Search Engine Marketing for the Chinese Market - Practical implications for the launch of an International Company Website in China

Bachelor Thesis from the year 2013 in the subject Communications - Public Relations, Advertising, Marketing, Social Media, grade: 1, FH OÖ Standort Steyr, course: Marketing & E-Business, language: English, abstract: Globalization has brought new opportunities to developing countries, and within the last few decades, especially the People's Republic of China transformed itself from a developing nation behind the bamboo curtain to one of the most influential nations on the world market. China's online population is growing very fast and counted already more than 560 million users in 2012, with a share of more than 70% of mobile Internet users. The Internet has become an indispensable tool for finding information quickly using a search engine. Therefore, for companies trading in China, their website will undoubtedly be vital in enhancing their public image and increasing sales volumes, and improving this website through search engine marketing (SEM) will be crucial to succeed. Due to huge cultural differences and governmental censorship of the Internet in mainland China, doing online business in this country is definitely different as in the Western world. To find out what is necessary for launching an international company website in China successfully, this paper describes and critically analyses the basic knowledge about China's online users and its online media world as well as search engines available in China and the challenges Chinese internet users face because of The Great Firewall. Aiming to provide key input for effective search engine marketing, this thesis combines theoretical background from various literary sources with the results of the author's online survey and interviews with four online marketing experts, who give an insight into their in-depth know-how of China's online marketing world and to provide advice on effective SEM for China's leading search engine Baidu. Clearly, as this papers shows, practising successful SEO depends on the combination of many different factors and actions. Writing original content, proper usage of keywords, incoming links from authoritative sites and other Baidu-sites are just some issues to be considered. Furthermore a Chinese ISP and content written in well-articulated 'Simplified Chinese' are other keys to success. Doing SEA for Baidu is quite challenging, especially for foreigners, because it requires experience with SEA, cultural understanding and perfect knowledge of Chinese to find the right keywords and handle Baidu's SEA and Analytics tool. Nevertheless, understanding China's culture and language is an important factor achieving good online visibility in China.