Baidu Pay Per Click (and a 'lil Google PPC Too)

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...

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...

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...

Somebody recently asked me:

Would Baidu's advertising platform would be a good way to reach Chinese-reading Internet users based in Australia?

To answer this, it's important to know how much Baidu search traffic there is in Australia. For that matter, how much Baidu search traffic is there outside of China in total? How about USA, the UK, Canada?

To answer these questions, I dug into some statistics for 10 websites. Over the timespan I checked, there were 58,000 visits via Baidu.

This is what I found: 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...

Baidu’s “Brand Promotion” product allows famous brands to display a lot more information about their brand for branded searches. When a Baidu user searches for a brand that uses Baidu’s brand advertising product, they will see text, images and video related to the brand as well as links that lead deeper into the company’s website. Read more...

Baidu recently released a helpful new feature called “Xijing”, which we will call “sub-links”. Sub-links show up on a second line below the upper textual pay per click ads. They provide users with the opportunity to view multiple advertiser offerings and provide marketers a new way to improve paid search marketing results. Read more...

Similar to Google, Baidu is able to place contextual ads on a wide network of websites. This allows advertisers to spread their message to a broader audience than if they were to place ads on search results alone. They call their content network ‘Baidu Union’. Read more...