Why China Market ?
1. China’s Market is Huge and the Potential is even Bigger
China has become the world’s largest auto market. There are more smartphones sold there than anywhere else; more groceries, beer, antiques, and art. In 2015, online retail sales in China totalled $581 billion, a 33% rise from 2014.
A growing portion of China’s 1.4 billion people are making discretionary purchases every day, and it’s showing no signs of stopping. By 2020, BCG forecasts there will be 280 million affluent consumers in China with a disposable income of $20K to $1m. Between now and then, average incomes will have tripled, if not more. In short, whatever you’re selling, it’s hard not to take notice of China.
2. E-commerce is Taking China by Storm
E-commerce in China has become a multi-hundred-billion-dollar-behemoth. 413 million Chinese regularly shop online, up from 361 billion in 2014. Even the Chinese Government is putting its weight behind it in the latest 5-year plan, implementing policy in hope of quadrupling annual e-commerce volumes from 2010 to 2015 to $2.9 trillion.
3. Chinese Consumers Love Overseas Brands
Just as Chinese consumers love to shop online, they love buying overseas products when they’re there. Overseas brands are generally perceived as higher quality and safer, with more ‘cool-factor’.
According to BCG, 61% of Chinese would pay more for overseas-made products. In certain categories, the preference is even higher. The World Luxury Association found 86% of Chinese consumers refuse to buy luxury goods labelled “Made in China”. 61% of Chinese have less confidence in local food than in 2011, and 28% expect to replace their domestic purchases with imports says Ipsos.
4. Reducing the Risk of Fakes
Chinese shoppers are less trusting than consumers elsewhere. And that’s with good reason. China is crawling with fakes from the well-known replica handbags and watches, to bogus Subway restaurants and until recently, fake Apple Stores, where even the staffs were fooled.
To counter that, China’s most popular business-to-consumer website, TMall, only sells products directly from a brand owner or authorized distributor, meaning consumers can shop with the confidence of buying the real thing. That bodes well for foreign brands that are much more likely to be copied.
5. Reaching the Inaccessible Masses
Another draw card for e-commerce is that it reaches markets that can be difficult and expensive to service otherwise. 75% of China’s affluent middle class live in ‘smaller cities’ you’ve probably never heard of and most of those cities don’t have the brick and mortar stores stocking the foreign brands they want. So they buy them online. There are close to 200 cities with over a million people in China, and going online is the easiest and most efficient way to reach them
No one will pretend that China is an easy market. But if you’re serious about wooing the hundreds of millions of potential consumers, you’ll have a much greater chance with a solid e-commerce strategy.
SEO In China
Who is Baidu?
Baidu is the number one and the most popular search engine in China, with an approximate number of 60 percent of the country’s market share. It was founded by Robin Li and Eric Xu on the 18th of January 2000. Baidu is ranked as the 5th search engine in the world and 1st for China and Chinese users, and is the first company to be included in the NASDAQ-100 index last December 2007.
BAIDU SEO IS DIFFERENT FROM GOOGLE SEO
Baidu and Google are not the same. One is not just the Chinese version of the other, it doesn’t work the same way for ranking websites. These two have different objectives, as well as different techniques in working. It is especially important to study and understand Baidu SEO when investing in China, even though you already mastered Google SEO.
BAIDU AND BING
Since Google’s exit in China due to censorship issues, Baidu held control in the Chinese search engine market. But, Microsoft’s Bing has always been present in the Chinese online market for the past few years, although holding only 2% market share. Recently however, Baidu and Bing decided and announced partnership, saying that some of the search results found on Bing will be in Baidu as well, and vice versa.
Having a solid top 3 ranking on Bing for both your English website and Chinese website could mean lasting visibility in the Chinese market.
BAIDU SEO
Getting high rankings on Baidu is a crucial part to being noticed in the Chinese digital market, as Baidu is where the Chinese mass market gets their everyday information. Once proper Baidu SEO techniques are mastered, there’ll be a constant and notable increase in search engine rankings.
SEO on Baidu usually works for a long term strategy, but for short term goals, sponsored links or links via Pay per click (PPC) strategy, which we’ll talk about later, rank high.
A WEBSITE IN CHINESE
Baidu prioritizes 100% Chinese based websites as their main selling feature is that they only index simplified Chinese characters. A website and homepage in Chinese would be preferable. It is also recommended, but not required, to have the company registered to China to have a website in “.cn”.
Baidu also loves big and famous websites, with updates and regularly refreshed contents preferred.
PAY PER CLICK (PPC) STRATEGY
Baidu Phoenix Nest is Baidu’s pay-per-click platform, much like Google’s Ad Words, although Baidu’s platform ranks websites depending on the money transactions and Ad Words rank theirs through the importance of website content. The higher level of the money transacted, the higher the ranking in Baidu.
BAIDU SEO FOR THE CHINESE MARKET
With more than 641.6 million internet users in China today, China is the biggest online market in the world. It is attracting many businesses around the globe, and they are all trying to penetrate the Chinese web. With more than 80% market share in the Chinese internet, Baidu is the most recommended and required search engine to enter that will surely be seen by the target market.
As you may have seen above, the Chinese internet is very complicated with its administration, culture, and language requirements. We are an SEO agency specialized in the search engine Baidu, we’d like to help in any way we can.