Chinese carrier enters South China Sea amid renewed tension

A group of Chinese warships led by the country's sole aircraft carrier entered the top half of the South China Sea on Monday after passing south of Taiwan, the island's defence ministry said of what China has termed a routine exercise.

The move comes amid renewed tension over self-ruled Taiwan, which Beijing claims as its own, following U.S. President-elect Donald Trump's telephone call with the island's president that upset Beijing.

The ministry said the aircraft carrier the Liaoning, accompanied by five vessels, had early Monday afternoon passed southeast of the Pratas Islands, which are controlled by Taiwan, heading southwest.

The carrier group earlier in the day passed 90 nautical miles south of Taiwan's southernmost point via the Bashi Channel, between Taiwan and the Philippines.

"Staying vigilant and flexible has always been the normal method of maintaining airspace security," said ministry spokesman Chen Chung-chi, declining to say whether Taiwan fighter jets were scrambled or if submarines had been deployed.

Chen said the ministry was continuing to "monitor and grasp the situation".

Senior Taiwan opposition Nationalist lawmaker Johnny Chiang said the Liaoning exercise was China's signal to the United States that it has broken through the "first island chain", an area that includes Japan's Ryukyu Islands and Taiwan.

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Shincheonji “New Heaven and New Earth” cult infiltrating churches

Hundreds of British churches, including some of the UK’s largest congregations, have been warned against possible infiltration by a group accused of being a “cult” promoting “control and deception”.
The Church of England has issued a formal alert to almost 500 parishes in London about the activities of the group known as Parachristo.

The organisation, a registered charity, runs Bible study courses at an anonymous industrial unit under a Botox clinic and a personal training company in London Docklands.
But it is understood to be linked to a controversial South Korean group known as Shinchonji (SCJ) – or the “New Heaven and New Earth” church (NHNE) – whose founder Man-Hee Lee is referred to as God’s “advocate”.

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The attitudes of Western European states towards new religious movements

If we summarize the current situation, beside a few centres receiving local or regional subsidies, three Western European countries — Austria, Belgium and France — have established agencies or centres for monitoring NRMs; these institutions are the outcomes of state initiatives at the national level.

 

Despite the successive waves of concerns about “cults”, most European countries do not have state agencies dealing with cult-related issues. In some cases, this has not prevented targeted measures against a specific movement, as evidenced by the years of surveillance of Scientology by German security agencies.

State-sponsored institutions dealing with cults are supposed to be neutral observers — which was one of the reasons for their founding. What happens in reality is nuanced and should certainly not be over-simplified. In practice, representatives of some official or state-supported agencies are seen more often at conferences of people with shared anti-cult assumptions than at academic conferences attracting sociologists of religion and other scholars conducting fieldwork. This has not prevented some members of these agencies’ staff from gaining considerable knowledge through years of work. One should understand that from the start the very roots of such agencies made it difficult for them to be really “neutral” (whatever meaning is ascribed to this word), since they were supposed to help solve a social problem, to support people seen as victims and to deal with deviations. Social scientists studying NRMs usually work from a quite different starting point.

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Affordable SEO Packages

 

Never pay more than you make!

The success of our Search Engine Optimization services lays in the fact that at Hire SEO Expert we understand the importance of high quality work at affordable prices and because we do we offer cost effective SEO services. In contrast to others our quality does not depend on pricing.

At Hire SEO we provide affordable SEO packages that include all the necessary strategies and white hat Search Engine Optimization techniques that are necessary to make sure your website reaches the top of the list on the search engine results on Google, Yahoo and Bing. 

As each website’s rank is regularly checked and followed as well as compared to websites of competitors during the whole process by SEO consultants, the SEO techniques needed to optimize each website are carefully chosen. By choosing the best and most cost effective SEO strategies our team of SEO experts ensure optimal results which are increased traffic and a better ROI (return on investment). Our cost effective SEO services include web analysis, keywords research, quality content writing, social media optimization and local promotion which are designed accordingly to the size of your company as well as your targeted audience-local or global.

Why Hire SEO Expert?

Firstly, we understand how important time and money is, especially for clients who are just beginning a new project or launching a new business and we have for this reason created affordable SEO packages that will help you generate not only a large amount but also high quality visitors to your online business who in turn can easily access your website and products as they are found high up on Google searches or any other search engine lists.

Secondly, all Cost effective SEO services ensure the sustainability of your website’s ranking resulting in your company’s long-term success, as each package is uniquely designed for each client and their business.

Finally, at Hire SEO Expert all our affordable SEO packages include free web resources for every new client, for example, we offer a free web analysis report, audit report, competitor’s analysis report, or build a marketing plan and a free SEO consultant. 

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SEO Service Provider

Every year, search engine optimization seems to change in some ways. Here are five helpful tips for you to keep track of how to best optimize your content in 2014:

1) Don’t slack off on your company’s social media presence

Although social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Google+ have been around for years now, that doesn’t mean they are irrelevant. If anything, your business needs to have a strong social media strategy now more than ever to help build awareness for your brand and to drive web traffic.

Also, remember people want to share relevant, quality content that relates to your audience’s lives in some way—don’t just create things for the sake of sharing. SEO optimization for your website isn’t just about creating and sharing content—it’s about creating and sharing content that people will care about.

2) Keep your writing natural

In the past, Google may have been more likely to pick up word-for-word keywords. Now, though, with the introduction of Google’s latest search algorithm Hummingbird, natural writing is taking center stage. This ties back to your company having strong content that drives traffic. Instead of focusing on writing around a keyword, make your keywords flow more naturally—if a few words are separating a keyword phrase, that will be OK. Google now recognizes ideas more so than just words, allowing your writing to really shine.

3) Don’t forget about local search optimization

Local content and search engine indexing will not be slowing down this year. More and more, Google is localizing search results to better cater to users’ needs. Look more into Google+ Local to see just how powerful localized results can be. In fact, the more you can use localized long-tail keywords and build out your local listing profiles, the better.

4) Keep your sites responsive

In the past, web and mobile sites largely lived in separate worlds—sites looked and performed completely differently on mobile devices and desktops. Now, though, if a company wants to not only look fresh but be indexed well in search engines, it should create a responsive site that can be viewed on all of today’s modern devices: smartphones, tablets, laptops and desktop computers. This not only creates happier users because they get a consistent, functional website, but it can also increase your search engine visibility and shares on social media.

5) Establish yourself as an expert

Whatever your business’s focus is, you’ll want to come off to your clients as an authoritative voice in your field of expertise. To do this, continue to create content for your blog, but make sure you can provide your viewers with helpful information. When you can provide practical tips for your readers, your website will be more valuable, as will your search engine optimization. Your viewers will begin to trust your voice more on important industry issues, and you can become their one-stop shop for important information.

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Establishing og PPC Campaign

When organizing your PPC campaign, set goals on every timescale, such as daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, and annually. The short-term goals should be steps involved in achieving the long-term goals. The short-term goals can then serve as benchmarks for progress toward the long-term goals. When planning campaign goals, compare similar timeframes and make sure that none contain an unreasonable number of goals for that length of time. Also make sure that all of the goals are in their proper order. Finishing half a task and then waiting for the results of a task that isn’t scheduled to start for a week is something of a waste of time.

Make Your Goals Both Challenging and Achievable

There is no point in a goal that is easy to achieve. Your goals should inspire you and your team to go the extra mile in order to achieve it. Similarly, a goal that is impossible to achieve prevents all progress. A good goal is just a step beyond your present grasp. A good goal will put you and your team a little out of your comfort zone, but not entirely out of it.

Focus on the Results, not the Tactics

Your goals need to be based on the results that they can achieve for your company. Making goals that are nothing more than a tactic for getting results is putting the cart before the horse. In other words, your goals should read like “Increase sales by 5 percent over the previous month and decrease costs by 3 percent,” instead of like “Add another 400 keywords.” Only after you have defined your goals in terms of the results that you want should you choose tactics to get you there. Use both baseline goals and stretch goals. Baseline goals focus on the minimum threshold for success, and stretch goals should set the standards for success that goes above and beyond the call of duty.

Create Benchmarks by Reviewing Past Performance

The best way to set goals for your PPC is to analyze the performance of previous campaigns. Conduct a review each month of the month before it, and set your goals on the basis of continuous monthly improvement.

While setting your campaign’s monthly goals, remember that some produce better results than others do. Look at the effects that time of day, date, month, and quarter have on performance. When doing this, avoid comparing time periods that don’t have a lot to do with each other. You cannot compare weekdays and weekends, for instance, or first quarter results to second quarter results. Set your goals to be relevant to the nature of your performance data. For instance, if November sales are high each year because of the holidays, then November should not be compared to October, but to November of the previous year.

Keep a record of special events that skew performance results. For instance, a special sale that significantly boosted conversion rates for July, a problem with the manufacturing process that caused a loss of sales, and a software problem that made your online order forms inaccessible would all be examples of special events that make figures for those months atypical. Expecting other months to have similar figures to months containing such events would be a bad idea.

Keep Track of Your Goals

Write down each of your goals as you create them. Record who is accountable for each of them. Keep track of benchmarks and progress toward each goal in the same document.

These goal documents not only help you to remember details and keep track of who is responsible for what, they also give you a ready way of seeing the big picture. They should also inspire you and your team to greater efforts.

Analyze Goal Achievements

Analyzing the goal achievements of previous PPC campaigns is an important part of setting future goals. Your analysis must go beyond the level of merely asking whether or not you hit the goal. You must also figure out why the goal was or was not achieved, and how it could be done better next time. You must develop a sense of whether the obstacles can be overcome in the future.

Summary

The precise amount to optimize or expand your PPC marketing campaign depends on the specifics of your business and industry, as well as a host of other factors, such as time of year. The only way to establish realistic goals is by knowing your company and its capacities, and experience running other PPC campaigns. Learning how to set the best goals is a matter of trial and error.

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