'Net Features : china

SEO for China from GinzaMetrics

Pete Prestipino — Tue, 30 Apr 2013 16:35:00 GMT

Enterprsise SEO and content marketing platform GinzaMetrics is going global, extending support to Chinese search engines Baidu and Sogou.

Baidu, Sogou and Google are now the default search engines for users selecting China as their website’s target country. GinzaMetrics users are now able to track organic search, social, and content for their websites in any country, with the platform suggesting relevant search engines. By providing companies access to organic search, social, and content marketing information from Baidu and Sogou, GinzaMetrics users can report on and gather recommendations for enhancing their global search strategies. Users can even tap into the monitoring features to observe the search and content performance of their competitors to understand the types of keywords and content that are trending for others in their industry.

GinzaMetrics CEO, Ray Grieselhuber, cites support for Baidu and Sogou as, “A result of growing e-commerce and web-based businesses in China, as well as the globalization of companies that need to be relevant in each of their markets.”

Expanding to China: At What Cost?

Amberly Dressler — Mon, 15 Apr 2013 18:10:00 GMT

In China, online retail sales surpassed 1.32 trillion yuan ($210.39 billion) in 2012, which is a 64.7 percent increase from the previous year.

By any measurement, China is a hot e-commerce marketing, but U.S. businesses looking to expand into this country, which has well-documented long-term issues with international trade, should proceed cautiously.

The growing number of partnerships between domestic businesses and China has ignited Jina Park, CEO and Founder of PLUSH, a baby and toddler trade and consumer show, to relay imperative advice to companies seeking business opportunities in China.

1. Domestic products are subject to be copied and even replaced by Chinese manufactures. This is currently happening in the auto industry.

2. Big brand names are just as susceptible to being copied in China. As seen in, “Welcome to China's Fake Apple Store,” which means just because a brand is big in the U.S., does not mean it cannot be copied in China.

3. Be aware of high demands and steep costs when transferring money out of China. Have a strategy to get the money made in China, out of China. The ideal scenario would be to hire a Chinese attorney to set up a business identity in China and open a business account in a Chinese bank. At the very least, a bank account in Hong Kong with an international bank that has branches in the United States should be acquired. China also has its own Internet and a near-impenetrable firewall. Therefore, any proceeds from Internet sales a company may make in China will be sent to the Bank of China for processing until that company pays the bank fees to wire their money out of the country. There is no Paypal, Ebay, or credit card processing avenues with Internet sales in China.

4. Segregate your business entity to a valid Chinese entity to avoid the double tax. Every U.S. dollar made in China can be taxed.

5. Powerful Chinese sponsors or benefactors involved within the Chinese government are crucial. If something goes awry, a trusted citizen can guide businesses through most mishaps.

6. Always consider international shipping costs. Third-party freight forwarding companies are quick and efficient but astronomically costly. Other alternatives include piggybacking, which saves money but loses time, personal shipping company may be ideal but the fees included are extensive.

7. Success in China is measured by an equation. To be successful in China, businesses must take into account the time spent traveling, working, and potentially even living in China. All of this comes as additional costs to those spent on setting up bank account, business entities, hiring lawyers, and shipping products. Setting up a business in China is all part of an equation that business owners must be willing to pay for success.

Ebay Behind the Great Wall with XIU Partnership

Pete Prestipino — Mon, 12 Nov 2012 19:45:00 GMT

Global Internet retailers get excited at the mere thought of promoting and advertising their products within China. Few have managed to take the neccesary steps however. Ebay is one that has and it is leading the charge in many respects, announcing a deal with Chinese online fashion retailer Xiu.com to create a localized online shopping experience called Ebay Style.

Ebay Style will include up to 5000 brands in apparel, handbags and shoes, accessories, health and beauty and other lifestyle categories. All products will be new and available from eBay’ trusted sellers. As well as providing the platform for Ebay Style, Xiu.com will be responsible for curating and translating the inventory from eBay with a product search and browsing experience suited to Chinese consumers. Xiu.com will also provide local returns and Chinese language customer service.

Melanie Tan, vice president for Ebay said: “Today, Chinese consumers are increasingly coming to eBay and we have seen a 40% year on year increase of goods bought by Chinese consumers navigating eBay.com in English. We believe that in the future Chinese consumers will use eBay as a passport to global Fashion styles, especially for leading women’s brands and accessories, and menswear, because our broad selection of new, branded, and designer merchandise will be unmatched in China.”

Microsoft Brings Azure Cloud OS to China

Michael Garrity — Tue, 06 Nov 2012 18:38:00 GMT

China’s increasingly important role in the future of the Internet and Web hosting just got a major seal of approval from Microsoft, who recently announced that it was going to bring its Windows Azure cloud-based operating system to the Asian nation.

This launch, which follows the release of Windows Server 2012, will bring multi-tenant public and private cloud services to millions of the businesses that operate in the world’s most populous country, giving owners a choice in how (and when) they will move to the cloud. Thanks to both Server 2012 and Azure, Windows customers can find the cloud that best matches the needs of their businesses, from on-premises datacenters to a public cloud.

According to a report from Forrester Research, the public cloud market in China is set to grow from $297 million in 2011 to an astonishing $3.8 billion in 2020.

Microsoft has signed a memorandum of understanding with the municipality of Shanghai and inked a deal to license its technologies with the company 21Vianet, which will provide Windows Azure services from its local Chinese datacenters to provide the best performance for its customers in the country.

Different Strokes: Design Preferences in U.S. and China

Linc Wonham — Thu, 19 Apr 2012 17:00:00 GMT

Digital marketing agency Acquity Group has released its Global Usability Study that surveyed American and Chinese consumers on their website preferences to better understand online shopping behaviors of consumers in China.

The findings revealed that both groups of consumers favored the American-style Web design over the Chinese-style design, especially on the homepage. American consumers gave the American style a 78-percent approval rating while Chinese consumers gave it an approval rating of 72 percent.

Different Web Experiences
Three Web page layouts were shown in both American-style and Chinese-style designs. Separate versions of a hypothetical e-commerce apparel site were created based on a set of generally accepted design principles for each market. Participants were asked to evaluate the three pages from each style of site – a homepage, a category landing page and an individual product detail and order page.

The American-style design featured a clean homepage with a large, branded image, limited selection of promotions and information, with little or no scrolling capabilities, and similarly structured product category landing and detail pages.

The Chinese-style site was much more information-heavy, characteristic of that market's typical retail website. Product images, descriptions and promotions were all included upfront on the homepage, with long pages and opportunities for continuous scrolling. This was consistent with the category landing and product detail pages.

American audiences tended to rate both design styles an average of 5 to 10 percent higher than Chinese audiences (75-80 percent, versus 70-75 percent), indicating that the Chinese respondents had a slightly more critical perception of Web design styles. Chinese respondents pointed out the American-style design's use of “Big pictures can drive attention, but the information was not enough”, and that the Chinese-style had “Too many product pictures on the homepage.”

Chinese respondents also noted a lack of advertised promotions more readily than Americans did, and were more frequently affected by price points.

“Creating a positive and rewarding Web experience is a complex formula of design best practices coupled with cultural preferences,” says Dominic Lee, Acquity Group’s creative director. “Although we went into the study with general cultural assumptions, the insights we collected about consumer preferences in both countries were unexpected. The cultural styles were not as easily categorized as we initially believed. This tells us that it is time to cross-pollinate the international e-commerce space.”

Entry into Foreign Markets
The point of the study was to generate analytics for marketing and IT officers as they continue to evaluate their digital channels in foreign markets. It revealed that consumers in the Chinese and U.S. markets have distinct tastes when it comes to interacting with digital channels, suggesting that marketers will need to explore new ways to merchandise a site and display product information when moving their brands into foreign markets.

“U.S. companies can save on costs by re-using designs and functionality from domestic-style home pages and landing pages, but winning over the Chinese consumer will require a product-page redesign to enhance both the quality and quantity of product information, which will likely prove beneficial to their home market as well,” says Lee. “Most Chinese companies launching in the U.S. should start from scratch with a new U.S.-style home page, but also keep in mind that U.S. consumers value the enhanced information featured in Chinese-style designs.”

The entire Global Usability Study can be downloaded here.

SEO for Baidu

Pete Prestipino — Tue, 23 Mar 2010 15:33:00 GMT

Now that Google is pulling its search and advertising from China, and its over 1.3 billion people, there's only one significant platform remaining available for Web dominance and that's Baidu. If you've considered getting into China (as much as you can get into it) then we've put together a quick guide to SEO (search engine optimization) for your review.

Keyword Research
Any sophisticated search advertising or search engine optimization campaign is going to start with an in-depth round of keyword research. While it is probably best to hire a vendor/company with both translation and interpretation experience, there are fortunately some free online keyword research tools that you will be able to bootstrap with and use for Chinese translation.

Baidu's PPC management platform Search Marketing Pro (also known as Phoenix Nest) should be your first step in conducting Chinese keyword research. Baidu's platform is similar to others you are likely familiar with, offering daily budget features, keyword (and negative) keyword matching, ad rotation, geo-targeting, day parting and of course a keyword suggestion tool and bid estimator. The keyword tool from Baidu offers related keyword suggestions based on the core keywords you submit and provides them for download in a spreadsheet.

You may be saying to yourself, "Hey, what about Alibaba?" and you'd be wise to do so. Alibaba is a leading trade portal and one of our secondary focus points as it should be yours. Its keyword suggestion tool (Alibaba Wangxiaobao) is particularly useful for those in wholesale and trade businesses as Alibaba users tend to buy in bulk.

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Editors Note: Install East Asian Language Files on Your Computer
I quickly learned that most of those in the English-speaking world, myself included, are not able to view Chinese characters without modifying our systems. The solution for Windows users is to install supplemental language support from your control panel. Doing so will enable you to see Chinese, Japanese and Korean language files, but at a cost of 230MB of disk space. Should you choose the install, open Regional and Language Options, click Start, click Control Panel, click Date, Time, Language, and Regional Options, and then click Regional and Language Options.

SEO Techniques
Unlike the complexity of search engine optimization for Google, Baidu offers a much more accessible challenge. Some of the core differences are that Baidu places more emphasis on meta information such as titles, descriptions and keywords. Alt tags are also weighted heavily, but the quantity of links is the key difference, as Google focuses more on the quality. Other techniques, including the use of heading tags and internal/external anchor text, should also be an area of focus.

If you just can’t seem to get your site added by the baidubot, you are able to submit directly using the Baidu Site Submit. For those interested in speeding up the process even more and getting some universal content into the index too, then it will be the Baidu Search Open Platform that will warrant your attention. Baidu’s open platform accepts XML data submission that may appear among the organic search results. The open platform requires developers/webmasters sign up and verify ownership (through file upload or meta tag verification) of the site, and submit a personal identity document.

One quick note on content and usability: Due to some speed and performance issues of the Baidu crawler, it has been suggested that writing in the reverse pyramid style (i.e. most important information at the top, preferably with a strong call to action) will result in higher positions, as often one the first few hundred kilobytes are indexed. This means you should keep design elements and content separate through CSS.

Chinese Domains, Hosting & Web Design
There are several important considerations when it comes to designing a website for Chinese users. In a perfect world you would have a Chinese domain extension as well as a Chinese hosting provider. Unless you’ve got some internal connections in China, however, it is best to start your search for hosting in Hong Kong, Taiwan or Singapore.

Finally, you'll want to make sure your pages have the appropriate content type indicated (see an example below) and avoid the use of robots.txt, focusing instead on modifying the .htaccess file instead.

This is far from a comprehensive guide for search engine optimization for China. What it does provide is quick but key insight into what you’ll need to consider if one of your objectives is total Chinese domination. Keep it light (no porn or gambling) and informational and you’ll make your mark in the land of the rising sun.

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