China SEO Blog

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

• Comments (0)

If you have been using the Adwords keyword tool for doing your keyword research, then you you will definitely like this. Now the tool provides data about number of searches conducted for each keyword. So for a certain number of suggested keywords, for instance, you will find as well the number of searches that was conducted for this keyword in the previous month, as well as the average monthly search volume.

You can read more about it on the Inside Adwords blog here:

http://adwords.blogspot.com/2008/07/keyword-tool-updated-with-search-volume.html

• Comments (0)

Recently we had a prospect who wanted us to help them start a link building campaign for their website. This was a moderately competitive industry but considering the facts that they had their main keywords in their domain (a huge advantage over competitors), the age of their domains and the amount of links they already had, it was surprising that they didn’t get more organic traffic but rather had to rely on Google Adwords to drive most of their traffic to their site.

A quick look at their site revealed a set up that just didn’t help in terms of SEO. The site was hosted on domain A, while the domain they were building links for, domain B, was redirecting to the domain A. Therefore domain B had no real pages of its own, despite the thousands of links already built for it. Domain A was also relevant to the industry, however had a mere 14 links while most of its indexed pages were in the supplemental index.

The client didn’t seem to be really opened to suggestions from us, arguing that they were “already working with another vendor for SEO”, therefore they just needed us to provide a quotation for link building…

Management decisions in terms of branding, marketing etc. conflict sometimes with some of the basic rules of search engine optimization and SEM. Without the right setup, an aggressive link building campaign will not yield the expected results and help improve the rankings of your site. Organic optimization of each page of a site, relevant and unique content are factors that just can’t be ignored if you want your site to reach the top. In the above case, deep link building was not even an option since all links were to be built to the home page of page B.

• Comments (0)

It seems that Yahoo has shut down the Overture Keyword Suggestion tool, as the page now redirects permanently to http://sem.smallbusiness.yahoo.com/searchenginemarketing. This was to be expected considering the long time without updates. This seems to be the end of an era, and the tool will be missed especially by diy internet marketers who, despite its inaccuracies, used it anyway because basically it was free.

• Comments (3)

After months of preparation and beta testing, Baidu has finally launched its instant messaging system, Baidu Hi.

I have downloaded and installed the program, which is still labelled beta 2.The interface is blueish and clean, and to use it one need to register for a Baidu passport (or use previous access details if one is using another Baidu service).

Baidu Hi is a newcomer in an industry currently dominated by QQ, and to a lesser extent, MSN. By leveraging in its enormous user base and reach, Baidu Hi should be able to grow quickly in the months to come although it should not pose a threat to the top two IM leaders in a foreseable future.

Baidu Hi has a Baidu searchbar at its top and its main objective is to improve user loyalty to the company’s core search business.

Baidu Hi is currently available in Chinese only.

• Comments (0)

Accoкомпютри втора употребаmebelirding to multiple reports, Google has set up a five years plan to gain supremacy in the search engine industry. To do so, it will need to win market share against the old rival, Baidu.com. In the short term, Google will invest in social networking sites and companies in China, while expanding on its mobile deals.

I think Google has two main issues that needs to be addressed quite urgently:

1-Google.cn is NOT better than Baidu.

2-Baidu offers services that are better than Google’s ones, or that Google just cannot offer (I am talking MP3 search for instance).

On the other hand, the mobile internet sure is growing fast, but I don’t think that it really matters at this point where the country is still struggling with its 3G standard. I also don’t see how beating Baidu in the mobile internet business can help in the PC-side of search.

• Comments (2)

Well, at least according to an independent Japanese research firm (Video Search). According to their report, Baidu is now ranked fourth, trailing Yahoo Softbank (market leader), Google and MSN.

Personally, for a number of reasons, I don’t really expect Baidu to do that well in Japan, at least not that fast. I will be posting more on this as soon as I get additional information from other sources.

Baidu currently displays no ads with search results conducted on its Japanese site.

• Comments (0)