East-West-Connect.com

I’ve had more than a few potential clients of our Chinese SEO services ask me if we will guarantee rankings for a set of keywords. The arrangement they’re looking for is one in which the SEO vendor guarantees that the client’s website will rank within the top 3 or top 5 positions for several predetermined keywords. If some terms do not remain within the top few rankings, the SEO company either doesn’t get paid, or they have to work to regain the rankings. Read more...

The Swiss brand valuation agency BV4 recently released the report “The Most Valuable Social Media Brands 2012” (pdf Read more...

The total online transaction volume reached 2.2 trillion Chinese Yuan in 2011. With that massive figure, and other promising trends in Chinese Internet usage, it’s clear that e-commerce has a bright future in China.

I’ve put together a few graphs to give you an overview of the online payment market in China. (Thanks to iResearch for the useful data.)

  Read more...

I used to receive a lot of inquiries from Baidu pay per click clients about getting the top spot in the Baidu paid ad results. They’d say things like “I absolutely must be number 1, regardless of how much more we have to pay” and “How come my site isn’t number 1 anymore? Please help me get back to number 1 right away.” Read more...

When entering the Chinese market, one of the first things you’ll need is a website. Perhaps you already have an English website, or perhaps you’re planning on creating a completely new website for the Chinese market, but either way you’ll have to answer the same questions: How can I better tailor my website to the habits of Chinese Internet users? How can I make them like us? How can I make them want to buy our products? These are essential questions to ask yourself at the beginning of the website localization process. Read more...

When entering the Chinese market, choice of domain name is often one of the first decisions that will need to be made. It’s a decision that shouldn’t be made lightly. Choose right, and you’ll have a more memorable, easily pronounceable, trustworthy domain name. Choose wrong and you may miss out on type-in traffic or end up with a domain that doesn’t inspire enough trust in the minds of your potential customers. Read more...

As a follow up for the recent post I made about the types of mobile phones used in China, I’ve prepared some data on Chinese mobile Internet user demographics. The data is from the latest CNNIC report published in January 2012.

Read more...

There were over 975 million mobile phone users as of November 2011 according to the MIIT (Ministry of Industry and Information Technology of China). Mobile phones have become an indispensable tool for modern communication. Read more...

Last week I was interviewed by James Renouf for an upcoming audio book and one of the questions they asked me was something like, “What is the biggest mistake you see Western companies making in entering the online Chinese market?” The answer I gave was that they just sit and wait until the best time for entry is already over. Read more...

The CNNIC report for January 2012 came out, so I've updated my graphs to reflect the recent data. The data is up-to-date as of the end of December, 2011.

Highlights: Read more...