International keyword research: How to improve SEO results in the Chinese market

When expanding into new markets, digital marketing is a key strategy that cannot be ignored to ensure that the brand is effectively displayed at all touchpoints. To this end, your marketing strategy not only needs to include localization of campaigns, landing pages and websites, but also needs to focus on search engine optimization (SEO). However, simply translating keywords is not enough to achieve the best results - literal translation may cause many problems and even affect the growth of business. Therefore, it is crucial to conduct in-depth international keyword research, especially in the Chinese market.

Why is simply translating keywords not enough?

Regional cultural differences play an important role in keyword research. Although different countries have different languages, people who speak the same language may search in completely different ways in different regions. Taking the Chinese market as an example, people may use different words and expressions when searching for a certain product. For example, in China, consumers may be more inclined to use "cheap hotel" instead of "cheap hotel", and in some specific cities, certain words are used more frequently. Ensuring the accurate selection of localized keywords can help brands better capture potential customer groups and avoid missing business opportunities due to inaccurate keywords.

Cultural differences between search engines and machine translation

The way people search for information through search engines such as Baidu and Sogou is greatly influenced by cultural differences. As search engines continue to evolve, they are able to better understand the real needs of users. In fact, search engines are already able to recognize some local slang, further improving the accuracy of search results.

However, most machine translation tools (including Google Translate) still have shortcomings in dealing with cultural differences and are usually unable to fully adapt to local language usage habits. This is why it is particularly important to use professional international SEO service companies to conduct keyword research, because they can use professional linguistic knowledge to select the most appropriate search terms for specific regions, especially in the Chinese market.

International keyword research: hotel industry example

Although some keywords or expressions may be universal across multiple countries, they may not reflect the actual search habits of local markets. For example, an international hotel chain brand once intended to translate its English keywords directly into Chinese, but the results were not ideal. Since the search volume of the translated keywords in the Chinese market was too low, this translation behavior was not only ineffective, but also a waste of marketing budget. The table below shows some of the translated keywords and their search volume. You can see that many translated keywords do not have enough search volume to support the marketing strategy.

Table 1: Keyword translation

As the table shows, simply translating keywords not only wastes budget, but also brings almost no results. On the surface, ignoring in-depth keyword research may save some short-term costs, but in the long run, the missed traffic will lead to more financial losses.

In contrast, when another hotel chain conducted professional international keyword research in the Chinese market, the results were very different. By accurately selecting keywords for the Chinese market, the hotel chain's click volume increased by more than 40% compared to the original data, proving the importance of international keyword research.

Table 2: International Keyword Research

Conclusion and the Importance of International Keyword Research

In short, simple keyword translation cannot effectively take into account cultural differences in different regions, nor can it accurately reflect users' search methods, which will cause brands to miss out on valuable search traffic.

If you want to learn more about how to improve your international keyword strategy, please contact our professional international SEO keyword research team. We will help you develop a more accurate global digital marketing strategy and lay the foundation for your brand's success in the Chinese market .

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