Chinese Search Engine Usage and Marketing

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...

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...

For people that don't yet know much about SEO, it must be a challenge to differentiate between all the different types of SEO service providers out there.
SEO is an industry with no standard professional regulations. It's an industry that anybody can get started in, but that is extremely difficult to master.
I hope to help the would-be SEO client answer this question: "What does it really mean when somebody says they can provide me SEO services?" Read more...

For an SEO project, it's important to check up on a regular basis and make changes where needed. For most projects, I do this on a weekly basis. Read more...

Below are some of the most common questions I'm asked about Baidu advertising account setup. Note that some details may vary based on the reseller. Much of what I describe below is how we do things at Nanjing Marketing Group, and we work with several resellers. Read more...

Last week I posted about how to generate a list of Chinese keywords for SEO purposes. Following up on that, I'd like to give some tips on how to evaluate that list of keywords. Which keywords should be used and which shouldn't? Read more...