World Internet Population is the number of Internet users around the world. Internet is expending and Internet usage is increasing every year since the birth of Internet. The fastest growing Internet population (2,357.3 %) since 2000 has been recorded in Africa where Internet Population has gone upto 110,931,700 users in 2010 compared to 4,514,400 Internet users in 2000.

Middle East the 2nd region where Internet Population growth rate of 1,825.3 % has been recorded which is 2nd fastest after Africa. As fa as Internet penetartion is concerned, North America is on top of the list where Internet penetration is 77.4% with Africa is on the bottom of the list where Internet penetration is only 19.9%.

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How a web hosting server can be Search Engine Optimized? and how it can be helpful in Search Engine Ranking. There are two very important factors which are helpful in SEO as far as hosting server is concerned:

1.    Location of Hosting Server
2.    Speed and connectivity of Hosting Server

These two factors play important role in SEO success. If you are optimizing a local web site that has local target market,for example a UK based business targeting visitors only from UK, can be benefitted by local hosting company having data centre within UK. Beside other factors, I have discussed in my other article “GeoTargeting with SEO”, GeoLocation of your hosting server is also important when it comes to advanced SEO. Local web sites hosted on local servers appear high in local searches. For example a UK based web site hosted on local UK server rank higher on Google.co.uk.

With Google’s publicized introduction of website “Speed” as a valid ranking factor into its algorithm, your website hosting providers now have their work cut out, as your site load time now have a direct impact on your Google rankings. So websites hosted on high specs server with high speed and connectivity have better chance to gain top rankings on SERPS.

SEO Hosting is a UK based Hosting provider offer web hosting service on high speed local UK servers. Local UK based web site may switch to SEO Hosting for better ranking for local searches.

Latest reduction could come Tuesday; would represent 5% of workforce

To the surprise of absolutely no one, Yahoo will lay off between 600 and 700 employees, perhaps as early as Tuesday. This represents about 5 percent of the struggling Internet company’s total workforce of 14,100.

This is the fourth round of mass layoffs by Yahoo in the past three years. Rumors of the latest round began swirling about five weeks ago, when reports surfaced that the company was preparing to eliminate 20 percent of its current jobs. Yahoo quickly dismissed these reports as “misleading and inaccurate,” but issued no outright denial. Now we know why.

According to the Wall Street Journal and other media outlets, the layoffs will be from Yahoo’s products group, which employs nearly half of the company’s employees. The group is responsible for Yahoo’s Web properties, including the finance, sports and news pages. Despite Yahoo’s inability to grow revenue in recent years, these destinations remain popular among Internet users. Yahoo is the No. 4 most-visited property on the Internet, trailing only Google, Facebook and YouTube.

Yahoo’s products division is run by Blake Irving, who joined the company in April. Irving had been corporate vice president of Microsoft’s Windows Live Platform unit, but left the software giant in 2007 and had been teaching at Pepperdine University before taking the Yahoo job.

The layoffs represent the second round of job reductions under the tenure of Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz, who has struggled to turn around the company since being hired in January 2009. Bartz laid off 675 workers in March 2009. In December 2008, under the tenure of former CEO Jerry Yang, Yahoo axed 1,500 jobs. Another 1,000 jobs were cut in February of that year.

Yahoo’s revenue and stock price have remained stuck in neutral while larger online advertising rival Google has continued to demonstrate impressive growth. Google announced last month that its more than 23,000 employees would receive 10 percent pay hikes and $1,000 holiday cash bonuses.

Article Resource: IT World

Author: Chris Nerney

Facebook is now third most important marketing tactic

Small businesses, while not yet at the usage levels of their larger counterparts, are warming up to social media marketing, according to a fall 2010 survey from small-business marketing firm Constant Contact.

The businesses surveyed overwhelmingly considered word-of-mouth the most important marketing tactic for finding new customers, but that figure includes discussions that take place both online and offline. Websites and email marketing followed as the only other tactics a majority of small businesses said were “very important.”

Overall, websites and email were rated the most important marketing tool for business promotion, with more than nine in 10 small businesses surveyed citing both. Facebook took a distant third, at 63%, but that was up from 50.5% in a March 2010 survey from Constant Contact. Twitter’s importance was rated relatively low, at just 31%, but that too was up from March (25.6%).

Among larger businesses, social media tends to play a larger role. A June 2010 survey of US online marketers from email marketing firm Lyris also found email and company websites were the top marketing tactics used—each by more than 95% of respondents—but social media clocked in at 82%, significantly higher than Facebook’s rating in the small-business survey.

“Small businesses are also slower to adopt social media, in part because many of them lack a strong web presence to begin with,” wrote Debra Aho Williamson in the December 2010 eMarketer report “Social Media in the Marketing Mix: Budgeting for 2011.”

Article Source: eMarketer

Nearly three-quarters this year

As consumer usage of social media continues to increase in the US and around the world, marketers have transitioned from cautious engagement to full deployment.

Next year, four in five US businesses with at least 100 employees will take part in social media marketing, eMarketer estimates. That’s up from just 42% as recently as 2008, and the number of marketers using the channel will continue to rise through 2012.

“Marketers that have spent the past few years ramping up their internal social media marketing infrastructure—and their presence on sites such as Facebook and Twitter—will take social media to new heights in 2011,” said Debra Aho Williamson, eMarketer principal analyst and author of the new report “Social Media in the Marketing Mix: Budgeting for 2011.” “And as they do, they will evolve the way they market across all media, not just online.”

eMarketer developed its social media marketing forecast through analysis of a dozen third-party surveys and their methodologies. The increase in usage stems from several trends, including rising consumer social media usage, the fact that Facebook now has a truly mass audience, and the promotional firepower companies have seen in action on social sites.

Social media is top of mind not only when it comes to usage but also spending. A worldwide survey of marketers by Maxymiser, a provider of website personalization tools, found that social media ranked third among areas marketers planned to focus their online marketing budget in 2011, after search and their own website.

According to several independent studies, spending on social media continues to rise.

“As spending increases, other marketing channels may lose budget,” said Williamson. “Total marketing budgets in general are not increasing, so social media spending must come from other types of marketing. Early indications are that offline media and promotions may be hit first.”

While the spending picture is bright, future increases will be tied to ROI. The need for effective measurement will reach its strongest point to date in 2011.

Article Source: eMarketer

Online direct marketing could see significant growth over the next few years, according to a new report. A forecast from MagnaGlobal claims that spending on internet marketing will increase to $117 billion (£74.3 billion) globally by 2013, meaning it will be bigger than newspaper marketing for the first time.

Overall, it projects global ad growth of 5.4 per cent to $412 billion in 2011, an upward revision of its his previous forecast of 4.2 per cent.

Brian Wieser, global director of forecasting for MagnaGlobal, is expected to tell this week’s UBS annual Global Media and Communications Conference that 2010’s ad market “is coming off a terrible 2009″.

“This creates a distorted perception, but 2011 will grow at a historically healthy cliff,” he will explain, according to the Hollywood Reporter.

The news follows a recent report from the UK’s Internet Advertising Bureau.

It showed that that UK spending on online marketing rose by ten per cent in the first half of 2010 compared with the same period last year.

SOURCE: Thomson Local

Three-quarters will market on social sites this holiday season

Holiday advertising budgets are shifting as marketers increase their reliance on online channels, according to research from BDO USA.

While print advertising remains on top for holiday spending, nearly 27% of retailers reported they would spend most of their budget for the period online, including on social networks. That was up just from 18% last year and puts online ahead of broadcast for the second year in a row.

In addition, 75% of respondents said they had included social networks in their marketing strategy, up dramatically from 51% in 2009. Most focused only a small percentage of total marketing efforts on social networks, but nearly 18% said at least 20% of their efforts were social.

Facebook is the main venue for retailers’ social media marketing, followed distantly by Twitter and other social networking sites.

Facebook has been a consistent retailer favorite. the e-tailing group found in Q1 2010 that 91% of retailers planned to have a Facebook presence within the year, making it more popular than customer reviews. Marketers responsible for ecommerce have also been quick to adopt Facebook’s “like” feature. According to BDO, Facebook’s popularity among retailers was up significantly since 2009, when just 76% used it for marketing.

Other researchers have likewise found that more companies are planning to use social media marketing this holiday season. US online retailers told Shop.org in September that the three top changes in their holiday plans vs. last year were increased use of Facebook, Twitter and other social media. The same month, an e-tailing group survey found most US multichannel retailers planned to up their social media usage this holiday season at least a little.

Article Source: eMarketer