FAQ
These most common questions from our clients in the past years have been kept periodically, which may also be your consideration when thinking about your online marketing in China. 
About SEO & PPC 1, I’m a bit worried about your SEO as our site keeps being adjusted frequently these days. How can you handle with that? You’re right. SEO job may be confused while website changes as always. However, a good SEO should be aligned with a site wherever it moves on. To make things easy for your understanding of SEO, we list the values of our SEO here as followings,
- SEO is an annual service, helping your website optimized continuously for China search engine marketing in the period, no matter your site changes. In fact, some professional advises will be given if necessary when site being adjusted greatly.
- SEO is a necessary job for your web marketing, improving the performance of your site with those major search engines in China in long term. It’s not just page optimization, but establishment of solid, relative, qualified outbound links as well.
- SEO is for both search engines and human beings. Some copywriting will be involved to drive targeted traffic to sales leads, as we all realize that the amount of effective sales leads is the one KPI (key Performance Indexing) of the project. PPC campaign is a half way for leads collection and may waste your money if your site itself has poor capacity of conversion.
- SEO is a defined job for site modification by keeping your site as usual including the layout, style sheet, image, existing presentation, etc.
2, Why should I need to hire a professional website content copywriting? Online copywriting is a special subset of writing that combines writing skill with the ability to use search engine optimization parameters.
- Technical aptitude for building web sites and the ability to write web site content rarely occur in the same person.
- Professional web site content copywriters bring a fresh approach. Online copywriters look at your business from a prospect or customer’s point of view.
- A search engine optimization copywriter concentrates on selling your products and services.
- An experienced web page content writer adds credibility and a look of professionalism to your web site.
- A search engine optimization copywriter enhances traffic which generates sales which increases revenues
3, How long does it take to get active online? Baidu and registration paperwork takes 2-3 weeks, once your Chinese pages are up and viewable online. The pages and content copy are assessed by China regulators before your PPC account is approved. China SEO assists with all paperwork and SE applications. 4, Must we spend SEM/PPC? No. It is the client’s own sales and marketing goals, and, level of market competition that decide when to engage in a active spend campaign. It varies across industry sector but approximately half of our clients are engaging in SEO with PPC whilst the others are quite happy with ongoing SEO. For newcomers to China, then some SEM/PPC allocation is recommended however to help assist gain some “market traction” and raise brand awareness. 5, Are there minimum SEM or PPC amounts required on Baidu? Is there a minimum activation period or time required? No and No. The only minimum amounts are the account set up fees and SE set minimum credit deposits paid to open your SE account. If your company already has a Google PPC account you can transfer and we can use that credit with Google HK, Baidu will require your own unique account opened and clients have the option to pay Baidu directly or via QiYang. Once deposited your account is registered and active and you then have up to 12 months to utilize your minimum credits. SEM/PPC campaigns can and often are switched on or off as the market moves. Good SEO managers react with the market accordingly. 6, What is your SEM/PPC Campaign Management service? Our manages client SEM/PPC spending according to KPIs and with account teams tracking and reacting to market volatility. As Key Word pricing is set by daily market, it is not uncommon to see PPC pricing move -/+ 500% over 30 days for certain “hot” key words and phrases. We works closely with clients accounts to ensure the most effective ROI for their spend. For example: the key word “澳洲地产投资” “Australia Property Investment” the average PPC price paid on Baidu in September 2012 was 68 cents $USD, per click through. In October the market heated-up and the average PPC price paid was $2.09 USD, per click through. This was an increase of 207% in (just) 30 days, so professional KPI driven PPC management is required in order to ensure best ROI over the campaign period. Your account manager will track and follow the market on your behalf, and engage or pause campaigns according to your set KPIs. Thereby ensuring SEM/PPC spend is not “wasted” but spent when and how the client needs it and according to set KPIs and fit client campaign budgets. We already have Google and Yahoo SEO and accounts, does that help in China? Yes, there is some value in Google SEO. But, it is relative compared to Baidu. Baidu the number 1 currently has between 75-78% of daily search queries in China. Google.com.hk (Hong Kong) is 2nd with 14% of daily search queries. Yahoo.com is way back ranked 26th (All Alexa rankings August 4 2012). What audience is important to you depends what SEO and PPC budget to allocate. For all clients we recommend to open a Baidu account also. 7, What are the costs to expect? Cost is relative to how important is the web to your business, and, just as importantly, to your competition. If you competitor is active in SEO and you rely on the web for part of your business, then they are setting the benchmark for you. For example: a small luxury, niche hotel or, OEM producer will spend $12-16K per year on SEO. A large hotel chain or, highly active brand can spend $20-30K per month on SEO. 8, Why do I need SEO? Highly competitive web businesses such as e-commerce, tourism and online booking portals, universities and education providers, FMCG brand, OEM high techs, financial, investment, real estate and legal sectors are all active in SEO. It is relative to how important it is for you to be found online. It can depend on a number of factors: How important is web traffic to your business? Competition matters. How much weekly and monthly competition there is for your top Key Words and Phrases. (It may be a little, or, it may be a lot). Bid prices go up and down throughout the year, hot words and phrases rise and fall. How Search Engine friendly, designed and engineered is your web page? PPC strategy, calendar and campaigns. You might want to drive up traffic for one quarter then conserve PPC for a seasonal campaign. On a scale of 1-10, for your target market what level of brand awareness do you have in China? Those with high brand awareness can focus PPC on seasonal campaigns. Those with low awareness will need to get active and invest SEO to gain and hold new market share. How long does it take? 3 months to see any trackable, reliable gains in traffic results. 6 months to gain solid momentum and “brand traction.” 12 months to gain and retain brand awareness and constant “search market share.” 9, How do you choose the best keywords? The first step in our SEO campaign is to develop your Keywords Profile through Keywords analysis. Based on your initial input, we will use a combination of experience and technics to generate a list of the most effective and well-searched keywords in your industry. We then work together to refine this list and compile the list of keywords and phrases that will be most beneficial to your product or services. You know your business and we know ours. We know how important it is to work together to generate the most effective Keyword Profile possible. 10, Will you need to access our web server? Yes, we will need access to your web server in order to upload and periodically update pages. We do our best to keep you informed every time we do an upload or make a change. It is vital that anyone else who may be making changes to your site stays current with the optimized pages we provide. 11, Do you have to make changes to our site? While many of the changes made to your site are done behind the scenes in the source code, it may be necessary to make certain minor changes to your site’s copy or layout. In most cases, these changes are minimal. We post all changes made to the front end of your site to our test server for your approval before we go live with the changes. 12, Can I see how my competitors are ranking for my targeted keywords? Our company can provide you Site Competing Analysis, Keyword Analysis and Monthly Ranking Reports services. They can offers you up to several competitor sites to be included such as the site ranking 1,5,10,20 etc., so you can compare at a glance how you are ranking in comparison to them for the same search terms. 13, What’s the right time for me to start a search engine marketing campaign in China? No time like the present! Firstly, with nearly 300 million people using the internet in China, and therefore more than 200 million of them using major search engines, the potential Web audience is so large that a strategic approach to capturing your share of that market is critical. Obtaining higher rankings in the major search engines is one of the most effective marketing tools you can implement in today’s online world. Secondly, we usually establish 12-month campaigns. There is an enormous amount of education, research, analysis, technical programming, and testing performed in the first 3 months in particular. 14, Can you guarantee a number 1 position in the search engines? Nobody can guarantee a number 1 position or specific ranking for your site for a given keyword or phrase in the organic search engine results. There are simply too many factors beyond anyone’s control – the search engines changing their ranking algorithms and rules, efforts made by competitors, and new sites being added to the Web. 15, How often do you resubmit my site to search engines? If your site is search engine compatible and optimized correctly, regular resubmission to engines is generally unnecessary although we find that monthly submissions to some search engines assists in maintaining rankings. Our ranking reports and maintenance checks keep track of your site every four weeks. If your site is already ranking highly, there is no need to resubmit it. However if any engines have lowered or dropped your site altogether (as can happen from time to time), it will be resubmitted to those engines. If an engine has dropped your rankings considerably since last report, it is time to tweak your META tags or check the optimized pages for any problems. This is included as part of your Monthly Site Ranking Management Service. Search engines will generally pick up the changes during their next edit and re-rank the site accordingly. Resubmission is usually only necessary if your site has undergone major content changes. 16, How often will I receive search engine ranking reports? We send out search engine ranking reports monthly to our clients. 17, How will I know if my business increases as a result of top rankings? Our monthly tracking report can help you to track the effectiveness of your campaign. By the end of the first twelve months, you will get an analysis of your activity at the end of the campaign as compared to the baseline established at the beginning of the campaign. 18, What can we do if the core keywords are banned in PPC in China? This happens in China, if you touch gambling or sexual games in PPC activity. By keywords analysis, some of relevant keywords or similar keywords will be advised for your consideration. Another clue is to follow potentials activity and figure out those keywords related to their online behaviors. This is indirectly targeting but works somewhat in the particular situation. 19, How long does it take to launch paid search accounts? Once all paperwork is in place, we can usually launch paid search advertising within three weeks. 20, How long will it take to receive results? Once the accounts are created and activated, traffic should be received by the website within hours, if not minutes. Generally, traffic will ramp up over the first few days of the campaign. 21, What is search engine 0ptimization or SEO? SEO, Search Engine Optimization, is the process of improving the volume and quality of traffic to a web site from search engines via “natural” (“organic” or “algorithmic”) search results. 22, How can search engine optimization impact my business? The goal of effective search engine optimization is not just adding traffic – it’s about growing your online business by reaching qualified consumers of your products and services. With about 298 million people using the Internet and about 200 million people using search engines in China, the potential online audience is so large for businesses that a strategic and sustainable approach to capturing that market is vital. 23, How does SEO compare to my other marketing investments? Companies continually re-evaluate the effectiveness of their marketing programs against changing buying patterns, but never before has there been such a rapid and intense change as the onset of the Internet. Search engine optimization is still relatively new and within the past five years, only the largest and most aggressive companies have rated it into their strategic marketing plans. Today, the science of search engine optimization is becoming an integral and dominant aspect of any company doing business online. Given the size of the potential market available via the Internet and the ability to instantly reach potential customers anywhere in the world, at any time, search engines has leaped ahead to become a critical marketing tool. No longer can companies ignore its effectiveness if done strategically, and done right. 24, What’s the best SEO tool? The main tools in SEO world fall to 3 sections, keywords selection, on-page optimization and link building. Nowadays, much more get involved, as for SEO analyzing, SEO performance. SEO itself is just a tool to comply with marketing strategy, to serve for business objectives. 25, Does Baidu Webmaster Tool have same equivalent function to send email if crawling activity has problem in a way as Google Webmaster Tool does? Baidu has its feature to enable you set notification via mobile, email, QQ and WeChat. Generally, it’s enough to watch Google Webmaster Tool, as in most cases these 2 giants would tell you the same problems. However, better do both checking, as Baidu Webmaster is an eye within great fire wall. About Landing Page 1, What is a “Landing Page”? A Landing Page (LP) is a web page specifically designed and SEO engineered to be the best “traffic catcher.” LPs are highly Search Engine friendly, and are designed to attract search-bot attention and increase your hits. We like to use the example of a sporting stadium, where a few people have “super-flags” that are 10x larger than those in the rest of the crowd. These flags can be seen from all around the ground, and really stand out from the other supporters. These “super flags” are the equivalent of a LP on the internet. They are built to attract attention, to be found and viewed and direct traffic through to your main web pages. 2, What’s the difference between landing page and home page? And why do we need a land page? According to Wiki, a landing page, sometimes known as a “lead capture page” or a “lander”, is a single web page that appears in response to clicking on a search engine optimized search result or an online advertisement. The landing page will usually display directed sales copy that is a logical extension of the advertisement, search result or link. Landing pages are often linked to from social media, email campaigns or search engine marketing campaigns in order to enhance the effectiveness of the advertisements. The general goal of a landing page is to convert site visitors into sales leads. A home page, or main/front page is a page on a website, whose main purpose is to guide visitors to specific page within website. In a word, landing page is a sales copy for leads generation while home page acts as a site guider. About Social Media 1, There are so many social media sites, which one is the best? There is no best in the social media world. You have to be with your customers wherever they are. 2, What’s the difference between Weibo and Weixin? Weibo(Micro Blog) is a computer and smart phone based blog system (like twitter). There are many companies providing the Weibo service, such as Sina, Tencent, Sohu, 163, etc. User often posts about their daily life, emotion and gossip. Also it can be used to share news, comments about certain events, industry, sports and technology and network online networking. Weixin(WeChat) is a smart phone app own by Tencent(QQ) which has been wildly used in China. Similar to Weibo, it can be used to post moments and news too, but users mainly use it to chat/ group chat. Additional, unlike Weibo, Weixin is the only app of its kind in China. For detail visit: http://www.wechat.com/en/ 3, As part of the services we offer, Should we suggest profiles in the Chinese social networks such as Weibo? We can conduct a list of those social media sites as recommended, but we advise to run a market research on how their competitors are doing on current China web, not only social media but SEO/PPC, and others. With the report, I’m sure they will have good picture of the current market and what good strategy they can apply in the market. 4, Does Weibo have any statistics data for its performance rating? Yes, Sina Weibo do have a strong background data support for its enterprise version. Where user can keep track on market trends, Weibo’s influence, traffic and fans analysis. About Language & Translation 1, Does Google Translate work well in Chinese? Viewers will see instantly that you are using translation software and rather than reading past line 1 of garble they will generally click somewhere else. Actually for Google translate it’s strongly advised not to use it. Using translation software greatly confuses your message and can harm your brand image. Having quality Chinese shows the viewer your brand appreciates both Chinese culture and their business. To assist our international clients we provide quality translation services. 2, Does Baidu operate in English or other languages? No. We provides weekly/monthly translated metrics, data reports and analysis in English. About Domain and Hosting 1, Do we need a “.CN” domain/URL? Will it help to improve my rankings? By China law, only a China registered office can apply for a .CN domain. For search rankings it really does not matter. Once your domain and account is registered and your content is up and indexed you have the served search ranking values as local all domain addresses registered on the Search Engine (eg. Baidu). Chinese are quite used to viewing international URL addresses. Your local URL (eg. “yourbrand.com/cn” or “yourbrand.co.uk/cn”) shows viewers they are at the genuine pages of your site.