Asia SEO GuruBlogging SEO in Bangkok Thailand

A few weeks ago, old family friend and Brisbane SEO from way back, Ben Wilks (www.benwilks.com) passed through Thailand.

Ben has been involved in SEO since 1996, starting out working on a Queensland tourism portal developed by his family.

Our discourse took place throughout a series of robust drinking sessions in Bangkok’s night life hot spots.

Towards the end of Ben’s journey in Thailand, I had the chance to interview him to get some of his thoughts about both SEO and the domain industry. The interview was recorded in my bungalow at a Muay Thai camp surrounded by jungle in the hills of Phuket. You can even hear the crickets in the background.

Watching the SEO industry change.

Right about here, early in the conversation our focus turned from SEO to the domain name industry.

About the domain industry.

Quality domains and SEO.

On Domain Development

During our conversations we spoke quite a lot about the new .Asia domain extension. Most of the time we diplomatically agreed to disagree :). Even though Ben did agree that .Asia may have a positive future, he did not value it as a attractive domain investment. As I wrote in the previous post, this seems to be consensus amongst most in the domain industry.

Speaking of .Asia

The future of .Asia and domain parking.

Read More

Read Ben’s thoughts on SEO in this article from The Melbourne Age

Get some great insight into the domain industry by watching Frank Schillings key note at the Seattle domain round table (2007).

During the last day of SMX China I had the good fortune to share lunch with Matthew McDougall, Laker Chen and Jessica Zhang from China based search marketing agency Sinotech Search.

I gained a lot of great insights from talking to Matthew especially about the search industry in China and operating a business in Asia.

On operating a business Matthew spoke a lot about how to structure a company to keep staff motivated and said that even on Saturdays and Sundays his team are in the office working away because its what they love doing. He seemed genuinely proud that his company is making a positive difference to the lives of his 120 or so employees.

Matthew has set up companies before, previously setting up in Silicon Valley. Probably the biggest piece of encouragement I took from him was when he said “The first company you setup is always a mess, you do everything wrong. You just have to take everything you learn and use it the second time around.” Really good advice for someone like myself making a lot of hard decisions about company setup in Asia.

After the conference i fired some quick questions to Matthew to get a better understanding of the industry in China.

How should companies targeting Chinese audiences approach beginning paid search campaigns in China?

Matthew: Consult with Sinotech Search Understand local language nuances, local seasonal trends and the way local search engines work (each SE has particular algorithmic structures to contend with)

How does natural search on the major Chinese search engines differ from search engines like Google and Yahoo?

Matthew: Baidu is King! Major difference is number of paid inclusions within organic results. Some keywords will have pages of paid inclusion.

Any predictions about major developments in the search industry in Asia over the next two years?

Matthew: Local Search Providers will continue to dominate. Will see the use of cost per day and cost per acquisition advertising models- support for text, display and video ads.

For more information about the Sinotech group see their website: China SEO Agency Sinotech Search

To read more of Matthew in the Blogosphere check out this post on Thomas Crampton dot com or some comments by Matthew about business in China in the New York Times.