SEO CHINA 101.3
Fili’s World did a great primer on Chinese Search Engine Basics and I with his permission I opted to use it as a springboard for this week’s post:
“The SEO rules for the Chinese Internet market are a bit different than that of any other country. The Internet market works differently due to various social, political and technological reasons. It’s quite remarkable that Google has so far failed to take over the Chinese search engine market which is still dominated by Baidu – maybe the only company in the world still beating Google in their niche.”
I consulted with a funds manager in New York about a year ago. He did not want to believe my prediction that Google would NEVER overtake Baidu and would keep losing ground. He expplained to me that Google had outspent Baidu 10-1 on R&D in the Chinese market and doubted Baidu could stand up to that. Gee, if it were only about money.
Baidu succeeds in spite of itself because it is Chinese!! Google shoils have spent a couple of hundred bucks taking to my students who make it really simple to understand: “Baidu has what we need” (mp3 downloads, Chinese language games…) in Chinese without forcing students to dig through the rubble of hard to grasp Google info in English. They don’t care that most of the top ten slots in Baidu are paid ads and are not highlighted as such. And they don’t care that the results may be censored or politically skewed. Google’s honesty policy (clear marking of ads) gets lost in translation. Everything is for sale in China and students and netizens here know it and accept it: you buy everything, cyberspace included, with money, guanxi (relational advantage), or political favors.
“Most of the website’s incoming traffic comes from search engine queries, so Google is extremely important for any site out there that’s interested in getting traffic, and the Internet is full of SEO experts and advice on how to help Google better understand your site, hopefully resulting in higher Google rankings and increased incoming traffic.”
About 95% of SEO companies that I queried in China use Google adwords to get you on the first page of a search engine listing. They know little else beyond that. Because Chinese businesses are not Internet savvy they buy into appearances. Looks are inordinately important here in everything: food, physical attractiveness, website bells and whistles (makes SEO harder that they adore flash heavy sites) and where their site appears. It does not matter to them that you can show them statistics proving only 20% or less of visitors come from the right (paid) side of a search bar.
“Baidu’s dominance in the enormous Chinese online market holds a whole new world of challenges and opportunities for websites. Asking online-colleagues and browsing through the Internet it’s quite surprising how little information is available on the topic in English. Most western SEO professionals I know assume that Baidu’s behavior is just the same as Google’s, but I always felt that’s just the easy response and probably far from the actual truth. I had a chance to rethink this subject when discussing “English Taiwan : The websphere, the blogosphere, traffic, SEO and the need for a profound change” and the lacking connection between the Chinese and English bloggers and blog readers in Taiwan and China. ”
What I am hoping is that this becomes a running discussion between Mark, Fili’s world Gemme, Alex , and OMBW. we all have different strengths and could stimulate a lot of learning and dialogue.
“Content : Baidu is extremely sensitive to some information, so totally avoid mentioning or writing adult content, pornography, or Chinese government forbidden keywords. Having any of those will not only affect the page the content is on but also the entire website.”
My site has been blocked 6/10 times I have checked it this month. I am extraordinarily pro-China, but I cannot seem to always fly under the censor’s radar.
Content description : Naturally, optimize your page title, your headings and keyword density in pages (5-8%), same as Google.
Check your tags with free, simple tools like Submit Express. They will let you know what you need to change and where. Type in my website address for your first analysis as we will use it as a learning tool. This service will also tell you keyword density and frequency (I will do a whole post on that later) and even highlight any negative issues with your outbound links.
Use Chinese words in your title and description tags, but check the length of encoded symbols so you do not exceed acceptable limits. Avoid using the name of your blog or website in the title and description tags unless there is a good reason. Once you are a branded name like Amazon, Boing Boing or (god forbid!) Perez Hilton, and people are actually coming to your site, you can always add it in.
Note that you can always add title and desription tags in your header that are different than what appears on say a wordpress blog. Check out the source code on my site and you will see that it does not match the description (tagline) generated by wordpress.
Google tends to see the title as most important for the engines and the desciption as part of your content while Yahoo and MSN give more weight to the description tag. As an example: I rank higher for the term American Professor (#1 out of 100,000,00 or so…) and lower for SEO CHINA in Google. I am only #25 in Yahoo! for Ameican Professor and #11 for China SEO. In MSN I am in the top 6 for both terms. If this was a blog meant to supplement my income I would need to alter my tags accordingly as American Professors are a dime a dozen (Sorry Chris) while good SEO specialists in China are harder to come by…
“Links : Anchor-texts for incoming links are, like in Google’s case, a very important SEO factor, but it seems Baidu attributes a little more importance to internal anchor-texts. Note that unlike Google, Baidu still doesn’t have a very advanced authority mechanism, so there’s less importance to where your anchor-text is coming from, and you can imagine the consequences of this.”
Ask your friends to place links to your sites, stories and pictures using relevant keywords. The bestest, smartest, and handsomest seo specialist in China is just fine for me, OK? Nothing elaborate.
Make sure for paid text ads that your key words are in the links if possible. And remember that Google, Yahoo! and MSN give extra points for ads on monster sites like theirs. Imagine that: you get more juice by paying the big boys for links…
Jump on the fact that Baidu doesn’t give extra credit to powerful sites because it will not hurt you in the other engines.
Watch your outgoing links carefully: If you looked at my site report in submit express you saw that I have too many outgoing links:
“This page contains too many URLs.
This tag contains 561 urls. Some Search Engines have problems with more than 100 urls on a page. ”
Blogs are always going to read out worse than conventional websites, but be a bit more careful than me. And try to minimize outgoing links to extremely weak sites, or sites that do not return links to you unless you have a good reason to do it. I generally repay sites that link to me in some way: I either add a blogroll link to sites I like or mention them in a post. If you do the same remember that some engines/sites with ranking systems give more power to front page links than buried links and more power to links in posts than to links on blogrolls.
As a rule I don’t give the time of day to sites that are overly stingy about links or credit sharing on their sites. I do have a few listings on my blogroll of sites that may never repay the nod, but they are important reads and should be tauted. But, don’t give away your power to the sites that don’t warrant it via content or elitist attitude just because you think you have to or operate under the illusion that they will one day abandon their ego.
My attitude is simple: we are in this together. Promote the valuable sites and help your friends, big or small, as much as you can without serious injury.
I am only 1/3 through Fili’s article. More soon…
Added Note on the Body Language post:
I showed this in class to non-English majors and they loved it…It provided great entertainment and a jumping-off place for discussion on “authentic” body language issues…
17 responses so far
That was a great SEO article. I have already added some Chinese characters to my blog title. I had my Chinese wife help me pick out the proper words. (Which is kind of funny if you know my site.)
I did have one small question. How do you get Baidu to list you if you aren’t in China? Is there a URL submission form on their site? If there is, I didn’t see it.
Anyway, thanks again for the great SEO tips.
As an investor, I’m very interested in Baidu. I’m not sure I’ll have much to contribute to this discussion that you want me in, though.
The reason is simply that I have very little interest in SEO. I’m definitely more about substance than style. I’d rather focus on improving the actual quality of my writing rather than a search engine’s perception of its quality. I may write something about this topic on my blog, though.
Hey, no fair! I thought my value was up to a least 50 cents for two!
Chris.
A great start (but how do I find fiLi’s post? 😉
Gemme’s post (http://www.searchenginejournal.com/last-weeks-in-china-chinese-seo-baidu-in-japan-yahoo-search-and-blocked-blogs/4631/) is also a wonderful reference on this topic.
I don’t care much for outgoing link Mojo, but most of the recommendations of that tool are pretty good. I think it’s important that China/Taiwan blogs learn more about making their sites SEO friendly, so that the Chinese/Taiwanese blogosphere will get the needed boost in SE rankings (and it appears that content, as great as it may be, just doesn’t do it).
Which brings up the obvious question – There is alot that you can do to improve your blog’s SE friendliness (metatags, URL structure, internal linking, duplicate content, etc. etc. etc.), why not implement this on your own blog?
Mark,
I tried to get to your site but couldn’t. Style is important. The old maxim is: Content is King. But, you can have the best bottle of wine in Fishlips, Ontario, but you won’t sell it if no one sees it. No one is suggesting tricks to fool the engines– though these techniques can be used that way–rather I am recommending that you make sure that your content is readable by the engines….Please weigh in anytime…
*****************
I fixed it Fili…Oops…
**************
John,
Thanks! Fili’s blog has the submission URL on it ( http://www.baidu.com/search/url_submit.html) and I will be speaking to that soonish…
Umm, just checked Mark and your server is blocked by our server here…Not sure why…
I searched your site in other way: Google only has one page indexed for you and submit express shows your title tag is too long and you have no description tag, no author tag, and no keywords tag. You have no incoming links from Google or MSN and your Google page rank is a 0/10. You had better be the next Hemmingway if you want the writing alone to bring in more readers….
OMBW
This is great info! I always love reading your blog, Prof. Excellent research goes into your posts – but then why should we expect anything less from the APinC?! I’m wondering, using WP, how do you add description/keyword/robot metatags to posts? Thanks for keeping us informed and entertained…
Mark,
I finally got to a computer that would access your site. You are indeed blockled here. It is likely because you are from Taiwan.
I normally go out of my way to support other bloggers and causes and don’t attack folks on this site. I wil make an exception in your case following your banal, ill-informed, mean-spirited post on SEO wherein you attacked me and Fili: /2007/greedy-superficial-bloggers-obsess-over-seo/
You signed your name on MY post , not with toshuo.com, but with /c/investing/. That wasn’t an attempt to drive traffic there, was it? Why the insulting title on your post? was that a way to get people to click for more as they have to do on all your posts? It is an easy way to generate hits.
THAT URL has one page indexed on Google and has NO Google page rank.
Your main site lacks, as does the investor page, meta tags for:description, author, keywords and more….You need a refresher geek class…
As for your top placement words. Here is the Wordtracker data on how many DAILY searches are done each day for each word:
modawai 0
pinyin tone tool 0
taiwan geek 0
buxiban curriculum 0
chinese textbook reviews 0
As for your unpopular locale:
taiwan 20564
China 60,000
Per-capita you have the edge.
As for Google page rank: There may be a little or no difference between a 4 and a 5/10 ranking. A five does not mean that you have anything more valuable than Fili (FYI: you are a 4/10)…The page rank algorithm differs from the actual Search Engine placement algorithm. Onemanbandwidth.com is not a site, just a portal and it has a rank of 3/10. add the /wordpress to it and it and it is a 5. Don’t intentionally misrepresent me to your readers.
This blog was meant to be a place for me to muse, rant, praise, heckle and cheer China. It was also meant to be an experiment in SEO. You see, I teach SEO/SEM at a University in addition to English. I use the blog IN CLASS to have fun and demonstrate tecniques that I hope will one day lead to career enhancement for my students and to occasionally inform, as best I can, on issues affecting even you folks with the missles pointed at you. I also hope it helps newcomers bring traffic to worthy sites and then keep them there. I am no blogging version of Mother Theresa, but I try to help where I can.
This blog was never meant to monetized and I do not optimize it to that end. Unlike you, I don’t profit from Google Adwords. I boycotted adwords to protest Google’s stance on censorhip in China and only recently eased up. ALL ad monies generated on this site (and it sadly ain’t grand dough) go to help victims of cancer in China. To date several students and community women have recieved several hundred dollars toward needed treatment otherwise unaffordable.
I also donate my SEO time to dozens (DOZENS) of organizations and individuals who deserve more traffic and a bigger forum for what they do. The then all-volunteer Blogger News Network is #1 out of over 100 million sites for real search terms like: “Blogger News” …. And I have done similar things for animal protection, literacy, and start-up businesses. And if those people moetize and profit from SEO so what? Why do you invest?
If you are not interested in traffic, what the hell are you writing a blog for anyway? SEO brings in traffic and good writing and information keeps it coming. I try for the former and strive for the latter.
BTW, I already said it on my site, and I’ll say it again here- it sounds like you’re doing very admirable volunteer work, and I respect that. Please don’t take my personal lack of interest in marketing as a personal attack on you or Fili.
Great post & Reply!
thanx
Came to this site through Mark’s blog, which has never been blocked for me in either Beijing or Shanghai. Your bad experiences might simply be due to your using an academic network – censorship is much stricter in schools than through commercial Internet providers. Censorship is a blunt tool and I doubt anyone cares how pro or anti-anything people are about anything.
I personally think SEO is overrated in the blog space, but that’s probably because I find blogs more through links and discussions than by searching for them. On an unrelated note, my experience with Chinese search is that Baidu has its tieba and music downloads, but that Google has better search. Google can’t compete with Baidu in pirating content, so it isn’t exactly a level playing field.
Wow, this has quickly gone from SEO how-to into cross-strait tension!
In my various hats in the China blogsphere I’ve had contact with all mentioned here (Lonnie, Mark, fiLi, Gemme and Alex), and each of you have always come across as really level-headed and nice people… sooo… before this becomes a “he said, ta shuo guo” moment, lets take a step back and realize a few of things:
1) Writing is why we all have blogs. Writing about teaching, writing about China, writing about finance, writing about SEO… it’s all writing.
2) Writing online is for reading.
3) Reading is done by people.
4) People use search engines.
5) Making sure your writing/site is optimized for that indexing is just smart.
6) Having a discussion about it with people who know about it is valuable for everyone – intensive use, or casual use.
I just want you two (Lonnie/Mark) to understand you’re both talking about the same thing and maybe put some cold water on things.
I’ve seen site stats used in various ways, but this is the first time I’ve seen them used as a way to fling insult. Kudos.
(cross-commented at onemanbandwidth and tushuo)
I asked several other people in China about my site being blocked and they all said it wasn’t. Ironically enough, it’s completely down as of 30 minutes ago. Not only that, but so is Dreamhost’s main page. Yikes!
I agree with Travelyan about Baidu. Their search isn’t their biggest draw. The music is very big, and from a business standpoint, the partnerships they’ve been making with other companies is very important.
That’s not to say their search should be disregarded, though. It’s definitely improving, and they’ve even opened up a beta site for Japanese search.
Our school server has blocked you….It has a very strict net nanny that does not seem to like Taiwan….
Little do they know I could start posting separationist propaganda in your comments at any time.
There is a good deal or all of wordpress.com that is blocked by the Great Firewall of China.
About SEO…
Creating good content is key.
That is how I started blogging.
A lot of bloggers would like to do nothing but blogging.
Using SEO and the tools for monetizing a blog is necessary.
Some bloggers do very well, others try to find their niche market.
There was a point where I was really trying hard to monetize my blog. But since I moved to Taiwan, I am taking another approach.
Part of it is moving my blog to a hosted service, which I did in February.
Seriously, everybody should take a step back and relax a bit.
There is no need for getting all upset about the matter.
We all have our own opinions, and most of the time they are different.
And, bloggers take different approaches in resolving the problems that they face. Most solutions are different.
Promoting the Chinese / Taiwanese blogospheres: a personal SEO study-case…
During March earlier this year, I discussed using SEO as means to promote the Taiwanese blogosphere in "English Taiwan : The websphere, the blogosphere, traffic, SEO and the need for a profound change". I got mixed responses – few suppor…