The total number of mobile services in operation (voice and data services) in Australia increased by seven per cent during 2009–10 to reach 25.99 million services at June 2010, according to the Australian Communications and Media Authority’s Communications Report 2009-10, tabled by the Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy in Parliament today.
The net growth in mobile services was fuelled by a very significant surge in the numbers of mobile wireless broadband services (datacard/dongle connected to a computer) which increased by 71 per cent over the period to reach 3.46 million at June 2010.
As DSL services only increased marginally (two per cent), this suggests that mobile broadband is very much developing as a complement to existing fixed broadband services.
‘New content and services are driving demand for broadband. Fixed line remains the dominant technology for broadband delivery. However, this is being complemented by the take-up of mobile broadband. Australians’ appetite for more broadband is clear, whether they are at home or on the move,’ said ACMA Chairman, Chris Chapman.
During 2009–10, the number of fixed-line telephone services in operation, declined from 10.67 million to 10.59 million. At the same time, more consumers continued to access VoIP services from home, from 2.5 million at June 2009 to 2.9 million at June 2010.
‘Increasing investment in mobile and fixed communications infrastructure and innovation in handset and other wireless consumer technology is testimony to the evolution of digital communications in Australia. New technologies are increasingly able to support voice, data and content services, complementing existing fixed-networks. This will continue to enable Australians to more fully participate in the digital economy and benefit from new service innovation,’ Mr Chapman said.
During 2009–10 there has also been significant developments relating to the digital economy in the Australian broadcasting sector in terms of the contining transition to digital broadcasting and the growth of digital television and digital radio services. At June 2010, 74 per cent of Australian households had converted their main set to digital television (up from 53 per cent at 30 June 2009).
Source: Australian Communications and Media Authority
Research from the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) shows that Australians are embracing the digital economy, with big increases in the volume of data downloaded, time spent online and activities undertaken online.
“Most Australians today have access to the internet at multiple locations, whether at home, work or elsewhere. Increasingly mobile internet is emerging as a complement to traditional fixed-line internet, allowing increased flexibility in terms of where and how the internet is accessed,” said ACMA Chairman, Chris Chapman.
At June 2010, approximately 77 per cent of the population 14 years and over were connected to the internet at home and 66 per cent had a broadband connection. Nearly 2.4 million people used the internet via their handheld mobile during June 2010, up from 1.6 million during June 2009.
“Australians are using the internet more intensively, going online more often for a much wider range of reasons,” said Mr Chapman.
Over the past five years, the frequency of internet use in Australia has steadily increased to the point where 28 per cent of people 14 years and over were estimated to be ‘heavy’ users (online more than 15 hours a week) in June 2010. A further 27 per cent were considered medium users (between 7 and 15 hours a week) and 23 per cent light users (up to 7 hours a week). Only 14 per cent were deemed to be heavy users during June 2005.
“To the majority of Australians the internet is not just an entertainment tool but increasingly an essential part of their everyday lives, providing access to critical information and services. Australians now use the internet for a wide range of activities with communications, research, information, banking and finance and general browsing being most popular,” said Mr Chapman.
Facilitated by increased internet speeds, the volume of information and content accessed by Australians via the internet is growing significantly, with 155,503 terabytes of data downloaded in Australia during the June quarter of 2010, compared to 99,249 terabytes during the June quarter of 2009, a year on year increase of almost 57 per cent and again consistent with exponential trend witnessed over the last several years.
Online social networking continues to be a major driving force in the increasing intensity of online participation. During June 2010 alone, 8.7 million Australians accessed mainstream social networking sites such as Facebook and YouTube from home, spending in total more than 41.5 million hours on these sites.
For many Australians the internet is also becoming an important source of news and information with over 6 million persons accessing the mainstream online news sites from home during June 2010.
Source: Australian Communications and Media Authority
The Australian unemployment rate increased 0.2 percentage points to 5.4 per cent in October, the Australian Bureau of Statistics announced today.
The ABS reported the number of people employed increased by 29,700 people to 11.356 million, seasonally adjusted, in October. The rise in employment was driven by an increase in part-time employment, up 43,800 people to 3.385 million, that was partially offset by a decrease in full-time employment, down 14,100 people to 7.971 million.
The number of people unemployed increased by 32,100 people, to 646,500 in October, the ABS said.
The ABS seasonally adjusted monthly aggregate hours worked series showed a rise in October, up 7.9 million hours to 1,602.6 million hours.
The ABS reported a record high for the labour force participation in October of 65.9 per cent, a rise of 0.3 percentage points from September.
Source: Australian Bureau of Statistics
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The whole idea of On-page SEO is based on keywords and keyphrases. “Keywords” is the name usually given to the words or phrases that best describe your page content/purpose and best match the words people use when searching for your content. Keeping this idea in mind, what you need to do to get your website optimized for search engines is to pick one of the most searched words or phrases which best match the content of your page.
For example, if you have a web design company, a good keyphrase would be “Web design”, because hey! it’s the most searched keyphrase all over the Internet related to your content (5.000.000 searches a month). So anyone would think that this is the best idea, but actually it isn’t. A very often searched keyword is more likely to have a very large amount of competitors (everybody wants the jackpot), which means that you will need to work harder and spend more money in the rest of the optimization (which is sometimes virtually impossible).
Now, you may be wondering, how can I know how many searches a month does a keyword get? This kind of information is provided freely by some ad systems like Google Adwords and Yahoo Overture (among others). In this article I’ll use Google Adwords keywords tool which I believe is the best to work with.
The URL for Google’s tool is https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal. There’s no need for registration, once you enter the page you can start searching for keywords. The tool usage is very simple, you just need to enter a term, for example “web design”, and fill the security code field. Once you submit the form, a list with searches related to your keywords shows up.
The resulting list will not only tell you how many searches a keyword gets on a monthly basis, but will also give you an idea of how many people may be targeting their optimization to that keyword (the more searches a keyword gets, the more optimized pages you will find). This is why you may not want to look at the top of the list. My advice is to pick up something with 1.000.000 searches a month or less (for the previous example, it could be “web design company”).
Besides, you can also use this list as a suggestion tool to pick up a more accurate keyword. For example, if you were looking for something like “web design” you may find that a more accurate keyword for your company would be “web design services”, just because “web design” is a very extensive topic that could go from tutorials to templates.
Lastly, take into account that search engines get cleverer everyday, so keywords shouldn’t look artificial anymore. This means that you shouldn’t repeat your keywords constantly all over the page. Instead you should make slight changes to the keywords so they keep saying the same thing but with different words. In the previous example, the variations could be: “website design”, “designing a website”, “design of websites”, etc.
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