (assuming long tail e.g. popular online games) per 500 to 1000 words.


5. Create blogs and mini-sites related to your niche that all serve your market with back links to your main business web site. This is a good time to use Squidoo, blogger and Hubpages as they are very high traffic sites. Include back links to your site in your bio.


6. Add ALT tags to all your images with relevant words related to your web page.


7. Submit a press release highlighting your product benefits to the top press release networks such as PRWeb and URLwire. If you don’t know how to prepare one, consult lulu.com as it teaches you the basics.


8. Create discussions on facebook and MySpace related to your niche and invite potential customers to voice their questions, concerns, etc. Include back links to your site in your bio.


9. Promote your web site services in free high traffic classified ads such as USFreeads. Include back links to your site in your bio.


10. Offer support to people needing your products by finding questions on Yahoo Answers and showing them the solution with a link to your site and a reason to visit. Be honest, show the benefits.


What’s next? Simple, rinse and repeat for every product you are marketing on your site. SEO is a long term marketing plan. You will reap the rewards if you can play the game and set out to dominate the search engines in your niche.

In the U.S. the total minutes spent on social networking sites has increased 83 percent year-over-year, according to a new report from Nielsen Online.


Total minutes spent on Facebook increased nearly 700 percent year-over-year, growing from 1.7 billion minutes in April 2008 to 13.9 billion in April 2009, making it the No. 1 social networking site for the month.


“We have seen some major growth in Facebook during the past year, and a subsequent decline in MySpace. Twitter has come on the scene in an explosive way perhaps changing the outlook for the entire space. The one thing that is clear about social networking is that regardless of how fast a site is growing or how big it is, it can quickly fall out of favor with consumers,” said Jon Gibs, vice president, online media and agency insights.


“Remember Friendster? Remember when MySpace was an unbeatable force? Neither Facebook nor Twitter are immune. Consumers have shown that they are willing to pick up their networks and move them to another platform, seemingly at a moment’s notice.”


While Facebook is now the most popular social network, MySpace has been doing well with its online video. With 120.8 million video streams, MySpace was the No. 1 social networking destination when ranked by streams and total minutes viewing video on the site, with an average of 38.8 minutes per viewer.


In comparison, Facebook visitors spent only 113.5 million minutes viewing video in April, with an average of 11.2 minutes per video viewer.


“So maybe the better question to ask is who does each site reach–not who is ‘winning.’ What audiences are they drawing and how are they building for the future to maintain the loyalty of their visitors, who to this point have shown little long-term loyalty to any specific platform,” said Gibs.

Facebook has landed a $200 million investment from Digital Sky Technologies (DST), an Internet investment group with significant stakes in Eastern European and Russian Internet businesses.


The investment in Facebook is in exchange for preferred stock, representing a 1.96 percent equity stake at a $10 billion valuation.


“This investment demonstrates Facebook’s ongoing success at creating a global network for people to share and connect,” said Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg.


“We’ve worked hard to bring more than 200 million people – 70 percent outside of the U.S. – onto Facebook to share with friends, family and co-workers. A number of firms approached us, but DST stood out because of the global perspective they bring – backed up by the impressive growth and financial achievements of their Internet investments. We’re looking forward to working with the DST team.”


In addition, DST has indicated that it is planning to offer to purchase at least $100 million of Facebook common stock from existing common stockholders that would facilitate liquidity for current and former employees’ vested shares in the company.


The details of the plan are expected to be announced to eligible participants during the summer.


“Our investment experience in other regions reveals the tremendous value social networking companies create as they redefine how people communicate and interact,” said Yuri Milner, chief executive of DST.

Just over half (51%) of mobile phone users access content using their mobile phone on a weekly basis, according to a new study by Magid Associates.


Mobile content consumers spend about the same amount of time with content (39 minutes) as the average user does texting (38 minutes) or talking on their mobile phone (44 minutes).


Mobile users are no longer using their phones just for communication, instead their using them to manage entertainment, news, and social information important to their lives.


Overall the most popular mobile content being accessed is news, weather and sports scores. The majority of mobile social networking is among 12-34 year olds, while news consumption is dominated (79%) by 18-54 year olds.


“Young people are driving a lot of the mobile content usage,” said Vicki Cohen, Executive Vice President.


“Anything entertainment oriented is a draw for the younger demo — games, music, movie times, entertainment news — it all exhibits a big opportunity for companies targeting younger demographic groups.”


The tween and teen markets are significant revenue opportunities. Twelve to seventeen year-olds are particularly interested in consuming mobile content; seventy-two percent do so weekly. Of these, fifty-two percent buy content regularly, while only 39 percent of all content users do the same.


Non-users of content say they are most put off by the cost of accessing mobile content; however content relevancy is just as important. Fifty-two percent of non-users (versus 22% of users) said they do not feel a need to access mobile content when they are away from more traditional content outlets.


“Lack of familiarity with mobile content and no clear perception of value are the primary barriers for non-users, who are more likely to be older Americans. The perception that it has to do with the handset isn’t entirely true,” says Jill Rosengard Hill, Senior Vice President.


“41 percent of those who don’t have a smart phone are accessing mobile news, music, and playing mobile games.”

Google has introduced new tools that aim to make users search results more focused and organized.


One of the new features is called “Search Options” which are a collection of tools that allow users to control search results and generate different views to find the information they need faster.


When doing a search on the Google homepage, a link under the search box says, “show options.” Clicking the link will bring up a menu to view results for video, forums, and reviews. Users can search by “recent results,” “anytime,” “the past week,” and “past year.”


Another search option that Google introduced called Wonder Wheel displays a visual concept map with related topics. A search for “dogs” brings up the Wonder Wheel with a number of different spokes leading to related topics with links. The topics included “dogs health,” “dog games,” “dog names,” and “dog breeds.”


Users can still see the standard search results when viewing the Wonder Wheel.


A tool called Google Squared, available in Google Labs next month, will automatically find information on the Internet to create spreadsheets a user is searching for.


Google also launched Google Sky Map for Android. Google Sky Map turns an Android-powered phone into a window on the night sky. By pointing the phone up towards the sky a map appears of the brightest stars, constellations and planets in that part of the sky. Sky Map can help users to identify specific stars.