The growth of 132% in India is more than many other countries, including home market in US.

“We have achieved varying levels of penetration within the population of Internet users in different countries,” Facebook has said, while noting that its penetration rate in India was estimated to be 20-30%.

“… in China, where Facebook access is restricted, we have near zero penetration. We continue to invest in growing our user base, particularly in markets where we are relatively less penetrated,” according to Facebook’s documents for IPO filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

Facebook monitors its user base through the number of Monthly Active Users (MAUs), among other metrics. An MAU is a registered Facebook user who logs in and visits Facebook, shares content or indulges in other activities in the last 30 days as of the date of measurement.

“As of December 31, 2011, we had 845 million MAUs, an increase of 39 per cent from December 31, 2010,” it noted.

“We experienced growth across different geographies, with users in Brazil and India representing a key source of growth,” Facebook said.

“… we had 46 million MAUs in India as of December 31, 2011, an increase of 132% from the prior year,” Facebook said. It noted that growth in the US was 16 per cent and 268 per cent in Brazil for the same period.

Facebook had 161 million MAUs in the US and 37 million in Brazil as on December 31, 2011.

Facebook faces competition from Internet giant Google’s social media platform Orkut in India, among other rivals in different countries.

Listing out its strategy, Facebook said it would “continue to focus on growing our user base across all geographies, including relatively less-penetrated, large markets such as Brazil, Germany, India, Japan, Russia, and South Korea.”

It added, “We compete broadly with Google’s social networking offerings, including Google+, and also with other, largely regional, social networks that have strong positions in particular countries, including Cyworld in Korea, Mixi in Japan, Orkut (owned by Google) in Brazil and India…”

Facebook has operation teams to provide support for users, developers, and advertisers in four regional centres, including one at Hyderabad in India.

“As we continue to grow internationally, we will enter countries that have different ideas about the contours of freedom of expression. Some differ so much from our ideas that we will not be able to exist there. Others are similar but, for historical or cultural reasons, restrict certain types of content, such as France or Germany, which ban pro-Nazi content,” it said.

“Until now, the only way we could take account of those countries’ limits was to remove content globally. Starting today, we give ourselves the ability to reactively withhold content from users in a specific country – while keeping it available in the rest of the world. We have also built in a way to communicate transparently to users when content is withheld, and why.”

The firm said that it has not used the feature yet, and that it will make it clear to users when their tweet has not got through. It has created a page with an organisation called Chilling Effects ( http://chillingeffects.org/twitter ) that users can turn to to find out if and when content has been withheld.

“One of our core values as a company is to defend and respect each user’s voice. We try to keep content up wherever and whenever we can, and we will be transparent with users when we can’t. The Tweets must continue to flow,” it added.

The study focusses on ShareThis’ database of sharing activity for the month of March 2011. It attempts to make a detailed analysis of more than 7 billion sharing signals across all major sharing channels, specifically looking at the sharing patterns of more than 300 million monthly users across the Top 1,000 publisher websites of ShareThis.

The research study throws light on how sharing stacks up compared to web search when it comes to generating traffic for websites and brands, how people share different types of content across different types of social channels, and how sharing gives all users the ability to be influential. Specifically, the study findings include a number of takeaways important to marketers and advertisers as they explore ways to better serve, reach and engage their audiences.

Highlights of the study:

• Sharing is bigger than Fans, Friends and Followers: Sharing also accounts for 31% of referral traffic.

• Sharing is about scale, not virality: Shared links are, on an average, across all sharing channels, clicked on 4.9 times each. So, content shared by large groups of people reach a wider audience, than content passed along from others.

• Everyone who shares is an influencer if the subject is important to him or her: Instead of one person being universally influential on a wide range of topics, the study found that many people are influential on only one or two topics.

• Sharing is about moments of opportunity and relevance: The study proves that sharing is a viable marketing solution for reaching audiences when they are most receptive to a particular category of advertising, such as consumer packaged goods, business and financial services, or consumer electronics.

Jeff Flemings, senior vice-president, human experience centers, SMG, says, “Sharing is a critical aspect of creating meaningful human experiences today. Getting large groups of people to share content, reactions and updates with others in their social network at scale is a marketing must. However, people only share what’s important to them, so it’s essential to have a deep understanding of what people are sharing and why.”

Right combination of keywords is essential before starting on-page optimization of landing pages and before starting any PPC campaign.

To begin your keyword research you need a clear stategy. It is important to pick the right combination words. Due to heavy competition targeting one or two word keywords will not get you top ranking. One of the important aspect of search engine algorithm is page-copy word relationship.

First step of keyword research is keyword brainstorming session and then use keyword research tools to identify your targeted primary keywords and secondary keywords. You can ask several basic questions to your team members, customers and subject experts.

What words/phrases would someone type to get to your site?

What keywords are associated with your line of business?

What would you type to find products, services and information you are selling?

How many primary keywords should you use?

What are important tools used for keyword research?

Should you buy expensive third party keyword tools?

How do you know which keywords to use?

Once I finalize my sets of keywords, where do you see how many people search on those keywords?

Try to answer above questions, you will save time for seo and love to do the research yourself. I will post a detailed strategy for keyword research and important tools to use in upcoming article.

~ Lotus

comScore reports Facebook is now only surpassed by local social networks in three European markets – the Netherlands, Poland, and Russia. Hyves was the most popular network in the Netherlands, while Nasza-klasa was the biggest network in Poland. Facebook’s reach was the lowest in Russia where it held just 18.8% of the market, behind Vkontakte, Odnoklassniki and Mail.ru. Turkey had the highest Facebook penetration in Europe at 90.4%, followed by the UK with 81.7%.

“As social networking becomes a more integral part of the online user experience, the presence of display advertising on social networking sites continues to grow,” comScore claims.

“In the UK and France, total display ad impressions on social networking sites grew by 47% and 64%, respectively, while in Germany that number more than doubled. The increasing prevalence of social networking as a component of the display advertising landscape is an indication that advertisers cannot afford to overlook this channel given its potential to reach a large number of consumers with high engagement.”

comScore claims that social networking was a key driver of display ad growth in the UK, France and Germany. In the UK, social networks served 41.3% of all display ads during December, compared to 26.5% in France and 28.9% in Germany. In all three countries, display ads reached over 97% of internet users during the month.

Also comScore claims that the use of online coupon sites in Europe grew by 162% year on year in December to 34.9million visitors. This was largely attributed to Groupon’s rapid growth, with the site now having a presence in more than 100 European cities. Meanwhile, smartphone penetration in the UK, France, Germany, Spain, and Italy hit 31.1% of mobile users in 2010, with Android experiencing a 951% gain and Apple jumping 115%.

The blog network method of link building is time and labor intensive, but you will get rewarded over time. You can get relevant links by distributing relevant, useful, unique content to your selected list of blog network.

As a part of this approach you should create a “content distribution network” by reaching out to blog owners and editors in related areas and get permission to syndicate your content to their site. If you are a owner of blog then you must be aware of most difficult part is to maintain a blog. Developing new content on daily basis is most challenging task. Most blog owners welcome quality unique content and accept your contribution.

The frequently asked question in this approach is, how do I build my own blog network?

You can follow following steps to build your blog network.

Step 1: Start with the list of popular blogs from your own search and follow for relevant information. Subscribe to RSS feed and filter the blogs which are updated daily with relevant content.

Step 2: Post comment on blog posts and try to develop that relationship over time, or directly contact the blog owner, tell them who you are and who you work for, and ask if they’d be open to syndicating your content.

Step 3: Your goal in this approach is to distribute your content across hundreds of blogs and make sure each blog get unique content. The fact is unique content gets indexed quickly and enable you to get more link juice for your website.

The effective approach is to write seed articles with targeted keyword in mind and take help of a content spinning software to create a unique spinner article from it.

Step 4: Distribute your content to your list of blogs and publish the articles across your blog network at a natural rate

Your articles will appear on Google blog search or news search once the content contribution is accepted and published on different blogs. You can track Google blog search results and use analytics to keep track of back links.

The look feel of the browser is very similar to Google Chrome. You can integrate your Facebook accounts with RockMelt and access several social network friendly features on the browser.

You can also add Twitter and G-mail accounts. The RockMelt browser stotes user account access information on the cloud to enable the users to get the same settings on any computer network. The right side of the browser has App Edge and on the left side you have Friend Edge.

You get updates or new gmail messages in the App Edge. Your Facebook friends will appear on left side as a column of buttons with their profile pictures.

The down side is there is no mobile version for RockMelt and you will have to wait for some major update for fixing issues related to browser.

• Submit your website in restaurant directories sites, yellow pages and eat out guides

• List and get opinions in in tripadvisors and similar websites

• List your business in Google local, Yahoo local and Bing local. Optimize your content with keyword and phrases. Offer discount coupons in Google local listing

• Use Yahoo answer to suggest your resturant. You need to be level 2 or higher member to post link in yahoo answers

• Create facebook pages and reach out to your fans

• Write press releases and distribute via online press release and news release websites

• Start a blog and post on weekly basis long articles and short articles, talking about restaurants

• Social bookmark your website and blogs

• Submit your site in top ranking local directories.

• Yelp.com
• Citysearch.com
• Insiderpages.com
• Kuduz.com
• Localeze.com
• InfoUSA.com
• Superpages
• Yellowpages
• Universal Business Listing ubl.org
• more realted local pages

• create profile for your resturant websites in about.com sidewiki domaintools etc

The changes are intended at making it easier to sort Facebook friendships into separate clusters, such as college chums, co-workers, neighbors and family. It’s aimed to make people more comfortable about posting observations and pictures for which they want only a limited audience.

Facebook already offers this through a “lists” feature, but only about 5% of 500 million plus users use that.

The new feature is known as “groups“. It will enable people to set up pages consisting of people who share the same interests.

Facebook founder and CEO said it would bring a “fundamental shift” in how people use Facebook.

• In Google local listing use a seo friendly name for your business. Try to include your business type in the name. Add your trageted keywords and city name in your business name, title  and description.
• Invite your users to give you reviews in Google locals. Try to get high number of positive reviews for your services. It is always better to have good ratings for your local reviews.
• Use a local phone number that is phone number with local STD code.
• Use correct categories. You can use Google auto suggested 5 categories that is best match with your business.
• Google give more importance to businesses close to the city centers. You are expected to rank higher if you are close to Google’s perceived city center.
• Add new coupons for your local customer regularly with in-built Google local functionality.
• Use social media to inform your trageted user base about contests, discount coupons and how they can avail your products and services.
• Use your logo with business name as the image name. Add relevant images and videos to make your listing interesting and prominent.
• Get listed in maximum number local directories, yellow pages in your city.
• Do quality link building on daily basis to improve page rank and domian authority.