A website for China - SEO & Marketing
-
I want to launch a website in China and have read that the best way forward for Baidu SEO is to host the site in China itself - does anyone have experience with doing that?
It seems there are a few hoops to jump through, but I imagine I'm not the first to try?
-
Yes, you're right. The best way is to host website in China on a CN domain. Hong Kong counts as well. Taiwan doesn't.
According to Search Engine Land: "Aside from preferring Chinese domains, Baidu also prefers websites to be hosted in China. This will also help improve page load speed."
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Hosted content vs Dedicated website (for large piece of content)
There is one question that keep bugging us and for which we are looking for a logical answer – to put it short, in which context(s) is it preferable to publish original content on a company website vs on a dedicated external platform with its own URL? To give a little more details: we an education company that provides languages course abroad and that functions like a specialised travel agency. Each trip is very specific – it depends on people's language level, objectives, budget, etc. – so we provide tailor-made advice for each of our students. Our site is not an e-commerce site, and a typical call-to-action is a request for a 1-to-1 interview with one of our agents, or a quote request for a language trip project. The top conversion for us is an enrolment for a language course abroad. We have a corporate websites structure where we have 1 website per locale where we operate, which means 14 websites in 7 different languages. We produce smaller pieces of content for these websites in a dedicated section – the rest of the website being mostly a presentation of our products, services and destinations – but here we intend to create a very large Quiz which will be based on multiple audio files. The content will be translated into multiple languages (likely 10 different languages) and will require some rather heavy development. We intend to add sections for scoreboards, stats, a log-in section (probably Facebook), etc. This sounds to us like something we should host on a specific URL, but then how can we make the most of the SEO benefits that we will (hopefully) get with such content? We plan to have an about section where we explain a little bit who we are, where we will probably link back to our corporate websites, but of course we want our project to live for itself and to be as far from commercial as possible – while still making the most of the SEO benefits. How can we do this in the most subtle / logical way? Would it be better to host our Quiz on our corporate domains? Thanks in advance for your advice. Maëlle
Branding | | ESL_Education0 -
Brand Name Cratering - possible N-SEO or Black Hat Attacks
Hello to the Moz Community, Let me start by saying, we are not an SEO company. We are the in-house agency for our parent corp, and the 7 companies in their portfolio. We manage their PPC and other digital items. None of the companies use an SEO company. Their "SEO strategy" is to not have one. They internally post on their own Social Media account, their own Blog, and send out their own Press Releases (which we help write the copy sometimes). One of the accounts encountered a very bizarre, and serious ranking problem around Dec 25th-30th. In the past when you Googled the company's brand name you would get 5-6 pages of internal content show up at the very Top of the results. Pages like Home Page, Blog Home, Contact Us, About Us, Client Reviews Page, etc. (core pages). There were then several other non core pages that would show up in the Top 20 results (my recollection is they controlled about 12-14 of the Top 20 results for the brand name). Unfortunately, around Dec. 25th this all cratered. And the only internal page that would display when you Googled the brand name was the Home Page (totally gone; even checking 100 rankings deep). So the question we have spend weeks trying to figure out is, what in the heck happened? We got together with the company to find out any and all possible changes or things could of happened since the first of December, which could have contributed to this cratering. Here is what we found: #1 The company made an acquisition of a smaller competitor in 2014. Around Dec. 10th they sent out a great press release announcing the acquisition. Since the press release was involving someone in the TV/radio advertising agency industry it was very popular (the best release they ever put out). The release was picked up by over 100 high page rank local TV stations, all across the U.S. (along with the normal companies that pick up online releases). The headline of the release was "Brand Name Reviews Assets of TV Ad Agency Competitor." Most of the stations that picked it up placed "Do not follow" links, but it was still an amazingly successful release. #2 Around Dec. 15th this 8 year old company received their first negative "client review." The review was not from a real client though, it was posted on Rip-Off report by a fake client, the Internet Mafia (reputation management co.) or a former employee/contractor. The posting was deliberately optimized. The URL and the Title Tag contained all sort of words like "Reviews" "Complaints" the "Domain Name," and the Company Brand Name (whoever did it, knew what they were doing). #3 Towards the end of December and into January the company received 6-8 bizarre root domain links. The links show to of come from domains that were just registered in November/December. Yet the domain name was already voluntarily forfeited by the beginning of January. Google Webmaster Tools is still showing the links, but when you go to the domain "all it shows is "cannot be found." WHOIS has screenshots of all of them though. Here is one: http://www.domaintools.com/research/screenshot-history/lizardeyephoto.com/ The domains themselves had nothing to do with the type of business this client account operates in, but the information after the / contained partial pieces of the company brand name. Here is an example: http://www.martygraveyard.com/buying-inexpensive-vehicles-at-on-line-community-automobile-auctions/ I personally don't think 6-8 new root domains could crater a website with 290 root domains (and 1500 links), but maybe those domains/sites are somehow "cloaked;" and they are actually showing bad information to the bots/spiders, but us humans can't see it? I honestly am not educated enough on the subject to know... #4 In mid January, three of the brand name pages returned: Home Page, About Us, Blog Home. However, the other pages are nowhere to be found. The companies Contact Us page, Client Reviews page (which used to rank 2nd), and all of the other Top 20 pages are totally gone. They are still indexed if you do a "site:brandname.com" search, but they won't show up when you Google the brand name. #5 Search results are almost identical with Bing and Google. So, here is the million dollar question: was our client's Brand Name deliberately attacked via an N-SEO Black Hat attack, in an effort to get it their internal pages to drop out of the rankings? Or did Google and Bing incorrectly issue some sort of partial penalty on certain pages due to the amazing success (and them believing it was some sort of link buying scheme) of the Press Release that was sent out at the beginning of December? If you read to the bottom of this, I am grateful for you doing so. Thanks in advance for anyone who tries to help us and our in-house client. Jake
Branding | | SBIM-Jake0 -
Getting Traffic to a New Website - Looking for Ideas
I am working with a company that is launching a brand new website (for a new business they are creating). I am wondering what things people have done to try to start building traffic and/or awareness for the site.
Branding | | TopFloor0 -
Product expansion on website. Best practices for Retargeting Interior Pages with a high concern for brand.
For the past year, I've worked on a website that offered one product (Product 1). The homepage targeted both branded terms and the highest volume keywords for the one product. We've built a lot of strong links to the homepage using the natural variations of the targeted Keywords & the homepage ranks very well for these terms. The brand is now expanding its offerings to two products (Product 1 & 2). Thus necessitating the creation of two product subpages. I'm not concerned about ranking of Product 2's page, only Product 1. From a branding perspective, the homepage URL works wonderfully for the expanded offerings. And from an SEO perspective, offering two products allows me to target a very high volume group of keywords on the homepage that now makes more sense given the offerings. This new group of keywords will make even more sense if brand is able to roll out a 3rd product. The profitability of Product 1 & 2 are about the same. The profitability of potential product 3 is far greater 1+2 combined. Product 3 also has the most natural correlation with the group of KWs I plan to target on the homepage, i.e., I care more about the ranking of the homepage once Product 3 has launched. Product 3 will have its own interior product page as there is plenty of search volume for KWs specific to this product. I'm worried about hurting the rankings of the old product and URL confusion between the homepage & the to-be-created Product 1 page. I don't see myself having a lot of options. Options 301 - It does not make sense to 301 redirect the homepage to the Product 1 interior page. The homepage URL has strong branding and will be used in future marketing. I do not believe that I value the maintaining the rankings of Product 1 enough to push for making the new homepage example.com/home or similar to allow for the 301 redirect. Canonical - The content of the homepage will be changing, thus a rel=canonical to the Product 1 page does not make sense, nor does it make sense from a ranking perspective as I also want the homepage to rank for the new set of KWs I will be targeting The only real option I see is attempting to reach out to strong back links with Product 1 anchor text (or context) & asking them the switch the URL to the Product 1 interior page. Combine this with proper site-wide internal linking to the new Product 1 interior page & an anchor text link on the homepage to the new Product 1 interior page. Am I missing something? Am I dismissing either one of the above options too easily. Am I over-thinking this (yes probably)? Would love another set of eyes on this.
Branding | | 2uinc0 -
Naming a brand & domain
Hi Experts, We are selecting a brand name and domain for a new ecommerce website. The major keyword in this industry is lets assume xyz. It is by far the most searched keyword in this industry, but it just sounds horrible for branding purposes. For SEO purposes how important is it to keep that keyword in the domain / brand name? can we make up for the lack of that keyword in the domain / brand name if we decide to pick a brand name that does not have xyz in it? Thanks for the help 🙂
Branding | | TVape0 -
Do you think my simple design website reflects my product better or worse?
Its been suggested my holiday cottage letting website maybe could do with a professional polish up and maybe restructure and navigation and if it would improve bookings I wouldn't hesitate. My only thought pattern is that this particular website is certainly not high-tech (this website was designed by me in Dreamweaver) I have a great guy working for me which is much better web design than me and technically more capable of producing a professional standard website, but with this new sideline I'm presently a small home-based company currently only letting eight old cottages. My thinking was keep the website simple, personal and homely for the moment. http://www.endeavourcottage.co.uk/ The website tends to be competing against large agencies which have often hundreds of properties on their books and you have to go through their filtering system to find the small number of properties that might be of interest. I can see that if I was selling large quantities of electrical equipment or something similar you just in a very polished well-designed website. The feedback I get from customers is that like the website and they like to know they can get hold of the person behind it. Which direction would you go? polished professional company styled WordPress website or simple design website with lots of pictures and descriptions. If I ever hit the big time and have hundreds of cottages I would have to join the design and more complicated navigation of the other agencies websites but whilst I’m small maybe not? Thanks for reading Alan
Branding | | whitbycottages0 -
Why does Tripadvisor rank higher than official hotel website?
Hello, I am trying to figure out why Tripadvisor is ranking higher for "Royal Lahaina Resort" than our official site RoyalLahaina.com website. Could any of you help here. It is confusing because our RoyalKona.com and our HawaiiHotels.com (Hotel Chain Group) ranks 1st but for one of the hotels it comes in second to trip advisor. Please help!
Branding | | TSpike10 -
Anybody use Twibbon to promote a website/cause/event?
I stumbled across Twibbon today - it's a service that basically creates an easy way for you to brand your Twitter/Facebook pictures, and to allow others to promote your cause as well. I'm not sure if I'm late to get on board here or if this is a relatively new thing, but it seems pretty cool. I can definitely see this really working out for promoting philanthropic causes. It would also work really well for events - imagine if every speaker at an SEO conference used Twibbon to brand their Twitter/Facebook? I think it would really help with branding, for both individuals and businesses.
Branding | | AnthonyMangia1