One of the tings mostly overlooked by advertisers, especially those not based in China and trying to promote their websites in China through pay per click (Google Adwords) is the fact that the Chinese visitors actually might just not be able to visit their websites!
One example should help. Everyone knows about Homestead.com , the popular all-in-one DIY sitebuilder + hosting platform that was quite hot in the early 2000, maybe not that much now as people become more knowledgeable in web design or for selecting a web hosting solution that better suits their needs. Homestead advertise heavily through Adwords and China is one of the markets where their ads are shown. They appear mostly for their own name and many search terms related to web hosting, wed design etc. However, Homestead.com has been blocked in China for the last two or three years at least! This means that they have been spending tens of dollars (or even more, considering that their industry has rather high CPC values) every day for years now, while those who click on the ad could not access their sites and would shut down the browser in a second. Talking about wasting resources.
Now for Homestead these might be pennies and probably they don’t care of this loss for China in their global advertising budget. However for small businesses targeting China, without the proper analytics software in place to track country of origin for their web visitors, bounce rates etc. that could have made them aware of the problem, this could be a serious hit to their bottom lines. We had a Canadian client coming to us who, after six months of “heavy” advertising in China through Adwords for their Chinese website, didn’t seem to get anything going in terms of sales or leads, and where surprised to find out that their sites couldn’t be accessed here without a proxy! And don’t count on Google to inform you of the situation, you might even be paying more than other advertisers since the high bounce rate will definitely lower your site quality score.
So, if you were to advertise through Google Adwords (or any other PPC network, for what it matters) in China, first make sure that you site can be seen here. There are online tools to check access from Chinese locations, if you know someone in China the best bet would be to ask them to test if they can visit your site. Ultimately, if your site main audience in China, you might consider hosting in China altogether, as you will get faster load times for your visitors which can be a boost for your site friendliness for users and quality score as well…But this will be for another article 
We have just launched a new blog for our web hosting division, China Hosting Blog. This blog will be about web hosting in China, with web hosting related news and articles, and of course updates on hosting solutions and services we can provide.
The new blog can be accessed from the following url: blog.sinohosting.net
After weeks of preparation, our new site www.sinohosting.net is now up and running. The decision to enter the web hosting arena has been fostered by what we consider to be the lack of quality web hosting firms in Shanghai offering international hosting solutions to local and foreign-owned or oriented firms, and the growing demand for companies based in China with international background (English support, foreign currencies payment etc.) to assist international firms for their Chinese hosting needs.
The new site will also complement nicely our existing SEO service, as many of our clients have been considering web hosting alternatives or new domain names acquisitions to protect their brands or to expand to new business lines.
SinoHosting.net currently offers web hosting with four choices of server location: mainland China (Shanghai, Shenzhen), Singapore, UK and the US. We plan to add Hong Kong and perhaps Beijing in a very near future. Other services include corporate email hosting (business emails for companies), domain name registration and email marketing management.
In the coming week, we will start a huge promotional campaign both online and offline to increase awareness of our new division. We plan to focus at the beginning on Shanghai and neighboring Zhejiang and Jiangsu provinces (Hangzhou, Suzhou, Wuxi, Nanjing).
As a launching promotion, we are offering Chinese domain names (including .cn, .com.cn, .net.cn and org.cn) at RMB30 only, with free 10MB parked hosting without ads, business email address, CPanel and Fantastico. This promotion is running through the end of October 2007. Paypal is accepted.
For more details on our hosting services, please visit www.sinohosting.net ; for specific enquries use the contact form on that site or email directly to support@sinohosting.net
Starting a website is one of the most critical decisions faced by every business owner in the world we live today. In all industry, it is very important to have a web presence that can stand up to competition both in terms of aesthetic (how professional is your site) and visibility (how easy it is for your customers to find your website, especially in the search engines).
This is also true in China for local Chinese companies and also for foreign enterprises coming into the country. Nevertheless, unless you go the extra step and refuse to follow the “China standards”, you may fall into one of these six pitfalls that will have a huge negative impact on your website overall success.
1. Build a flash website (or use CMS)
Flash seems to be the standards in China, and it is true that more flashy effects there are on their site more impressed would be the typical Chinese bosses. Some so-called web design companies will just use a PHP-based content management system without taking a few minutes to modify some very basic elements that would have helped the site perform better on Google or Yahoo. I have seen this many times on some real estate and trading companies websites, and many others as well. Search engines cannot read flash (so far). CMS is not that bad per se but it needs to be customized properly. Having a big flash intro at your main page (the most important of your site and the one most of the links you build will direct to), with no or little content, is a sure way to doom your site to the abysses of the search results. Try instead to embed flash in your html code, or use a CMS with search engine friendly page names and configurable meta tags.
2. Going cheap for web design, hosting or promotion.
Chinese companies have always competed by offering low prices and many local web firms will give lower than cost prices just to grab a few more clients. When choosing a company to handle your web design and hosting, go for those with a long term proven track record that can provide a portfolio of their previous clients. I have seen clients hosting companies actually disappear overnight with all the consequences you can imagine for their websites. Moreover, you don’t want to have a site that takes days to load a single page when you know how patient the typical Internet user is. It is always good to shop around for lower prices but these lower offers should only be used as a bargaining tool with more established firms.
3. Inexistent or incomplete Chinese translation of your site.
If you want to sell to Chinese you need to provide them information in a language they can understand. So many overseas companies assume that all they need to do is to advertise their current site in China and customers will come knocking at the door. There are also many examples of companies with poor translated web pages or even some using free online translation tools. You have to do the necessary investment to get your site properly translated in Chinese language for it to perform well in China.
4. Hosting Overseas
While it is true that most sites hosted elsewhere are accessible in China, it makes sense to have your Chinese portion of your website hosted in China. Not only will you have the benefit of faster connection speed, but you will be more protected against potential IP blocking (if it happens that your host has been serving subversive sites and becomes blocked in China) or even natural disasters (remember the Taiwan earthquake that essentially cut access to overseas sites from China for days or even weeks in some cases).
5. Not registering with the ICP
Yes I know China is one of the rare countries that requires you to register your site with the authorities. But it is the way it is here and if you are in business here you need to comply with the regulations. You don’t want to “forget” to register your site and have its access suddently blocked for a month or two while you are in the middle of a heavy advertising campaign. Usually your local hosting will take care of that but you would want to double check. On major corporations sites you will find that ICP certificate number in the bottom of their main pages so just do like them.
6. Over-relying on Pay-Per-Click to advertise your site.
Until a very recent time site optimization was equal to PPC in China. Although PPC should be an integral part of your marketing budget, you won’t want to over rely on it to get your site to your customers. Competitors will not hesitate to have your site bomb-clicked, and some would use some automatic software to make sure you top your maximal budget each and every day. Without proper ROI monitoring it is easy to spend huge amount of money for very little in return. Instead, you should undertake a diversified marketing strategy including organic SEO and traditional advertising as well.
Hope these quick tips will be of any help. This is not a complete reference and we will be writing more very soon on the subject.
Patrick Abotsi
www.seo4china.com
