Top fifty China Business articles

As we are upgrading our China Business website, I'm making an inventory on articles published in recent months. It is a great joy to see what headlines we have covered so far. Here's my top fifty China Business articles we have run (thanks to many true China Experts, who's web sites you should visit if you are looking to make the most of your business in China).

The list of articles is huge. And best of all: all of them are free to access and read. So take your pick, and if you quickly want to find one particular one, use the search-function on the top right-hand side of http://www.chinasuccessstories.com/!

Enjoy, M

Intellectual Property in Franchising Relationships - the view from China and Hong Kong

Credit Cards and Debit Cards in Nanning China

Doing Business in China

Opportunity Knocks in China

How could SMEs get business in China? Winning big brands by product fit

Strategic Management in China: How To Be Fast And Focused

How to order a quality inspection

Assess Your Risk, Plan, and THEN Outsource to China

Effective sourcing in China requires Western companies to change

Hao Bizarre, How Bazaar

18 Practical Tips on Working with a Chinese Partner

China's Mandatory Welfare and Insurance Payment System

How to Close Down a Representative Office in Shanghai

Chinese Business & Culture

The communication skills of Sun Tzu

Guanxi at the Dinner Table

Investing China: Risks, opportunities, incentives

Tips for doing business in China

Working with Chinese factories

Common staffing mistakes in China, and how to avoid them

Chinese Lawyers: The New Generation

China Business Resources

Five ways to tarnish your company's image in China

Sun Tzu the Art of War Strategy - Is this the forbidden knowledge of success

IP Protection - Best Practice Tips

Understanding China

Humor in Sino-Western business relations

Are China Expats De-Facto Colonialists?

A (Consumer) Storm in a (Foreign) Coffee Cup

The Nature of China's Business Press

How to manage your Operation management department in China

Misfortune in Chinese Business Start-up

Innovation: China story a problem

Building a Business in China

Mentality, Mindset, Mianzi – How to Avoid a Crisis

How do you keep your Intellectual Property secret when it's your sales pitch?

Selling in the world's largest consumer market

7 Reasons Why You Should Come to China!

Scientific study on Guanxi in Business

The Internet Marketing Situation In China

Licensing Your Trademark in China: One More Thing to Remember

Due Diligence in China: Revealing the Dark Side of the Moon

Business and travel Etiquette in China

How to work with interpreters

The Many Faces of China

Pirates of the Middle Kingdom

What is wrong with Chinese TV?

Man Man Chi

Building rapport and negotiations with Chinese, or "No Relationship…No Business!"

Open Your Mind, Change Your Paradigm

Face, it is all about respect

China Business Practice and Business Etiquette Tips

Surviving Dinner & the Drinks

Business cards: your Chinese identity!

China's Five Surprises

Finding Manufacturers in China: Building a Network the Wrong Way

Doing business in China Chinese Social and Business Culture

Understanding Chinese Employees

Five Unpleasant Truths of Doing Business in China

Summary of Registration for Foreign-Invested Enterprises in China

"No commerce, no evil" is no more: how China's ethical standards affect your business

Import from China: Getting Started

Doing Business in China: Opportunities and Challenges for European Companies

Impressive list, right?
Imagine: we have only just started. So if you are in any way looking to get that extra leverage doing business in or with China. Or if you want to prevent yourself from making mistakes that cost others, who found out the hard way, many millions; then you should visit http://www.chinasuccessstories.com/ immediately (and make sure to subscribe to the – also free – newsletter).

Favorite China Business information source?

What is your Favorite China Business information source? That was the question we asked on http://www.chinasuccessstories.com/ Here are the results:

• China Business Web sites, blogs: 41%
• Books and magazines on China Business: 19%
• Business fairs, seminars, conferences: 16%
• China network clubs, groups, communities: 12%
• Your (www.chinasuccessstories.com) website! (1): 7%

Answers marked with 1 are added by a guest, so they obviously don't weigh as much.

The winners are therefore China Business Web sites, blogs and Books and magazines on China Business. Did we miss any China Business information topics?

China Business Blog goes LinkedIn

Dear China friends,

You are most welcome to join our (as in: www.chinasuccessstories.com) China Business group on LinkedIn! I'm positive you will benefit from it, being able to get into contact with other China Business minded professionals like yourself. Please visit http://www.linkedin.com/e/gis/36656/50377703F693 for details.

M
(I am assuming you've subscribed to our newsletter on doing business in China on www.chinasuccessstories.com already. If you haven't, you should do so before requesting to join the China Business group on LinkedIn).

Facebook’s China traffic killer app?

Imagine having 50 China friends on Facebook (which is not a lot), imagine 10 of them installed the Blog Friends app (which is not a lot) and 10 of their China interested friends did the same thing (trying to make this a simple explanation). Every time you publish a new post to your (China Business or else) blog, a hundred profile-pages (10x10) are updated with your feed! Broadcasting to an audience of like-minded people has never, ever, been easier as far as I'm concerned. Try it! Look me up: my name on Facebook is Michael de Beer, you will recognize me easily by the China-red Puma/Tuna avatar. -> http://www.facebook.com/s.php?q=michael+de+beer&n=-1&init=s Whatever you do, do not hesitate to add me as a blog friend. Doing so, your blog will show up on my pages, viewed by many, and my China Business Blog, www.chinasuccessstories.com will show up on yours to return the favor. Forget link exchanging. This will have a way bigger effect in the long run, driving much more high quality traffic to your China site.

China Business SEO / SEM world speed record for Google?

This week China Business Success Stories achieved an important milestone in its effort to become one of the top China Business web sites out there. In what should qualify as an official world speed record, we accomplished one of our short term objectives: reaching the top ten spot in Google, searching for China Business. Big deal? Huge! It means we beat around 700 to 800 million others, leaving but a few to outperform us on this particular search. Forget top 1%. Forget being ranked in the first 1% of the first 1% searching for China Business. If I'm not mistaken, we are now in the first 1%, of the first 1%, of the first 1%, of the first 1%, and then some. Effectively leaving more than 99,999999% other China Business sites behind us!

World record?
Is it a world record? Well if anything, it goes to prove – make sure to discuss this with your online marketer – that within 8 months you can establish amazing results, if you are willing to spend the time and effort (in our case 1FTE of work at least). And it doesn't have to costs half a million dollars, if the web site:

• is on topic with the desired keywords
• actually has to offer benefits to its audience
• is well designed as far as usability is concerned
• content has more than one contributor and offers ways to respond
• is accessible to / optimized for search engine spiders
• gets noticed by some 2.0-type of web sites out there (as long as it is still 2007 when you read this)
  

China Business SEO / SEM stats
Depending on which country you are from (and in what language your OS (Operating System / Windows) is!), you can now find us on: the number Nr. 4 spot on the first Page in Google if you're looking for China Business related sites in Holland/ Dutch language. That is to say, on at least 3 days of the week. Google uses different databases and servers, so half the time you would need to look on the second page of Google's results. As far as I could gather, in the US we are on the third page, in India same thing, etc. Where exactly? Please tell me.

Look for China Business on any search engine of your choice, and let me know where we stand?

Make sure to click our 'organic result' as well, because that is one of many factors Google uses to determine whether our China Business world speed record was good judgment. I think it is. I hope you agree!

PS Any tips, suggestions or comments on how to improve our China Business ranking (or on any given keyword), are highly appreciated. For instance: what on earth do we have to do to get PageRank 7 – in world speed record time obviously – on Google? Is it a matter of waiting, or keep trying?

What’s your favorite China Business Topic?

That was the question we asked on http://www.chinasuccessstories.com/ Here are the results:

Chinese Law: 11%

Importing from China: 37%

Guanxi intricacies: 5%

Marketing in China: 15%

Banking & Finance China1: 7%

electronics1: 10%

chinese gadgets1: 2%

euopean law1: 2%

chinese gadgets1: 2%

import export1: 7%

petroleum1: 2%

Glassine paper1: 1%

Recruitment in China1: 1%

All answers marked with 1 are added by a guest, so as some were added later, they obviously don't weigh as much. The winners are therefore Marketing in China, Banking & Finance China, import export and Importing from China. Did we miss any China Business topics?

Crazy Chinese Business Analyses

As promised: I’d get back on Crazy Egg's analysis of our China Business site. And – call me crazy – I couldn’t wait and ran a test this weekend. The results of which I’m happy to share. What makes our China Business site click? Have a look!

My First conclusions (make sure to click for the large version of the jpg):

• Most visitors click in the top 10 or 20% of your page if it is as long as ours is. So it is love at first sight, or you are out.
  
• Big surprise to me was that almost nobody clicks on the pictures (they link just as well, but somehow most people prefer the text link). What is the expression? Mind over matter; function over form; something like that? Help me out here. Content is king? You tell me…


• People absolutely love to click on poll radio-buttons (bet your statistics program never found that out for you until now, right?).
  
• When provided for, visitors actually use the search function on your web site – also quite remarkable. I mean with Google toolbar in place to search for content directly on any site, I’d personally NEVER use that.


• And finally, I’m not sure yet if visitors actually click on specific words in text-links or not. Most clicks are centered, but the ‘prominent’/’interesting’-topic words seem to outperform the others by a fraction.

Jump to a crazy – way to early to decide – conclusion? Why not. Don’t forget there are many more things to deduct from this data – not to mention what Crazy Egg’s confetti feature has to offer. But here’s what I think matters to potential advertisers:

Drum roll?
From this day on I’m convinced that advertisers (China Business related, or any for that matter) should demand a spot in the top section of your pages, and should be well happy to pay at least xx times more for that spot than the amount paid for advertisements on the bottom of pages.

Also: they should demand text based ads. As our site for instance draws many people looking for China Business, China market, China sourcing, China law, etc. make sure to get those words in in your copy, and you’ll be looking forward to a crazy response on your China advertising dollar!

M