Creating a website in Chinese... questions!

[effisk]

Hi there,

my company is going to extend its activities in China.
In order to do so, we will create a website in Chinese (Mandarin). Because I don't speak Chinese and because I am not familiar with issues that could occur because the website has not been properly prepared for the Chinese market (in terms of SEO, etc.), I have a few questions to submit, I hope some of you already have been confronted with these problems before and can give me some advice...


1/ We are about to host our new website in Hong Kong for accessiblity reasons. The provider we have selected claims that there is a good speed between HK and China (most of the Chinese websites I visit from home (France) are very slow, and websites out of China are very slow when visited from China). Is that connection speed related to the host, the country where the site is hosted...?

2/ I am not sure how the website should be encoded. UTF-8 seems to be the best option. What about GB2312? How does-it impact on Search Engine ranking?

3/ Speaking about search engines, does anyone know what the most used search engines are? Baidu? Any info about how these search engines work (compared to Google...)?

4/ Last but not least, a "marketing" company registered our-company-name.cn the day before we did it (probably one of the hosting companies we contacted). So now we're stuck with our-company-name.com.cn
Does anybody know what the law about domain names is in China? Is it possible to claim the domain name? (our company name is very specific)

I'll try to keep looking for info in the next days, I'll post my findings here, if in the meantime someone has some ideas and suggestions...

cheers.

effisk.

[kgun]

Baidu and as far as I know it is the preferred Chinese SE.

Advice: There has been a lot of related discussions at WebMasterWorld, and there are at least three people from China at that forum. Their nic's are:

gouqi
hotice_2002
redstorm

You may read there and ask them if you do not get a good enough answer is the best advice I can give you. Maybe they know people that can translate your site to Chinese.

If I remember right, it is no point in hosting the site in Hong Kong. Mainlaind China should perhaps be better.

A .com site may be good enough.

Kjell Gunnar Bleivik
http://www.multifinanceit.com/
http://www.blognorway.com/

[effisk]

Hi Kjell and thanks for your quick reply.

Originally Posted by kgun

Advice: There has been a lot of related discussions at WebMasterWorld, and there are at least three people from China at that forum. Their nic's are:
gouqi
hotice_2002
redstorm

I have a read-only access to this forum (I haven't registered). I'll have a look anyway, I'll probably find some good info.

Originally Posted by kgun

You may read there and ask them is the best advice I can give you. Maybe they know people that can translate your site to chinese.

I actually don't need any translation service. It is a website providing highly technical information, I know a few experts who can translate my pages but they know nothing about web hosting/SEO/etc. (it's not their job).

Originally Posted by kgun

If I remember right, it was no point in hosting the site in Hong Kong. Mainlain China should perhaps be better.

That's interesting. I have a closer look at that issue.

Originally Posted by kgun

A .com site may be good enough.

We actually already use this extention for our main website and we want a .cn extension to make it look more "local". It will be a complete different website from the original English one.

[kgun]

subpage for Asia (most important in my subjective view along the right edge under the heading Far East).

http://multifinanceit.com/markets/Asia/asia.htm

Also look under the heading "China" in the linkcollection "Links" in the upper right corner.

Directories and SE's here:

http://multifinanceit.com/markets/regionalsearch.htm


Kjell Gunnar Bleivik
http://multifinanceit.com/
http://www.blognorway.com/