China Watch Blog

China Watch Blog wishes to announce to readers that its ranking at Alexa.com today is 90,446 in the top 100,000 websites ranking out of the 30 million websites it ranks around the world.

China Watch Blog wishes all readers and visitors a Happy Easter and hope they can find something nice to read when they visit our website.

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China Watch Blog wishes to inform readers of the benefits of doing Search Engine Optimization (SEO)?

By doing so, you can get millions of impressions and thereafter clicks, for FREE!

You also don’t have to engage in a bidding war with your competitors; and,

Finally, SEO enhances your brand value in the long run.

According to iClick Media, which offers Search Engine Optimization (SEO) services, SEO are customised so that you can meet your company’s marketing objectives and goals. Basically, SEO providers apply the most effective and ethical SEO techniques to ensure their client’s website is ranked highly.

What will be checked during the Website Audit?

- Title Tag

- Meta Description Tag

- Language Meta Tag

- Heading Tags

- ALT Attributes

- 301 ReDirects

- URL Formats

- Etc

China Watch Blog has learnt that whether or not you have a brick and mortar presence, your company’s website serves as your online storefront, giving potential customers an opportunity to learn about your company, products and services.

Search Engine Optimization is the strategy that leads new customers to your business by helping your site appear higher in the rankings.

Hiring a Search Engine Optimization company is the best way to make sure your site is found by the clients you want. National Positions (www.nationalpositions.com) claims to be the top SEO company in the industry with the results to prove it! Anyhow it is ranked 73,376 by Alexa.com compared with GCTL8.com/blog’s 104,716 ranking and therefore should be ok. Check it out.

Why is Search Engine Optimization crucial to your long-term success? Consider these stats:

97% of consumers research online before purchasing and are impacted by an SEO company’s work
92% of potential clients contact a company immediately after searching
Search Engine Optimization and Internet marketing offers better leads, with the smallest cost-per-lead
Internet marketing drives $6 of in-store sales for every $1 online
92% of Internet users have researched a product or service online
and then purchased offline from a local company at least once

China Watch Blog has learnt that Online marketing and small business experts, Ajax Union, best known for helping small businesses increase their web presence via online marketing, are giving companies a huge boost to not only keep them viable but make them successful in the lagging US economy.

To help companies stand out from the crowd they are devoting November 26, calling it Small Business Saturday, to helping small businesses increase sales and take full advantage of one of the busiest shopping weekends of the year.

Ajax Union, founded by Joe Apfelbaum and Zevi Friedman, is proof that companies can thrive in a down economy. One of the few businesses actually hiring these days. They provide companies with methods for increasing their web presence and brand marketing. Their success record is undeniable. They have helped troubled companies not just survive but actually thrive in our current poor economy.

Joe Apfelbaum and Zevi Friedman, co-founders of Ajax, were recently featured on FOX News, discussing how small businesses can benefit from targeted online marketing and advertising. In fact, they are offering their proven, effective advice to small business owners on November 26, as a way to help them increase their web traffic and take full advantage of one of the busiest weekends of the year.

This dynamic duo’s expertise includes methods for effectively increasing and utilizing Search Engine Anatomy, Search Engine Optimization Basics (SEO), and Google Places Listing and Optimization.

Ajax Union is a Brooklyn, New York-based search engine agency offering a diverse array of services created to suit the needs of small businesses. Since 2007, they have been serving their clients with an effective blend of industry-tested internet advertising services, plus a little something extra.

The result has been a unique search engine marketing strategy for every campaign – no nonsense, no budget-breaking expenses, and no work that you can only assume is getting done.

Ajax Union presents a better business marketing model that offers 100% transparency, 100% flexibility and zero contracts. In other words, a better kind of online marketing designed for small businesses.

Their approach is simple – they become experts in each business. They study the company, the industry, the goals and the competition and if any of those factors change, they adjust each campaign to match. This approach has enabled them to realize measurable results in improved search engine rankings, greater traffic to websites, and targeted social networking to connect each business to its key demographics.

Joe Apfelbaum and Zevi Friedman are the co-founders, and CEO and President respectively of Ajax Union. They possess years of experience in online marketing and by combining their entrepreneurial talents and hands-on approach with those of their hand-picked team, they are able to develop innovative business strategies that are tailored to the individual needs of their small and medium-sized business clients, ensuring them of maximum success online.

China Watch Blog has picked up a white paper by Software-as-a-Service marketing technology provider, Hydra which warns digital marketing channel specialists, who continue to work in silos, that they are taking a risky approach.

Titled “Natural Search Specialist, should Paid Search matter to you?”, the white paper highlights why it is in the natural search specialist’s best interest – be they in-house or agency-based, to plan and execute campaigns with other disciplines in mind, as opposed to working in isolation.

“Today, it is simply unacceptable for Natural Search specialists to plan budget optimisation without considering Paid Search”, says Ruth Zohrer, solutions consultant at Hydra. “If Natural Search specialists want to be successful in improving returns, it is imperative they move away from looking at Natural Search metrics alone and start looking at the big picture.”

The white paper focuses on five key points from keyword research, competitor benchmarking to budget optimisation, two of which include:

Omitting to consider the Paid Search competitor landscape in natural search competitor analysis is a mistake

Few channels are driven by competitor activity as much as Natural Search*. A competitor’s overhaul of their pages or back-link profile can lead to dramatic changes in the composition of search engine results pages (SERPs) and cause movements up or down the web rankings for other sites.

Hence competitor research is an integral part to successful Natural Search campaign management. By regularly monitoring competitors, Natural Search specialists assess the success of their strategies, identify new methods and benchmark performance fluctuations.

Few Natural Search specialists, however, consider the Paid Search** competitor landscape in their Natural Search competitor analysis and therefore only get a fraction of the overall picture that they must consider. Zohrer points out strong brands are increasingly running campaigns on both channels, and historically, most brands have used Paid Search to substitute for Natural Search performance when not in the Top 10 SERPs.

“Natural Search specialists should supplement their competitor list with cross-channel key performance indicators (KPIs) to identify true leaders in their industry, as well as uncover weaknesses of vulnerable competitors,” says Zohrer. “This information is particularly useful in choosing which battles to fight: if a site is considerably difficult to outperform in Natural Search, resources could be allocated to another keyword instead of wasting them in pursuing a rank that is not realistic.”

In Natural Search, sudden drops in performance can often be puzzling. Are competitors boosting their pages to outperform rival sites? Or might this drop in performance have resulted from recent changes implemented? Has the search engine released another update to the algorithm? Is this caused by other issues like industry-wide trends? Without the appropriate frame of reference, Natural Search specialists can spend a lot of time trying to answer the unknown. In worst case scenarios, misleading evidence can result in corrective measures that worsen performance further, another aspect the white paper raises for adding Paid Search into the equation.

Natural Search specialists should make the evaluation of both Natural and Paid Search data a permanent habit when evaluating performance

Natural Search specialists should take a step back and analyse Natural Search performance in conjunction with Paid Search performance. According to Hydra’s Zohrer, this will help pinpoint if any sudden drops might be a channel-specific issue or a wider phenomenon affecting performance such as seasonal variations or industry-wide trends. Additionally, since search is experienced as one channel by users (Natural Search + Paid Search), a sharp performance improvement in Paid Search paired to a sharp decrease in Natural Search performance may also hint at potential strategy cannibalisation between channels.

“None of the above alternatives can be properly considered without incorporating Paid Search into the analysis, which is why Natural Search specialists should make the evaluation of both Natural and Paid Search data a permanent habit when evaluating performance.”

Hydra undertook a survey*** of over 300 UK-based digital marketers focussing on how digital marketing teams currently operate, based on collaboration, use of technologies and competitor analysis. A resounding 90% said they would see an advantage in using a common reporting and campaign implementation platform, indicative of an innate need for greater collaboration between these disciplines within digital marketing teams. The survey also highlighted that those firms with multiple digital marketing disciplines whose teams interacted regularly, displayed greater confidence in their success.

The One platform from Hydra aims to encourage this positive cross-pollination of ideas between the two disciplines by allowing Natural Search specialists to easily, efficiently and accurately derive insights from Paid Search campaigns. Its live data reports uncover the most important search terms and trends – from the largest keyword opportunities to the top performing companies across multiple sectors in Natural and Paid Search.

China Watch Blog has learnt that many readers had difficulty in accessing our RSS feed, if so, kindly try again by going to:

http://www.gctl8.com/blog/feed/

Any inconvenience is highly regretted.

China Watch Blog has picked up this SEO Advice for New Sites and Startups from netapplications.com.

In its latest newsletter, it says that the goal of any business is to make money, and the only way to make money is to get clients/customers.

“For my Boston SEO company, getting clients means doing a lot of upfront work to find, cultivate and close the deal with a great lead. But for every great lead that comes down the pipeline, I have to sort through at least a dozen bad ones. My business has reached the point where I don’t have to take on every potential client that comes my way. I can afford to be a little picky, and I strive to work with clients that I know I can help. If I think that my company is not the SEO firm for you, I’m not afraid to say so.

“After 12 years in the search marketing industry, I have found that most of the “bad” SEO clients are startups and new site owners. It usually has nothing to do with the personality of people running the sites, or even the sites themselves. More often than not it has to deal with their expectations. One of the most important things to remember is that SEO is long-term! What you do know may not have an immediate effect on your site, but it will resonate for years to come,” says netapplications.com.

China Watch Blog presents the fourth and last part of the SEOs Factors or Myths, which is the Part 4 of the IV part series by Michael Bluejay.

Q13. Should at any time my rankings change, or even disappear from the results, then should I consider that a permanent change?

FACT: Rankings are fleeting. There is no such thing as ever achieving a permanent ranking in Google or any other engine. The engines constantly modify their ranking algorithms (and keep them secret to boot), and every day new pages appear on the web, some of which will by vying for your spot in the SERPs. Think of every search you do in an engine as a snapshot of that moment in time. Just because you’re on the first page doesn’t mean you’ll stay there. And just because you drop from the first page and disappear from the top 100 doesn’t mean that you’re lost forever, either. Also realize that there is no real way to tell when a change happens and for how long that change will last. You might drop out of the top 100 for a couple of days or weeks, or it may be many months. The point is that there’s no way to tell. Consider the SERPs as 100% fleeting.

The important thing to take from this is to accept that rankings change, you will rarely know why, and you shouldn’t panic if your ranking drops or even if it disappears.

Q14. Are the search engine evaluation of my site’s front page the same as the inside pages?

FACT: The search engines evaluate each page on your site individually, on its merits. That means that your inside pages could rank as well or better than your front page. This isn’t a bad thing, it’s a good thing. Most webmasters concentrate on getting a lot of visitors to their home page from a few “money” search terms. But you can easily get more traffic to your site overall by getting a few visits to each of your inside pages from less common searches. Yesterday the most popular way people found my personal site was by searching the engines for “austin radio stations”. A total of 22 people did that. But 939 people found my site through the search engines total, on any term. The #1 search into my site still accounts for only 2.3% of my traffic from the engines.

PageRank (PR) — Google’s measurement of how important a page is.

Q15. Is it true that the sites with the highest “PageRank” will always rank higher in the SERPs.

FACT: PageRank is just one criterion Google uses in figuring out how to rank pages. A site with a lower PageRank will show up higher in the SERPs if Google thinks it’s more relevant than one with a lower PageRank.

16. Should I consider another site’s PageRank when deciding whether to link to them or whether to ask for a link.

FACT: And how would that serve your visitors? Link to another site if you think it’s of value to your visitors. Ask for a link if you think your site is of value to the other site’s visitors. Don’t focus on PageRank. Focus on building a good site.

China Watch Blog presents the third part of a four part series from Michael Bluejay on SEOs, factor or myth.

Q9. Do sites that use JavaScript get penalized?

FACT: Search engines aren’t stupid. They’re not going to penalize a site for using standard technology. If your links exist only in JavaScript (e.g., ) then the engines can’t follow those links, but that’s not a penalty, that’s poor development on your part. Having JavaScript links is no problem as long as you also have standard links (e.g., ) somewhere on the page.

China Watch Blog presents the second part of a four part series on SEOs Facts and Myths, by Michael Bluejay.

Q5. Instead of focusing on building a quality site with good, useful information, should I try to find some “trick” to make my site rank well.

FACT: Focusing on tricks is a waste of time. Build a quality site and they will come. There is no magic bullet which will rocket you to the top of the Search engine results pages (SERPs). There is no way Google could rank eight billion web pages by using only one criterion. There are reportedly hundreds of different factors in Google’s ranking algorithm. Thus your chances of dominating the SERPs by making one specific change are slim.

There have been certain tricks that people have discovered over the years, but as soon as they exploited them the engines closed the loopholes. The engines aren’t stupid, and they’re not going to stand by while a bunch of webmasters try to game the system. Any trick you might be lucky enough to discover will have a short shelf life. It’s not a long-term strategy.

Q6. Is it a good idea to make my keywords invisible, such as by having white letters on a white background.

FACT: The engines are not stupid. But stupid tricks like invisible text can get your site penalized by some engines. Focusing on tricks is a waste of time.

Q7. Is it a good idea for trading links with any site which will link to

FACT: Trading links with anyone is silly. If you have standards in real life (and you should), then you should have standards on the web, too. Don’t associate with useless websites. Choose your friends carefully.

8. It is true that search engines can’t deal with framed sites, or they penalize framed sites.

FACT: Search engines can index framed sites just fine. They’re not stupid. There are a whole host of other reasons why you shouldn’t use frames, such as that users can’t bookmark or link to any page other than your home page, and when a search engine lists an inside page the visitor will arrive at that page without the surrounding frames. (Yes, you can force the frames with JavaScript, but that’s an extremely clumsy and awkward solution.)