East-West-Connect.com

Uh oh!
Baidu is now making most existing Baidu pay per click customers jump through yet another hoop.
Here's a translated excerpt from the official announcement:

"
In order to further strengthen an honest marketing environment on Baidu search as well as provide the most benefit for searchers and advertisers, Baidu launched an authenticity verification initiative in 2012. This initiative effectively helped advertisers improve the reliability of their advertisements. The initiative now applies to the majority of Baidu clients. Read more...

I recently talked to somebody that had setup a new business and they wanted some guidance on this question:
"Which marketing channel would be better for us at the beginning: Pay per click or SEO?"
I'll answer this in a way that's relevant to English and Chinese marketing.

First of all, let me say that there is no one-size fits all answer to the question of pay per click (PPC) vs. SEO. It depends on the situation. Read more...

Traffic Now or Traffic Later...

Somebody recently asked me:
"We are currently asking a freelancer to do English-to-Chinese translation on the content found on our main website. I wonder if SEO keyword research could be done now so that we can pass on the info to our translator so that he can keep in mind the various keywords he should use when translating the materials. Or is it more efficient to do this as well as rest of SEO when the Chinese website is up and running? Read more...

A friend of mine recently launched a very cool idea inspired by the elderly people of China. She calls it the Slow Flash Mob and I think it's a great example of how an aspect of Chinese culture could be transplanted to another area in a postiive way. Before I go on, check out the video.

Read more...

There are a lot of articles out there on how to learn Chinese. Basic tips include things like “go to China”, “take Chinese language courses”, etc. Great tips.

But, as somebody that wants to learn Chinese, what else should you know? What are the secrets that only someone who has invested their sweat and blood into learning a language can tell you?

To answer this, I asked this question to several accomplished language learners on the topic of learning Chinese: What is one unusual tip you have for learning Chinese? Read more...

Some of the most common questions I hear from website owners that are considering entering the Chinese market are about hosting and domain names. Questions like “Do I need to host my site in China?”, “Should I use a .cn, .com.cn or something else?” and “Will my site get blocked?” Read more...

I received an email asking: “What type of tools are useful for testing broad/exact search volumes (including long tails) for China?”

For this question, I’ll assume that we’re talking about keyword research for a new market, so using data from existing websites isn’t possible.

Here are the 4 tools we use the most.

Google AdWords Keyword Tool

Google’s keyword tool is an industry standard for English keyword research, and it’s quite useful for Chinese as well. Read more...

I found this question on Quora: “How does Baidu compares to Google when it comes to display ads rather than search ads?”

Good question.

First some background… Read more...

This week I posted two new items on sites other than East-West-Connect. Check them out. :)

5 Baidu SEM Tips From the Pros on Clickz.asia - In this article, I listed 5 tips tailored towards the Baidu paid search newbie. Clickz.asia is a blog with marketing news and marketing advice for China and other Asian countries. Read more...

I thought you might like this Chinese-language infographic about how expensive foreign brands are for Chinese consumers, so I translated it into English. Thanks to Rand for sharing this on the China Digital Marketing Linkedin group. Read more...