In general, the reason Baidu PPC advertising can be highly effective is the fact that users who are actively searching for something already have a buying intent. It means that they are more likely to convert, in other words to become the actual customers compared to those who are passively looking at ads or are still in the process of discovery of a specific product or service.

Baidu PPC advertising is, in principal, identical to Google’s equivalent, although there are several important differences to keep in mind. First of all, due to the fact that Chinese internet is tightly controlled and regulated by the government, opening a PPC account is, by far, more complicated process than with Google.

In contrast to Google AdWords account which is free and only asks for a Gmail account and a credit card, Baidu requires some serious paperwork, a fee and a deposit to get it going.

Currently, only legally registered companies, domestic or foreign, can advertise with Baidu. Obviously, opening Baidu PPC advertising account for a Chinese company is much easier than for a foreign one, it is also cheaper and faster. Overseas business entities are required to provide business registration certificate at the minimum and are often asked to submit additional documentation. This is why it is recommended to enlist a help of professionals who are experienced in dealing with Baidu on behalf of a foreign company.

Once the account has been registered and activated, it operates in a similar way with Google, although the back end interface is entirely in Chinese. In addition, the structure is significantly more confusing and takes some time getting used to. Once again, even if you are fluent in Chinese, it is always a good idea to outsource Baidu account management to someone who is well familiar with it instead of attempting to do it yourself.

Baidu PPC advertising with search ads

On the most basic level, there are two sections in Baidu account: search ads and display ads. Search ads are those that are displayed on search results pages in response to user query. In Baidu, they come in a few different formats.

The most basic format is a text ad complete with a title, two lines of description and URL at the bottom – quite similar to Google. There is also a verification level assigned to an ad which is designed to inform users on trustworthiness of a particular website and an advertiser.

Some text ads can also include additional links to separate landing pages. By offering several options, such arrangement increases likelihood of that ad being clicked, although this format is more expensive.

Baidu brand zone

Baidu Brand Zone is another option that is most suitable for businesses looking to build brand awareness rather than achieve direct conversions. This type of ads typically include images, text and multiple links. Such ads are CPM (cost per mille/1000 impressions) based and therefore harder to measure. The price for such ads depends on their size and the position making the advertising in Baidu Brand Zone to be the most expensive type of Baidu marketing.

Using images with Baidu PPC advertising

In general, in order to increase the CTR (click through rate) advertisers would try to include images in the ads whenever possible as well pack more links into an ad. Carefully designed text that fits well with dynamic keywords (those that show up in response to the relevant query) is another important factor to consider. This is where A/B split tests come handy and, fortunately, Baidu offers unlimited ways to test and fine tune the best performing combinations.

Another good reason to include images with the ads is the fact that more users, especially on mobile, use pictures to search for products. Baidu’s picture matching algorithms continue improving offering more opportunities to display matching ads.

Baidu PPC advertising for mobile

Mobile search is another major area of Baidu strength where it holds even larger market share than on desktops. Optimizing ads for mobile involves setting up a call button that dials the number automatically by user simply tapping it from their phones. It works in both mobile browser and Baidu app.

If the business is particularly interested in reaching mobile users, it is worth investing in creating mobile friendly ads with suitable images and shorter, more concise text.

Baidu display ads

Display ads is the second major method to advertise with Baidu. It involves placing image ads (banners) at the most relevant sites that are part of vast Baidu ads display network. This is what is often called remarketing (or retargeting) – the ads are displayed based on a specific user’s history of visiting sites or searching for a particular term.

Technically, it is identical to a much larger Google’s ads display network, which, like many other things, has been copied by Baidu.
Both search ads and display ads are managed within the same Baidu PPC account sharing advertising budget that can be split between the two methods.

Typically, it is hard to predict in advance which PPC method would bring better results, therefore you should expect it to take some time to determine how to best allocate the budget between search and display ads.

The post Overview of Baidu PPC Advertising, Best Practices first appeared on Sampi.co.

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In terms of monthly users, Weibo is the second largest Chinese social media platform after WeChat. However, unlike WeChat, it is still primarily PC based. Weibo is one of the most powerful marketing tools in China offering wide range of possibilities for reaching people across various demographics and psychographics.

Weibo offers to marketers a powerful Weibo Index tool to learn more about what platform users are searching for. Compared to previously covered Baidu and Qihoo tools, it is structured in sig
nificantly different way allowing generating other types of data.

It is important to note that social media platforms like Weibo could be quite similar to search engines in many ways. Platform users search for terms in a similar way as they do using Baidu or Qihoo. This allows Weibo to generate wealth of information that could be indispensable for marketers looking to customize their message for this particular audience.

Weibo Index into four main tabs: historic keyword trends, real time trends, geographical interpretation and user attributes analysis.

Let’s examine what Weibo Index shows for the same keyword we used for Baidu and Qihoo tools covered earlier.

The first graph shows search volumes for a keyword on PC and mobile. It is quite clear that there is a certain correlation with the search results we have seen with the search engines: both types of data show a sharp peak in the second half of March:

Looking at both PC based and mobile searches reveals the fact that most searches have been done from mobile Weibo app rather than PC based website:

Next tab displays search volumes in the past 24 hours. Here, peaks occur in different times compared to results from the search engines. Apparently, Weibo searches for iPhone 8 have peaked at around noon and then again at 23:00:

Such information can be particularly useful for social media marketing. It can allow marketers to figure out optimal timing for posts to receive maximum exposure on the network. In fact, the data can even be reduced down to an hour level in order to identify search volumes of every single minute within a particular hour!

The location tab shows geographic distribution of the searches:

Here the situation is also a bit different from the results we have seen with Baidu and Qihoo. It seems that people in Hebei and Zhejiang provinces were the ones most interested in iPhone 8.

Last tab, audience attributes, shows even less correlation with the search engines data for this particular term. This time, women represented the vast majority of the audience (80%) vs. only 20% of men. Also, the audience is significantly much younger on Weibo: most people searching for iPhone 8 were between ages 19-24.

This information could lead to a different approach for marketing this specific product. On Weibo, marketers could be tailoring the ad to a largely young female audience while Baidu and Qihoo ads should cater to older male crowd. Optimizing marketing approach across different platforms would be much more difficult without having such data.

Last section of the audience attributes tab relates to user persona that seems quite irrelevant for this particular keyword. Also, Weibo shows the data on zodiac signs of the users searching for a particular term:

Apparently, Libra born users were more active in their search for iPhone 8. Why was that the case? I guess we will never know.

In any case, Weibo seems to be the only network out there that enables marketers to incorporate astrology into their marketing…

Continue to WeChat Index tutorial >>>

Here are our tutorials on China keyword research tools:

Keyword research on Baidu: Baidu Index

Keyword research on Qihoo: Qihoo Index

Keyword research on Weibo: Weibo Index

Keyword research on WeChat: WeChat Index

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Qihoo, also known as 360Search and So.com, is the second largest Chinese search engine. By various estimates, it holds between 15 to 25% of the search market share and is fairly popular among younger users.

It is also often noted that Qihoo search results tend to be more accurate than Baidu’s and advertising with Qihoo is also a bit cheaper. Despite once posing a real threat to Baidu’s dominance, Qihoo is still trailing Baidu in terms of overall popularity.

Qihoo Index is the keyword research tool that can be used to complement Baidu’s. Also, it doesn’t require registering an account which makes it a bit easier. Other than that, the functionality and the type of data Qihoo Index generates is quite similar to Baidu Index which was covered earlier.

Here we are using the same keyword “iPhone8” to see the results. The first panel presents the total number of searches and the trends overtime. Just like with Baidu Index, the data can be displayed for the last 7, 30 or 90 days as well as for custom date ranges.

The top panel shows 5,340 searches for iPhone 8 over the last 30 days which is about 5 times less searches on Baidu for the same period.

Similar to Baidu, Qihoo index indicates various kinks, peaks and valleys of the curve with a letter corresponding to a specific media mention. Hovering over those letters opens a pop-up with more details on the source linked to an article:

Another Qihoo Index graph specifically focuses on media mentions. Just like with Baidu, each change in the curve can be further examined for more details related to a specific news source.

The graph above displays search activity in the last 24 hours. Quite predictably, the search reaches two of its peaks in the morning and afternoon with a dip in between (a lunch break?) before flattening out during the night hours.

Next diagram shows related keywords in key phrase surrounding the main keyword. Analogous to Baidu, the keywords are grouped based on search volumes and relevant position:

Related searches data displays the keywords searched by users before or after that specific search term. In this case, “iPhone 8 price” was the strongest related key phrase. Also, users seem to be often searching for iPhone 8 pictures:

Also like Baidu, Qihoo Index also shows geographic distribution of searches. It seems that most iPhone 8 related searches were coming from the richest Chinese provinces and cities which reflects traditional popularity of Apple products in those areas.

Insights into audience are largely similar to the results we have seen with Baidu for the same term: men represent the majority (70% vs. 30%). The age brackets used by Qihoo are a bit different with Baidu: almost half of the people interested in iPhone 8 were aged between 25 and 34.

Another dimension that is available only with Qihoo Index is classification of the users by attributes. Apparently, Qihoo uses other search terms attributed to the same user in order to build what is called “persona” in marketing. Learning more about customer profiles through this method can provide further useful insights for a marketer.

Continue to Weibo Index tutorial >>>

Here are our tutorials on China keyword research tools:

Keyword research on Baidu: Baidu Index

Keyword research on Qihoo: Qihoo Index

Keyword research on Weibo: Weibo Index

Keyword research on WeChat: WeChat Index

The post Basics of China Keyword Research: Qihoo Index first appeared on Sampi.co.

The post Basics of China Keyword Research: Qihoo Index appeared first on Sampi.co.

Being the largest search engine in China, Baidu keyword research should be the one to start with. Currently, Baidu offers Baidu Index tool that is free for Baidu advertising accounts, offering some basic information to users.

Here is an example of searching for keyword “iPhone8” (most Chinese users would typically type in “iPhone8” without space between the two words).

First, Baidu Index would match it with a keyword in the database before displaying the data. This means that for some rare keywords or those with low search volumes, this tool may not show any results. For those cases, a more powerful keyword research tool within Baidu advertising account must be used.

The top section shows the numbers for search volumes on PC (25,999) and mobile (20,070). It is remarkable to note that the overall search volume for this particular term is only 20% larger on PC vs. mobile.

Some points on the graph are also marked with letters: A, B, C, D etc. Those can be linked to a particular events such as mentions in media. Viewing the relevant content can give a researcher further insight on what was behind peaks and valleys of the chart.

Next, Baidu Index shows some more data on related keywords and how they are related to the original one in a key phrase (sometimes called long tail keyword). The size of the bubble illustrates the search volume and the color – the relative position.

Manipulating the slider allows viewing snapshots of the related keywords at different time periods. It can also help getting an idea on how the searches were changing over time.

The data is further detailed in the list of top related keywords that come before or after this specific keyword. This panel also lists the sites that have received most hits as a result of this keyword search:

Unsurprisingly, the most common key phrase was about the timing of iPhone 8 release.

Next graph specifically focuses on media mentions of the keyword. From here, user can view the actual article. This helps figuring out which type of news helped driving more searches and which had little to no effect.

The following series of data focuses on the audience. The map below illustrates search volume distribution by province. From here, the data can be further drilled down to the levels of area and city.

Finally, the audience is broken down by age distribution and gender. According to Baidu, iPhone 8 was mostly searched by males between ages of 20 and 39.

Continue to Qihoo Index tutorial >>>

Here are our tutorials on China keyword research tools:

Keyword research on Baidu: Baidu Index

Keyword research on Qihoo: Qihoo Index

Keyword research on Weibo: Weibo Index

Keyword research on WeChat: WeChat Index

The post Basics of China Keyword Research: Baidu Index first appeared on Sampi.co.

The post Basics of China Keyword Research: Baidu Index appeared first on Sampi.co.

All of the major Chinese search engines, as well social media platforms, offer some type of basic tools for China keyword research and trends measurement. The latest launch of WeChat Index feature holds a lot of promise. With nearly 890 million monthly active users, it has the potential to offer the most accurate picture of online searches. Unfortunately, it is still severely limited compared to the tools from Baidu, Qihoo and Weibo.

Another missing component in the overall China digital landscape is the absence of shopping trends measuring tool from Taobao, the largest ecommerce platform in China. After launching the beta of Taobao Index at the end of 2011, it was discontinued last year. Alibaba promises to relaunch a better tool in the future but it has already been a year since the original Taobao index went offline.

The first tool we are going to look at is Baidu Index.

Continue to Baidu Index tutorial >>>

Here are our tutorials on China keyword research tools:

Keyword research on Baidu: Baidu Index

Keyword research on Qihoo: Qihoo Index

Keyword research on Weibo: Weibo Index

Keyword research on WeChat: WeChat Index

The post Basics of China Keyword Research: Measuring Search Trends first appeared on Sampi.co.

The post Basics of China Keyword Research: Measuring Search Trends appeared first on Sampi.co.

Up until the middle of 2016, Chinese PPC, especially with Baidu, was, on average, delivering better returns than SEO. This was due to several factors:

• First, the search results, especially for popular terms, were dominated by paid ads. In some cases, hardly any organic results would be displayed in the first page;
• Second, there was little visual distinction in Baidu between paid and organic results and most people couldn’t even tell the difference.

Things have changed significantly since the most recent scandal involving fraudulent Baidu medical ads that led to the death of young cancer sufferer. Following public outcry and negative publicity, Chinese government published new rules concerning Baidu advertising that, among other things, recommended limiting paid results to no more than 30% of SERP (search engine results pages).

Also, the new rules require ads to be more easily distinguishable from organic results in order to minimize the confusion between them.

Baidu, as well as other Chinese search engines, have announced their commitment to comply with the new rules (not that they had any choice in the matter anyway). Less advertising space has inevitably led to increased cost of PPC advertising which has made such campaigns more expensive than they could have been in the past.

On the positive side, the quality of ads is supposed to improve which may, at least in theory, increase trustworthiness of paid ads from a user standpoint.

How to choose between PPC vs. SEO for Chinese market

When it comes to SEO, organic results are now guaranteed to feature prominently in Chinese SERPs which makes SEO a more worthwhile investment than it would have been before the new rules were implemented.

On the other hand, you still need to consider different pros and cons of each strategy.

One of the most important consideration is the time frame. Getting results from PPC is almost instant while building SEO traffic takes time. Typically, it would take somewhere between 3 to 6 months to start seeing some benefits from SEO and 9-12 months of consistent efforts to build a stable organic ranking to show up high enough in SERPs. If you can’t wait that long than PPC is probably the best route to choose.

In addition, since the feedback is fast and measurable, PPC is best at testing different keywords to see which ones work better. Tweaking SEO keywords takes much longer feedback loop.

Calculating which strategy would be more profitable also requires knowing LTV (life time value) of a customer. This figure can then be compared to the cost of acquiring that customer with either SEO or PPC. As a general rule, SEO tends to be a better fit for high volume, low LTV cases.

Another disadvantage of SEO for Chinese market compared to PPC that is worth mentioning is its sensitivity to Baidu algorithms changes. When that happens, an optimized site can lose ranking practically overnight which makes SEO an ongoing, hence expensive, effort.

Obviously PPC doesn’t have this weakness since you are paying Baidu for getting visitors bypassing their ranking algorithms.
On the other hand, organic results are generally considered to be more trustworthy and therefore are more likely to be clicked than the ads. Since now Chinese engines are required to implement more visual distinction between paid and organic results, visitors are becoming more aware of which is which and tend to favor organic ones.

Considering the above point, SEO for Chinese market seems to offer the better value in search marketing than PPC as a long term strategy. There is an exception however: if your niche is dominated by established players or authority sites that have been building their reputation for years, it is highly unlikely that you would be able to unseat them. However, if you employ PPC you still may be able to outbid them.
In conclusion, choosing between SEO and PPC requires answering three basic questions:

• Can you afford waiting a few months for the results or time is of the essence?
• How LTV of your customer stacks against the cost of their acquisition with either strategy?
• How competitive is your space and whether you have a realistic chance to achieve high organic ranking vs. existing sites?

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Here is our guide Baidu Baike.

Baidu Baike (百度 百科 in Chinese, translated as “Baidu Encyclopedia”) is a collaborative, web-based encyclopedia that is owned and produced by the Chinese search engine Baidu. The test version was released on April 20, 2006 and within three weeks the encyclopedia had grown to more than 90,000 articles and surpassing Chinese Wikipedia. In January 2018 Baidu Baike had more than 15.1 million articles.

Baidu officially declares that Baidu Baike serves as an online encyclopedia, as well as information storage for netizens. Baidu Baike claims “equality”, “cooperation”, “sharing” and “freedom” as the platform’s core values. It is connected with search engines in order to meet information needs of the users.

Baidu Baike Concept

At World Wide Web Consortium 2018, Baidu’s William Chang said that “there is actually no reason for China to use Wikipedia … It is very natural for China to make its own products.”

While using Baidu search engine, the link of the corresponding entry in Baidu Baike, if present, is placed as the first result or one of the first results.

Content restrictions

Articles or comments that contain the following types of content are not allowed:

• Pornographic, violent and “uncivilized” content
• Advertisement
• Personal attacks
• Content against morality and ethics
• Malicious, trivial or spam-like content
• Personal facts

Since Baidu falls under the jurisdiction of the Chinese government, it is mandatory to censor the contents of their encyclopedia in accordance with relevant government regulations. All editors must register accounts with their real names before they can create or edit articles. The administrators filter the edits before they become public.

As a result, Baidu Baike has an advantage over its competitors by complying with Chinese censorship laws. Since Chinese version of Wikipedia does not censor its own content, the government can block it while Baidu Baike remains accessible.

Structure: front page

The current front page of Baidu Baike was put into operation in 6 September 2012. At the top of the page displays the official Baidu Baike slogan “Let all humankind learn about the world”, as well as up-to-date information about the number of users and mentions. The selected content is presented at the bottom left of the front page.

The bottom right contains announcements, plans and projects. The information on the front page usually contains current hot topics, often related to featured news. In addition to these popular topics, there are also one-sentence summaries of the news. Baidu Baike also includes other channels such as nature, culture, geography and special topics such as core users, digital museums, etc.

Submissions

The access pages of Baidu Baike include telephone cards, texts and other supporting information. An earlier version allowed users to respond to pages, but this feature was removed after September 2008, coinciding with time when other major Western social media channels (Facebook, Twitter, YouTube) became inaccessible in China. The main language of Baidu Baike is Chinese, written with the simplified script, messages written in traditional Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese or Japanese are automatically translated.

Calling cards and texts

Baike telephone cards contain two parts: the description of an item and the basic information. The first is similar to the preface of an article, which provides a general introduction to the whole text. The latter uses a table to summarize basic information and statistics. Both are processed separately from the main part of the article. The main text is limited to 40 thousand bits, which corresponds to 20 thousand Chinese characters.

The earlier versions could only contain one image, but now 20 images and 20 albums can be included in an article. The item may also contain a link to a Baidu card, dynamic screenshots and videos. The information cited is below the main text, which does not distinguish footnotes from other details. However, the quoted images do not specify the source.

Supporting information

Most pieces of supporting information are located at the bottom or the right of the page, except for scientific terms, which are pushed upwards. Usually supporting information is automatically generated by the system, with some manual editing. Supporting information on the right side of the page contains personal information, statistics, today in history, honor contribution and current trends. Statistics include the number of page views, the number of editors, the latest updates, information about makers, etc. Editors who contribute complex articles are also mentioned and honored.

A user can see a database, the Baidu dictionary and related items at the bottom of each article. The celebrity articles have added databases with their individual songs, albums and videos. The user recommendations section is used to collect feedback about the article.

Editing Encyclopedia entries

When an editor makes an edit that has been approved, the editor’s account receives a certain number of experience points based on the complexity of the operation (1 for the simplest operations, 5 for a complex operation). When an editor successfully completes the requested job, the editor receives experience points and a predetermined number of welfare points that can be used to make purchases on Baidu. Editors are divided into 15 levels with corresponding ‘Encyclopedia titles’ (百科 头衔) based on their accumulated experience points. In 2012, the names of the titles were changed from modern business-sounding titles to titles that resembled the Chinese imperial exam and the Confucian scholarship.

Content and categories

In contrast with a traditional encyclopedia, the information in Baidu Baike is somewhat broader. Baidu Baike also contains food recipes, film products, internet programs and video games, as well as their encyclopedic content. However, unlike Chinese Wikipedia, Baidu Baike never gives a strict definition of the difference between an encyclopedia entry and a dictionary entry. There are also many statements about diction and common phrases.

In addition to articles, Baidu Baike contains several special pages:

• A Sandbox entry (编辑 实验), giving users the opportunity to practice editing;
• Help, which offers terminologies, basic settings, prescriptions, user titles, etc.
• User page, called “Baidu Authorized ID” which is similar to that of Wikipedia. However, these are considered an encouragement for advanced users – very few editors receive the privilege to create their own page;
• Baidu Baike has an open policy for adding entries and supports categorized search functions. The classification is based on the characteristics of an item, but not on the quality, and there is no limit to categorization. Baidu Baike now has an elementary categorized page and tree. Part of the open layout can be set at levels, but catalogs with similar meanings cannot be merged or redirected.

Source: Wikipedia

Read more on how you can take advantage of marketing on Baidu Baike.

The post Guide to Baidu Baike, China’s Wikipedia Equivalent first appeared on Sampi.co.

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Moreover, Baidu is also the leading choice for searches on mobile devices, the increasingly important Chinese search engines market. In June 2016, it was reported that Baidu had 667 million monthly active users (MAU) just for that month alone.

Baidu is still the leader of Chinese search engines market

The entire Chinese search engines market has been growing at fairly steady rate since 2010, adding each year somewhere between 50 and 70 million new users. This year, it is estimated to have reached about 600 million regular users, about 3 quarters of which go to Baidu as their service of choice.

In many ways, Baidu has been following, if not copying, Google’s business strategy. It has diversified its business into areas that are identical to Google’s: from navigation and self-driving cars to AI (artificial intelligence) and VR (virtual reality).

Although, it did hit a few bumps on the road, such as recent scandals with its medical ads and illegal promotions of gambling sites, it is hard to imagine Baidu being knocked off its primary position among Chinese search engines any time soon.

The other Chinese search engines that are worth mentioning are Qihoo (aka Search360) and Sogou. Qihoo in particular has been growing relatively fast in recent years and was the only one that was ever in a position to somewhat threaten Baidu’s dominance in Chinese search engines market, although it is no longer the case.

When it comes to advertising, Baidu should always be considered as the first choice, mainly because of its largest reach. On average, Baidu CPC (cost per click) tends to be higher than Google across almost all industries. Most likely, it will continue to increase as Baidu has been experiencing fall in profits and will probably increase prices as time goes by.

Another reason to focus on Baidu is the fact that its technology is the most advanced. This ultimately affects advertisement CTR (click through rate) through higher relevancy with the search terms.

Baidu has also been active in the video market and currently owns one of the largest online video hosting platforms called iQiYi. As videos are quickly becoming one of the most popular types of content consumed online, Baidu is in a good position to take advantage of that market as well.

In addition, Baidu, like Google, is very good at remarketing which is built into its display network with over 600,000 partner websites in China. Managing both search ads and display ads is done within the same Baidu advertising account where user can simply split the budget between the two channels.

One of the biggest hustles associated with Baidu PPC is opening the advertising account. Unless your company has Chinese business registration, applying for Baidu account involves quite a bit of paperwork and a long verification process. Baidu would typically request translated version of your foreign business license and may require additional proof of incorporation. Companies in financial and medical fields would most certainly be scrutinized more carefully and multiple requests for additional licenses are quite common.

Verification of a website (which must be in Chinese) often leads to more requests to change certain sections (most commonly “about us” part). All this is aimed at making sure that the advertiser is not misrepresenting its business nature and is a legitimate company which will not become involved in promoting anything illegal.

This process is in sharp contrast with Google’s where anyone with a Gmail and a credit card can open an account and start running campaigns almost immediately.

The situation is not that much different with the other Chinese search engines such as Qihoo and Sogou. They also require business registration and licenses from foreign applicants and must follow similar verification process. Once approved, running PPC campaign with those engines is quite similar to Baidu. On the positive side, for businesses that are not in very competitive niches, CPC on Qihoo and Sogou can be substantially lower compared to Baidu. Therefore, it is a good idea to try those engines as well in parallel, although not instead of, Baidu.

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If you are familiar with Google AdWords, Baidu PPC conversion types are quite similar. Unlike Google AdWords, the conversions must be first set up within Baidu TongJi, the equivalent of Google Analytics. Then, they can be tracked in both Baidu TuiGuang (Baidu’s “AdWords”) and Baidu TongJi.

First, here is how search engines define a conversion: each instance of visitors completing a desired activity on your website, such as registration or download, is recorded as a conversion.

Here are the examples of conversion targets:

• Obtaining users’ info: registering online, creating an account etc.;
• Contact objectives: requesting consultation, sending a message, calling a phone number, etc.;
• Interactive goals: video playback event, placing item into a shopping cart, sharing content etc.;
• Revenue target: tracking online orders, payments etc.

4 types of Baidu PPC conversion that you can set up for your campaign:

Page conversions

This type of Baidu PPC conversion is triggered whenever a visitor reaches a specific URL. Each such visit will be registered as one conversion. This is the most common type of conversion used by most advertisers.

For example, a “thank you” page can be set as an URL that triggers conversion. So, whenever a visitor buys a product, signs up for a newsletter, downloads a file etc. – the next page they reach will be that “thank you” page. As soon as this event happens, Baidu knows that this is a conversion and update the report.

Setting it up is straightforward: all you need is the destination URL that triggers the conversion and define recording method (visits, page views, URL variable). You can also assign a conversion value and track conversion revenue performance.

In more advanced settings, you can also setup a path – the sequence of pages which you want your visitor to go to first before reaching the final conversion URL, in other words, a type of a sales funnel.

Even conversion

It is a bit more advanced way to set up Baidu PPC conversions than a simple. The event conversion is triggered whenever a visitor performs specified actions, such as registration, purchase, download, play, and so on.

It can be set using a preview method: user chooses the element on the page and set the conversion event page. If the page where the event is located is not unique, you can use variable part of the URL as a wildcard..

Another method is manually adding event conversion using event element ID.

This type of Baidu PPC conversions also allow you to set conversion value and track revenue.

Duration conversion

This conversion is triggered whenever visitors stayed on the site for longer than the specified time or stayed on a specific page for a specific time duration. This type of conversion can help you to understand whether users have actually read content on the page rather than skipped it.

The setup is quite simple: you set the conversion goal as the total time duration of a visits in hours, minutes or seconds.

There is also an option to set monetary value for this type of conversion.

Page visits conversion

This conversion is defined as the total number of pages opened by a visitor in one session.

You can simply define the number of pages that must be exceeded in one session and that would be recorded as the conversion. Baidu recommends to set this number to minimum 3 pages.

This type of conversion can also be tracked as the revenue once it has been assigned value in the setting but it is optional.

The post China SEM: Getting to Know Baidu PPC Conversion Types first appeared on Sampi.co.

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According to the most recent data, WeChat has passed a milestone of a billion users which puts it far ahead of any other Chinese social media platform. Measuring trends on such an enormous network could potentially bring the most statistically accurate data to marketers.

Up until a few weeks ago, it was not possible to get a hold of such metrics on WeChat. Fortunately, the platform has just released a new WeChat Index tool that allows viewing some basic trends on keywords.

The good news is that, from marketers’ perspective, WeChat is finally moving in the right direction. However, the bad news is that the data that is generated by WeChat Index is very limited. There are no any equivalents to options available from the previously reviewed tools: Baidu Index, Qihoo Index and Weibo Index.

In order to access the tool, user has to enter Chinese words “微信指数”into the search bar and tap on the first result. This opens up the prompt as shown above.

If one is planning to use WeChat Index frequently, it easier to simply pin this page to the top of the chat sessions by choosing option “Sticky on Top”.

Typing the keyword “iPhone8” returns the search trend graph:

Just like with the other index tools, the data can be viewed for 7, 30 or 90 days but there is no option to customize the date range:

It is still not clear what the total number (350,016 in this example) actually represents. In fact, it remains the same no matter what date range is chosen (a bug?):

Although, WeChat Index is a good start, in its present form, it can hardly offer any useful information. Also, it seems that only popular keywords, probably those with high enough search volumes, can be viewed.

Despite the fact that WeChat could record all the search and user related data, WeChat Index doesn’t display any geographical distribution, audience analysis or related keywords. So, essentially, it is only good for getting an idea on general search trends within the network for certain popular keywords.

Release of WeChat Index to the public is still a very good start and points to the possible course correction by Tencent. It has started to move, albeit slowly, from a private communication network to discovery platform.

Also, WeChat search function now has more options and is increasingly used for searches on wide range of topics. In order to read the articles from the search results, one has to follow the account it was posted on which opens another route for official WeChat accounts to acquire new followers.

Here are our tutorials on China keyword research tools:

Keyword research on Baidu: Baidu Index

Keyword research on Qihoo: Qihoo Index

Keyword research on Weibo: Weibo Index

Keyword research on WeChat: WeChat Index

The post Basics of China Keyword Research: WeChat Index first appeared on Sampi.co.

The post Basics of China Keyword Research: WeChat Index appeared first on Sampi.co.