Dominate China!

www.dominatechina.com










































Table of contents

Introduction


Part I: The Chinese culture

Chinese Internet business laws
The Golden Shield Project
) Ip filtering
) DNS filtering/redirection
iii) Url filtering
iv) Packet filtering
v) Characteristics of banned websites



Part II: Internet Marketing Techniques for China

Chinese Seo keyword analysis and development
Keyword research
Getting a .cn domain name
Getting a Chinese ip
Option 2


Marketing on the top websites in China

Baidu
i) General Background Information
ii) Submitting your website to Baidu
iii) Visit the Baidu submission url
iv) Option 2
v) Building Chinese links
vi) Additional optimizing tip
Google China
Yahoo China
i) Yahoo directory
Msn China
Sina
i) Sign up for a blog on Sina
ii) Step one: visit the sign up url
iii) Step two: Fill in your profile details
Conclusion/Quick start program

Introduction

Since China opened her doors to the world in the late 1970s, it has
attracted so many foreign investors. This is not surprising since China is
known for its lower productive costs which equates to higher profits for
businesses. China is an astronomic economic powerhouse that keeps
gaining steam over the years. lt' s the United States biggest creditor and
is projected to be the leading economic powerhouse by 2025.

For over a decade China's gross domestic product (GDP) has continued to
grow. More and more of its countrymen have more money to spend and
are also using the internet more frequently.

With its rapidly growing economy and high numbers of professionals,
China's citizens on average have more money to spend. lt is estimated
that there are over 200 million middle class Chinese citizens, and that the
average Chinese savings rate is an outstanding 50%. This means that
there is a whole lot of money in China just waiting to be spent. So, the next
question is why don't they spend it on your products and services?

They may just do that if you position yourself correctly in the marketplace.
One cannot ignore the brute numbers of the Chinese. They have the
largest population in the world, which makes it a deluxe choice for
businesses to market to. With all of these attractive features it makes good
business sense to start implementing lnternet marketing campaigns
specifically for Chinese users. lts low cost and virtually risk free with huge
promises for potential returns. The best thing about it is that once you are
done implementing your campaign you can place a " Made ln China"
logo on your site :).







Part I: The Chinese cu|ture

lf you " Google" for images of China' s major cities such as Shanghai,
Beijing, Hong King, or Jinn, you may see a myriad of fancy cars, tall
skyscrapers, modern fast-as-bullets trains, exquisite restaurants, and
celebrity hotels.

On the contrary, if you Google ancient China, you may catch images that
reminds you of a perennial and beautiful culture. This may seem confusing
at first, but it' s really a combination of both. China modern cities look
very similar to the western ones, but this is not a good characterization of
the entire country. Most of China still maintains its ancient culture and it' s
good to know this so that you will understand how to communicate with
the Chinese web users more efficaciously, because communication is an
indispensable token of marketing.

ln addition, China is a very latitudinous and complex market. China's
market is considered the fastest changing one globally. ln the next section
l will introduce to you some laws and regulations that you should be aware
of while marketing in China.

lf you don't know some of these, then you may very well end up getting
your lnternet business blacklisted from China! Remember, you are
stepping into new territory so you cannot conduct your business the same
exact way that you would in your native country.


Chinese Internet business |aws

Before doing business in any country you should try to learn as much
about their rules, laws, and regulations. The best route you can take is by
employing a lawyer that specializes in that countries law. l am going to
inform you about a project in China that you should be aware of if you' re
serious about lnternet marketing there. The reason for this is because if
your website does not conform to certain guidelines then it may never be
accessible to your prospective Chinese customers!

The Go|den Shie|d Pro[ect

This is commonly referred to as the Great Firewall of China, and is a
censorship surveillance project that is controlled by the Ministry of Public
Security (MPS), and was started in 1998. A major feature of this service is
the ability to block certain ip addresses from being transmitted with the aid
of firewalls from the lnternet gateways.

This means that if your website contains content that is deemed
inappropriate, then it can be ostracized from being accessed in mainland
China. Below is some common censorship conventions carried out by the
Golden shield project:

i) ip fi|tering: ln this practice, the permission to allocate certain ip
addresses is denied. lf you use shared hosting then you are at a much
larger risk of being blocked because if one site on the server is blocked,
then all of the remaining websites hosted on the server will be blocked as
well. This type of filtering affects mainly TCP protocols such as http, ftp, or
pop.

ii) DNS fi|tering/redirection: With this blocking technique the domain name
simply does not resolve, or if it does it will return an incorrect ip address.
This technique blocks all ip protocols as well.

iii) Ur| fi|tering: this block certain uniform resource locator's (urls) based
solely on the keywords that are embedded within the url. This technique
doesn't take into account any other factors such as the origin of the url.

iv) Packet fi|tering: This is a technique that is used to implement secured
firewalls. When certain controversial keywords are detected, the tcp
packet transmission is terminated. ln this method, search engine results
are filtered.

v) Characteristics of banned websites

A lot of popular websites have become banned in China, and below l will
describe some common characteristics of those sites.

- Websites belonging to suppressed and outlawed groups such as those
headed by Falun Gong.

- Certain political media sources such as the Chinese version of BBC
News.

- Websites ascribing to Taiwanese government and media.

- Anything that the Chinese government labels as obscene or
pornographic.

- Websites that contains text about the Dalai Lama.

Typically, websites that are blocked tend to not be indexed by local
Chinese search engines which is why it is important to take measures to
prevent this from happening.















Part II: Internet Marketing Techniques for China


Chinese Seo keyword ana|ysis and deve|opment

Many lnternet marketers think that search engine optimization for Chinese
users is the same unequivocal process for English based sites. l
fractionally agree with this statement. Whether you' re doing business in
China, Japan, Denmark, Germany, Ethiopia, Tanzania, or the United
States, if a company is in business, then one of their ambitions is to make
a profit which is conducted through a transaction of some sort.

However, there will be some lucid idiosyncrasies because of the language
and culture differences. A similar thing can be said with regards to search
engine marketing. An lnternet marketer must do the proper keyword
research, develop good content, and build links to their websites.
However, depending on what search engine their using there will be some
differences in how they carry on.

lf all search engines had identical algorithms and technology, then
theoretically, they would all display the same results. However, if you used
multiple search engines, then you will know that this is far from the truth.
So, the algorithms and technology that search engines use along with the
culture and language differences makes implementing seo campaigns
different regionally. Anyhow, let me guide you through the preliminary
stages of implementing search engine campaigns in China.


Keyword research

The first thing that you want to do is find the appropriate keywords that you
are targeting. However, there exists a language fortification, so you must
first get your keywords translated properly. l would not laud using
automatic translation tools as you will miss out on the localization and
dialect aspect which can give you inaccurate results. The last thing you
want to do is invest lots of time and capital into your marketing only to
realize that you are targeting something that you have no desire to!

So, make sure that you have a qualified Chinese speaking professional
that can assist you along this process. What l would recommend is to
make a list of keywords in excel, and then submit them to be translated.
Also, there is something important that you should know about Chinese
users before you start implementing search engine marketing campaigns.

Even though they are the largest web users in the world (due to its
populous numbers) the lnternet in China is still in its infancy stage, and
their users are not very efficient when it comes to ordaining searches.
Therefore, if you are thinking about targeting long tail keywords l would
recommend thinking twice.

This may sound like a setback but let me give you some confidence. The
search engine results for Chinese search engines are nowhere as steep
as it is for English based search engines, so targeting larger keywords
may not be as bad as you think. Also, something else you may be musing
is how in the world do you perform Chinese keyword research?

Well, this is kind of a catch 22 situation. Baidu (China's most popular
search engine) does provide a keyword research tool in their pay per view
advertising control panel. However, this is probably not much use to you if
you cannot read Chinese. So, if you' re interested in finding more
lucrative Chinese keywords, then you might want to delegate this task to a
native Chinese speaker that has experience with working with Baidu on a
freelance service of your choice.

However, Baidu does provide many other search tools. Use this tool to
find a list of the hottest keywords that day: http://top.baidu.com/.

Below is a snapshot of the keywords translated from simplified Chinese to
English taken on March 20
WK
2010.


Getting a .cn domain name


One important countenance in your international marketing campaign is
whether you need a .cn domain name. Theoretically, you do not have to
have a .cn domain name to reach the Chinese audience, but it is not a bad
idea if you do decide to use one.

The reason for this is from my research, .cn domain names tend to rank
higher in Chinese search engines such as Baidu. ln addition, .cn domain
names look more familiar to Chinese users and in psychology, something
that we are familiar with equates to something that we are more likely to
trust.

Moving along, the next question isKRZLQWKHZRUOGGRHVRQHJRDERXW
DFTXLULQJDFQGRPDLQQDPH? lf you have searched for an elucidation to
this question online then it' s very likely that you have found some
websites that claim to be able to register .cn domain names for you.

There were some credible western companies that register .cn domain
names along with a host of other international domain name extensions
(idns). One of them in which im sure you heard of is Godaddy, while
another popular one is namecheap. However, both of these companies no
longer offer .cn registrations. lf you have a .cn domain name and want to
still maintain it then they can assist you with that, but they are not allowing
new registrations. Godaddy has done this before, they were in a constant
back and forth battle with China lnternet Network lnformation
Center(CNNlC), or the organization that delegates the release of .cn
domain names.

The reason for this is because CNNlC keeps requesting more information
from the individuals that own a .cn ccTLD. The reason that this is
speculated is because they want to micromanage more of the websites
that are marketed towards the Chinese demographic.

They were requesting various personal information along with a colored
photo id of the individual that owns the domain name. You can read more
about the article here:http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2361779,00.asp.

lf CNNlC becomes more lenient on their domain name registration policies
then most likely Godaddy will start offering them again in the future.
Anyhow, there are a couple of alternatives to getting a .cn ccTLD. One,
you can acquire a .asia ccTLD. Godaddy in fact sell them for $14.99 per
year, you can find out more about it here:
http://www.godaddy.com/gdshop/tlds/asia.asp. This is great because you can
market to various Asian countries with this ccTLD. ln addition, you can just
partition your website by making a .cn sub-domain name on your website.
lf your web host allows you to do this, then you should take advantage of
this. All of the links that are pointed to your website will be agglomerated
which could help your overall search engine rankings.



Getting a Chinese ip

Getting a Chinese ip hosting is trickier then getting a .cn domain name. A
good question that you may have is if you really need a Chinese web host.
The question is yes and no. lf you are located in mainland China, and if
you wish to start a website, then its required by the Chinese government
that you apply for an lnternet content provider (icp) license so that you can
host a website within the great firewall of china.

To apply for an icp license visit this website url here:
http://www.miibeian.gov.cn/.

Let me iterate. lf you are located in mainland China then you have to apply
for a license which takes around 15-20 days if your website doesn't
contain any content that could be classified as inappropriate which was
discussed previously.

lf you are located in mainland China and have not applied for an icp
license, your website could very well still be up, but don't be surprised if
one day your website is no longer accessible. However, if you are located
outside of China, then it is not mandatory for you to acquire an icp license
even though there are still some clear cut benefits to getting one.

One benefit is if your website is approved for an icp license, then it will not
be excluded from the Great Wall of China. lt is kind of like a form of
immunity. ln addition, if your web host is located in China then your
website will be more accessible as opposed to being hosted somewhere
else in the world. For example, have you tried accessing a Chinese search
engine that was hosted on a Chinese ip address?

lf you have, then you will know that to query searches on average takes a
longer time then if you were to use a search engine that is located
regionally. The reason for this is simply due to the proximity of the servers.

ln addition, it' s always a good idea to variegate your servers. lf a
catastrophe happens in a location in which you host your servers, then
it' s a high probability that the websites hosted on that server will be
down. However, if you diversify the location of your servers then most
likely this will not be much of an issue. A Chinese web host that you can
consider is: www.web2.cn.

However, since there support is mainly in Chinese, it' s probably a good
idea to acquire a Chinese web master that can handle the setup of your
Chinese website on the Chinese web host. lt may be a little more costly,
but the headaches that you will have will decrease greatly. lf you think
working with a web host that speaks your native language is hard enough,
then just imagine how difficult it will be once you switch languages!












Marketing on the top websites in China

Baidu
Google.cn
Yahoo.cn
Msn.cn
Sina.com

Baidu
page rank: 9
alexa rank: 9

i) Genera| Background Information

Baidu is the most used search engine in China, and is also a consistently
top ten most trafficked website worldwide according to Alexa. This is not
entirely surprising considering that Chinese users are the largest web
users in the world. From my research and from communicating with native
Chinese webusers, l found out a great deal of information about Baidu that
l probably would not have known.

lt' s interesting to note that most of China's top websites are mostly
Chinese run and operated businesses. A lot of English based websites are
either blocked or difficult to access, and they find that they use Baidu
because of its speed and accessibility.

Would you use a better quality website if it was slow and constantly hard
to access, or would you fancy using the website that doesn't give as good
results, but give them lickety split? l think most individuals would choose
the latter option.

Baidu also blocks a legion of websites according to the rules of the higher
regulating organizations of China. Similar to Google, Baidu allows internet
marketers to implement both organic search engine marketing and paid
advertising campaigns. However, unlike Google, Baidu doesn't separate
their paid advertising from their organic search engine results. They in fact
coalesce the two together. Therefore, if you visit the front page of Baidu
and check the first website for any given keyword, there is unfortunately
no way to differentiate which site earned that ranking based on merit, and
which ones paid for that position.

Therefore, trying to gain the top positions in Baidu strictly with organic
search engine marketing practices is quite a task. That doesn't mean that
you should give up on organic search engine in Baidu altogether, because
it can still help you reach your targeted demographic.

ii) Submitting your website to Baidu

Just like with any other search engine, the first step to leeching traffic
through it is by first getting your website indexed in the search engine,
therefore, im going to show you how you can submit your website to
Baidu.

iii) Visit the Baidu submission ur|

Website submission url is here:
http://www.baidu.com/search/url_submit.html

This is the Chinese translated to English:
http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=zh-
CN&u=http://www.baidu.com/search/url_submit.html&ei=-eejS6-
LA5WWtgf4wq2DCg&sa=X&oi=translate&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CAs
Q7gEwAA&prev=/search%3Fq%3Dhttp://www.baidu.com/search/url_subm
it.html%26hl%3Den

You may notice that the images will still maintain its Chinese characters.
The reason for this is because translating software cannot translate
images. ln order to edit images you must use some type of image
manipulating software.

However, l think it' s fair to say that most marketers have experience
filling in forms that contain captcha, and most of them will know that if a
form has captcha code followed by an image button, then that button will
be the one that they will use to submit the form.

Anyhow, enter in your website url, enter in the captcha, and then submit
your website to be reviewed by Baidu. There is nothing left for you to do
except to check back about a month later to see if your website is included
in the Baidu index. To confirm that your url has been submitted, make sure
to check that the this url redirects to here
http://www.baidu.com/search/success.html after submitting.

Unlike the major American search engines such as Google, Yahoo, and
MSN, Baidu does not offer any webmaster tools, and also doesn't include
the inclusion of xml sitemaps in their system. This is unfortunate because
these tools would very well help speed up the indexing of a website in
Baidu.

To check if your website is indexed in Baidu, use this command here:
site:yourwebsite.com

iv) Option 2:

Just like with English based search engines, if you find a website that is
already indexed in Baidu, and then get that website to link to your website,
then this is a faster way to speed up the process of getting your website
indexed in Baidu. However, it' s crucial that you make sure that the
website that links to you is written in simplified Chinese, and that you have
your website translated to this type of content as well. Link building is
something that is important as well in international search engines.


v) Bui|ding Chinese |inks

A great way to generate free search engine traffic is through an efficiently
implemented link building campaign. You get from one website to the next
via links, so the more links you have pointing to your website equals the
higher chances of your website getting seen. A majority of the rules for
link building in different regions will be the same. You will need the
following:

1. Quality content.
2. Appropriate keywords.
3. Content that is marketed through the appropriate channels.

However, when you are marketing internationally it is a requisite that your
keywords are translated properly. l would recommend consulting a native
Chinese speaking individual that can help you out with this process. There
exists Chinese directories that you can submit to as well, but navigating
through them will be quite tedious when you cannot understand the
language. This is why it' s important to have a qualified Chinese speaking
individual helping you out through this process.

vi) Additiona| optimizing tip

lt is a good idea to get the keywords that you want to rank for to be
included in your domain name. You will of course need to consult with a
Chinese speaking individual to help you out with this, but it' s definitely a
good idea.


Goog|e China
website url: http://www.google.cn
page rank: 10
alexa rank: 1

As mentioned previously, Baidu is the king of the search engines in China,
and it acquires roughly 60% of the shares for searchs in China. However,
Google.cn (a subsidiary company of Google) does acquire the second
amount of searches in the Chinese market, so still do not look past the big
G.

The bad thing with this is that Google will soon cease its operations in
China in April 2010. Anyhow, unlike Baidu, Google does not adhere to the
rules and regulations set by the people republic of China regarding search
results, and this has lead Google.cn to become involved in a good amount
of controversies.

Anyhow, very similar to Baidu, make sure that your website is submitted to
Google.cn, and work on building the links to your sites with this regional
ccTLD in order to increase your organic search engine rankings.

However, unlike Baidu, Google.cn does not mix organic search engine
results with the paid advertising results. These two entities are kept
separate, so this is good for those marketers that love free organic search
engine traffic.

To submit your website to Google.cn, visit this url here:
http://www.google.com/addurl/?hl=zh-CN


To make things easier for you, here is the screen shot of the website
translated from simplified Chinese to English below.


The first url is for your website, the second is for your any comments, and
then the third one is for entering the captcha code. Once all of this is done,
click the submit button.

Yahoo China

website url: http://www.yahoo.cn/
pagerank: 7
alexa rank: 1309


Yahoo.cn is a subsidiary of Yahoo inc and is a popular search engine in
China. Just like with the other previous methods, the name of the game is
to get your website indexed, and to also build links to your website.


submission url: http://search.help.cn.yahoo.com/h4_4.html

Below is a screen shot of the website translated in English.



Enter in the form details, and submit your website.

i) Yahoo directory

You can also submit your website for inclusion in the Chinese web
directory of Yahoo as well.

website url: http://site.yahoo.com.cn/



MSN China
website url: http://cn.msn.com/
pagerank: 9

Just like Google and Yahoo, Msn also has its Chinese version of their
website. However, unlike the other two networks, it does not have its
separate submission form for international websites. However, you can
still submit your international website to their system for inclusion. The
submission url is located here:
http://www.bing.com/webmaster/SubmitSitePage.aspx


Sina

page rank: 8
alexa rank: 2068

Sina is China's largest web portal. lt is in essence the Chinese version of
Yahoo inc. Unlike many popular websites in China, Sina has subsidiary
companies that offer web services from different access ports around the
world. Some of these include:

Sina US

Sina Japan

Sina China

Sina Korea

Sina Europe

Sina Germany


i) Sign up for a b|og on Sina

lf you ever tried to sign up for a blog on a foreign website then it is plain
chaotic without the assistance of a native speaker. However, l have
experience with knowing what to work for on these types of sites so
overtime it has become easier. Anyhow, below are some instructions that
you can follow to setup a blog on Sina.

ii) Step one: visit the sign up ur|

Here is the url:
http://login.sina.com.cn/signup/signup.php?entry=blog&src=ruiblog

To make things easier on you here is the sign up page translated below.





iii) Step two: Fi|| in your profi|e detai|s


The second page that you will be taken to along the process is here:
http://login.sina.com.cn/signup/signup1.php?entry=blog&src=ruiblog&srcui
d=

The content of the page is translated in the screen shot below.





Once you have finished filling in this information you will be redirected to another page as indicated in
the url below:

http://control.blog.sina.com.cn/reg/reg_blog.php?srcuid=&version=7&src=r
uiblog

The translated content has been posted in the screen shot below.




Fill in the required details along with any other personal information that you prefer, and then submit
that information. Once that is done you should be redirected to this url here:
http://control.blog.sina.com.cn/reg/reg_blog_complete.php?src=ruiblog&ve
rsion=7.

You will then be given the option to set up your blog which you should go
ahead and do. Similar to most free blogging platforms such as blogger and
wordpress, you will be give free templates that you can use to setup your
blog as indicated in the screen shot below:



You will then be redirected to another page as indicated by the url below:

http://control.blog.sina.com.cn/reg/reg_blog_attention.php?src=1&version=
7


The image of what you will see is indicated in the screen shot below:



You can skip this step momentarily and access your blog.

To make your first blog post in Sina, click the icon as indicated in the
screen shot below.





Make sure to have some translated content ready, and to link back to your website with the appropriate
keywords.





















Conc|usion/Quick start program

Finito! You have made it to the end of this guide and hopefully your head
is running with ideas of all of the huge untapped potential there still exists
with marketing in China. Percentage wise, there is a higher percentage of
American users on the internet, but due to China's sheer numbers, they
are still the largest web users on the internet.

Just imagine if the percentage of Chinese users equals that of American
users? A lot of internet marketers are thinking that Bing will take over
Google in a couple of years. However many internet marketers are
overlooking Baidu, it is already a consistently top ten trafficked website
worldwide according to Alexa, and as more and more Chinese users come
to the internet, it wouldn't surprise me if Baidu keeps climbing that ladder.

While the internet is still in its infancy stage in China, there are still many
top Chinese websites in the world which is simply stunning. Anyhow, let
me give you a quick start campaign to penetrate through the Chinese
market online.

1. Get a regiona| domain name. This will give you a better chance of
ranking in regional search engines and also masquerades your website as
a local one.

2. Get a regiona| web host. This will help ensure that your website will
not be excluded from the Great Wall of China and will make your website
load more efficiently for your Chinese users. lt' s also a good idea to
diversify where you host your website as well.

3. Start imp|ementing a qua|ity trans|ation campaign for your website.
You want to make sure that your web users can read your website content
efficiently, because Chinese users will not brook poorly written content, as
it' s frustrating on their part. Simplified Chinese is what you should have
your website translated to.

4. Gather keywords that you want to rank for in the regional search
engines.

5. Start submitting your website to regiona| search engines and set up
blogs on popular regional blog hosts with properly translated content that
links back to your idn.

6. Start imp|ementing a |ong term regiona| |ink bui|ding campaign to
increase the organic search engine traffic and web presence to your
website.


Thanks for the support, looking forward to hearing good results for you,
and take your business to a new height.