Mediaboss Marketing

Recently, I attended Baidus annual search conference for agency partners in Beijing. One of the premier search events in China for SEO professionals, the conference was hosted by engineers from Baidus core search and Webmaster Tools teams.

The agenda covered Baidus eco-empowerment strategy, its Mobile Instant Page (MIP) project and a wrap-up of the 2016 algorithm updates. The event made it clear to me that 2016 was the year Baidu SEO came into its own. If you arent already investing in Baidu SEO, 2017 is your year to start.

The concept of eco-empowerment was introduced by Dai Tan, Baidus Chief Architect of Search. With search, Baidu wants every practitioner in the internet ecosystem to have better efficiencies in production, execution and monetization. In order to fulfill eco-empowerment, Baidu needs to provide relevant technology and form a mechanism for the ecosystem, supported by two pillars: page load speed and HTTPS.

Every half-second delay in page loading will cost you 3 percent of user visits. This is why Baidu moved quickly to follow Googles Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) feature with the MIP project (Chinese language). At the same time, security is a critical factor to an engines reputation in a market where site hijacks, spams and PII data leaks are rampant. In May 2015, Baidu launched Not Set, which is its own version of Not Provided.

The main accomplishment in the mechanism of Baidu Search is in the release of Spider 3.0 (Chinese language), which was launched in early 2016, dramatically increasing the speed of URL discovery and indexing. As a result, crawl speed has increased by 80 percent, and Baidu is now capable of indexing trillions of web pages in real time. The Divine Domain project planned for mid-2017 promises to further boost indexing speed.

Mobile Instant Page is a bold name. Even Googles AMP only claims to be accelerated. The results speak for themselves.As reported in the Conference, more than 2,800 sites have implemented MIP, reducing load time by 30 to 80 percent and subsequently increasing landing page clicks from 5 to 30 percent.

The technology and structure of MIP are very similar to Googles AMP; even the page code is virtually identical. And just as AMP has been a controversial idea in the SEO world since its launch, so is Baidus MIP within the Great Firewall of China. Convincing webmasters to adopt this new technology has been a challenge, given the sacrifice of page flexibility in favor of improved loading speed and ranking signals.

Baidu has been fighting its way through obstacles, having learned valuable lessons from AMPs rollout. A channel has been added in Baidu Webmaster Tools for page submissions. An open-source project is now on GitHub. A tutorial provides quick training for programmers. An integrated development environment (IDE) and an online validator are published. Themes are available for popular content management system (CMS) platforms like WordPress. Most importantly, the Flashy icon is now attached to all MIP results on the Baidu mobile search engine results page (SERP).

By December 2016, three months after MIPs release, Baidu had already indexed more than 900 million MIP pages.

An MIP result entry with the MIP icon on the mobile SERP of Baidu

The anniversary of the MIP Project

You may see Baidu MIP as a copycat of Google AMP. But there are nuances. First, Baidu MIP is using scripts to maintain compatibility with mobile browsers other than Chrome or Safari in China. In addition, MIP pages put JavaScript before the ending tag, while in AMP, you still put scripts between and . Both MIP and AMP only allow asynchronous scripts, but it doesnt make a big difference, because neither approach will delay the page rendering.

Since Google retreated from China in 2006, the only two G-products that remain functional in that market are Google Maps and Google Translate. Mobile internet users are unable to access the AMP in mainland China.

Many people believe that if Google hadnt been expatriated, Baidu would not have its dominant power in the search market. However, even when Google search was still in China, its market share never exceeded Baidus. And Bing, which is still in China, isnt challenging Baidu at all.

When it comes to other players like QQ and MSN Messenger, only those engines that are customized for local markets (or work with the government) will have the chance to win the battle against Baidu.

A map of the world showing the real-time activity of Baidu search, on a screen in the lobby of Baidu Building in Beijing

Baidus ambition is not confined to China. Alliances with partners like Merkle in other regions are helping Baidu to learn about other markets and expand business reach. If you still see Google as a threat to Baidu, you may be wrong. A better term, frenemy, may better describe their relationship.

Now, through Googles DoubleClick for Search, you are able to bid for Baidu pay-per-click (PPC) ads. On the other side, Baidu is actively working with Google on the alignment of AMP-MIP and developing standards for Progressive Web Apps. And finally, Baidu intends to adopt the Schema.org data structure in 2017, having already documented the Schema.org markup support in the MIP specification.

Anti-app-fraud, Ice Bucket, Skynet and Blue-sky are the four main algorithm updates made by Baidu in the second half of 2016, and in almost every month, there was a negative update.

While the Chinternet environment is getting more complicated, Baidu is investing a significant amount of effort to protect and improve the ecosystem they have defined:

In late 2016, there has been a drop in discussions around indexing in the Chinese webmaster communities. This seems to signal that Baidu can now better identify pages with low quality.

From the other angle, it is evident that Baidu has a clear view that the mobile-first web is transitioning into a mobile-only web. Apart from the core project of MIP, three out of four algorithm updates are aiming for mobile pages.

Historically, SEO strategies and investments were second-tier priorities for brands in China. Too many paid ads appeared on the SERP, where organic links had limited exposure, leaving little opportunity for SEO. Additionally, leadership had no idea of how long they would be in their roles. They wanted quick success and shortcuts, suggesting paid search is the best way out.

Things are changing. Due to regulations and the release of Chinas Internet Ad Law, Baidu cut down the number of sponsored results in the main column of the SERP from up to 10 to no more than 5. With some exceptions where larger ad formats are served, users will see a much cleaner SERP with fewer ads.

Obviously, it is a positive change for SEOs because paid traffic and organic traffic play a zero-sum game. Organic results now have more viewability with fewer sponsored links overhead.

As my colleague, Adam Audette, wrote in Merkles Dossier, your SEO effort is critical and will account for 3050 percent of traffic online. As such, I offer the following recommendations for your 2017 SEO strategy in China.

Some opinions expressed in this article may be those of a guest author and not necessarily Search Engine Land. Staff authors are listed here.

Read the rest here:
2016 was a coming-of-age year for Baidu SEO; why you should invest in 2017 - Search Engine Land

Forbes

3 Steps For Mobile SEO Success Forbes The short version is that if your brand isn't presenting well on mobile devices, your SEO campaign is hobbled. This development shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone after all, over 60% of search engine queries are submitted on mobile devices.

View original post here:
3 Steps For Mobile SEO Success - Forbes

Photo: Contributed Photo /

Kate Centofanti and Marc Whittington were married Oct. 8 at the Pavilion on Crystal Lake in Middletown.

Kate Centofanti and Marc Whittington were married Oct. 8 at the Pavilion on Crystal Lake in Middletown.

Newly engaged Greenwich residents Katherine Suzanne Knetzger and Dr. Mark Anthony Vitale plan a June wedding.

Newly engaged Greenwich residents Katherine Suzanne Knetzger and Dr. Mark Anthony Vitale plan a June wedding.

Celebrations: weddings, engagements

Wedding

Kate Centofanti, the daughter of Alan Centofanti and Dr. Babette Caraccio of Stamford and Cocoa Beach, Fla., married Marc Whittington, the son of Christiana and Ned Whittington of Hanover, N.H., on Oct. 8 at the Pavilion on Crystal Lake in Middletown.

Robert Powers, a friend of the couple and a Justice of the Peace, officiated at the ceremony. The bride and groom are 2014 graduates of Wesleyan University in Middletown, where they met. A small family ceremony was held the day before at St. Agnes Roman Catholic Church in Greenwich officiated by the Rev. William Carey.

The bride is a 2010 graduate of Greenwich High School. She is an account coordinator for Jacobson Strategic Communications in Philadelphia.

The groom graduated from Hanover High School in New Hampshire before attending Wesleyan. He is an SEO strategist at Haystack Needle in Philadelphia.

Following a wedding trip to Costa Rica, the couple will continue to reside in Philadelphia.

Engagement

Diane Knetzger of New Canaan and Hugh Knetzger of Greenwich are pleased to announce the engagement of their daughter, Katherine Suzanne Knetzger to Mark Anthony Vitale, son of Dorothy and Aldo Vitale of Brooklyn, NY.

The future bride is a graduate of New Canaan High School and received her bachelors degree in nursing at Villanova University. She went on to positions at Norwalk Hospital and the Hospital for Special Surgery before returning closer to home to work as a registered nurse in the outpatient clinic at Greenwich Hospital. She is now pursuing advanced training through a nurse practitioner degree at Fairfield University while concurrently working in the Greenwich Hospital clinic.

The future bridegroom graduated from Tufts University with a bachelors degree in biopsychology, and went on to medical school at Columbia University. After completing a residency in orthopaedic surgery at Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center and a hand surgery fellowship at the Mayo Clinic, he is now a board-certified hand and upper extremity surgeon working in Greenwich at Orthopaedic and Neurosurgery Specialists (ONS).

The couple resides in Greenwich, where they look forward to exchanging wedding vows in June of 2017.

The rest is here:
Celebrations: weddings, engagements - Greenwich Time

As a medical student, do you ever wonder what its like to specialize in rheumatology? Meet Philip Seo, MD, a rheumatologist and featured physician in the AMA Wire Shadow Me Specialty Series, which offers advice directly from physicians about life in their specialties. Check out his insights to help determine whether a career in rheumatology might be a good fit for you.

Shadowing Dr. Seo

Specialty: Rheumatology

Practice setting: Academic

Employment type: University employee

Years in practice: 13

A typical day in my practice: Three days a week, Im in the clinic seeing patients. I start around 8 a.m. and see my last patient around 4 p.m., sometimes with the help of a trainee.

One of the advantages of working in a university setting is that it has allowed me to develop a narrow specialty. Although Im a rheumatologist, my area of expertise is systemic vasculitis, and patients will travel long distances so I can help them with microscopic polyangiitis, granulomatosis with polyangiitis, Takayasus arteritis and other diagnoses that might not walk into most clinics every day.

I am also the program director for the Division of Rheumatology at Johns Hopkins, so on the other days of the week, I run the fellowship programs and work on other projects.

Six weeks out of the year, I am assigned to supervise the inpatient consult service at one of our two hospitals. The disadvantage of this is that the workflow can be unpredictable. One day we may have five consults, and the next we may have zero consults. The advantage is that it forces me out of my comfort zone and makes me think about diagnoses and diseases that I might not typically see in my clinic.

As a trainee, I think its hard to get a sense of what rheumatology is because we are often the service of last resort, the service that gets called when everyone else has seen a patient and no one can come up with a unifying diagnosis. My clinic is almost the exact opposite, and in my typical clinic day I will largely see patients who are doing well and are just coming in for a tune-up.

The most challenging and rewarding aspects of caring for rheumatology patients: Most rheumatic diseases are diagnosed clinically, meaning that theres generally not one single test that can prove what diagnosis a patient has. As a practicing rheumatologist, this is endlessly gratifying because it never gets old. Generally, even within a given diagnosis, each patient will have his or her own unique set of symptoms, and an approach that worked for one patient may not work for another.

Because so many diagnoses in my field rely on clinical assessment, they are generally not diseases that you can diagnose by reading about the criteria on UpToDate. It is incredibly rewarding to realize that I have picked up a skill set that allows me to help patients whom other doctors cannot.

Adjectives to describe the typical rheumatologist: Detail-oriented. Storytellers.

How my lifestyle matches or differs from what I had envisioned in medical school: Work-life balance is always a challenge, and I frankly try not to give a lot of thought to my college classmates who have already made more money than I will likely see during my lifetime. I also know that Im making a bit of a trade-off: I work in an academic practice so I can see patients I find interesting and rewarding, and in exchange, I make somewhat less money than my trainees who went directly into private practice.

As an academic, I also do a reasonable amount of traveling to give lectures and meet people in other institutions, which is rewarding, but it also means that I spend fewer nights each month in my own bed. On the other hand, in my field, there arent that many reasons that I would have to go into the hospital urgently in the middle of the night, and its nice to have that level of predictability and stability in my life. In fact, there are a good number of people who choose rheumatology specifically because it allows them to work part-time.

Skills every physician in training should have for rheumatology but wont be tested for on the board exam: E.Q.: emotional quotient. The ability to walk into a room and place a patient at ease is incredibly important, and its not a skill that is easily taught. I think that every patient needs a different type of doctorsay, a buddy, a father-figure or a confidantand it is up to us to determine how to best respond to those needs.

The ability to communicate effectively is also incredibly important. Many diagnoses in rheumatology are complicated, with complex regimens, and learning how to explain everything in a comprehensible fashion is crucial. A good deal of my time in my clinic is spent explaining other doctors plans to my patients!

One question every physician in training should ask themselves before pursuing this specialty: How much do I enjoy the story? More than any other specialty, rheumatology is full of storytellers, people who enjoy listening to patients talk about how they were doing well until Memorial Day, when they looked down at their legs and realized that they were developing a rash that they had never seen before. In my field, its often the journey from health to illness that gives us the diagnosis, and listening to the patient tell his or her story is how we collect the pieces to the puzzle.

One book every medical student interested in rheumatology should read: When Breath Becomes Air, by Paul Kalanithi, MD

The online resources students interested in my specialty should follow: Johns Hopkins Rheumatologys website, the American College of Rheumatologys website and the American College of Rheumatology on Facebook and Twitter.

Quick insights I'd give students who are considering rheumatology:If you think you might be interested in rheumatology, go out and find a rheumatologist! I think that too many people are dissuaded from the field because of the one crazy case they had heard about without realizing the broad spectrum of patients rheumatologists see. The best way to figure out if the field is a good fit is to shadow a rheumatologist.

Rheumatology is a good field for people who want to get to know their patients. Ive been in practice long enough that I have cared for some patients for over a decade, and not every field gives you the opportunity to become such an important part of your patients lives.

Original post:
What it's like to specialize in rheumatology: Shadowing Dr. Seo - American Medical Association (blog)

SYDNEYLeading Australian independent Sling & Stone is partnering with Interpublic Group agency Golin under an agreement that will provide the firms clients with access to an international network, and Golin clients with additional capabilities in Australia. Sling & Stone has also added several new clients, including Campos Coffee, GreenSync, and nura. They join a roster that includes Twitter, Xero, Domain, Kogan.com, and Slack.

MUMBAIGolinOpinionhas won the PR mandate for Dr. Oetker, a leading brand of western cuisine in India. The agency was appointed after a multi-agency pitch and will build a strategic framework for Dr. Oetker India by establishing the brand's core values that define it globally and strengthen the positioning of the brand.

SYDNEYPatrice Pandeleos and Heather Mollins, who most recently led Kite Communications as general manager and associate director respectivelyhave launched Seven Communications, a new full service communications agency that will offer a varied pricing structure. The agency will offer public relations, social media, digital, SEO, SEM, content development,events, issues and crisis management, strategy and planning, media solutions, influencer engagement and talent management. The agencys name is a reflection of the companys guiding seven values; be innovative, commit to excellence, tell it like it is, be accountable, be proactive, have a conscience and be human.

SYDNEYTechnology agency DT and strategic communications consultancy Cannings, both part of WPP, have launchedScout, an digital approach to issues and crisis management. Scout provides clients with full-service preparedness, from board level advice and corporate positioning, through crisis communication planning, stakeholder sentiment monitoring and analysis, simulation training, and real-time digital response and reputation recovery plans. It enables companies to deliver a swift, targeted response, designed to prevent issues escalating and triggering a robust process should a crisis occur.

SEOULBurson-Marsteller has appointed Elizabeth Bae as managing director in the corporate practice of its South Korea office, driving client development, strategy and new offerings for the practice. Bae joins Burson-Marsteller from Edelman Korea, where she led the firm's corporate and consumer practice and provided counsel for global brands across consumer products, food and beverage, and travel and tourism, as well as finance and business-to-business sectors.

SYDNEYMarketing communications agency Filtered Media of Sydney, Australia, has become the latest partner of PROI Worldwide, the leading global partnership of independent communications agencies. Founded by Heather Jones and Mark Jones in 2007, Filtered Media employs at team of 25 and works with client such as Telstra, Coca-Cola, Vitamix, Adobe and NEC. PROI Worldwide now has four agencies in Australia, with offices in Sydney and Melbourne, and plans to add a fifth agency in Brisbane in the near future.

See the original post:
Asia-Pacific News In Brief (February 6, 2017) - The Holmes Report