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1. If I run an English site (with a .com name) and wish to target the English speaking people in Japan, Korea and China, who are likely to search in English using the locally popular searchengines, what are my options? I see that the local Googles identify my site but not the local Yahoos. What about the other local searchengines?
2. Is it necessary to book domains with local extensions? Can I have an English site with the local domain extension? If I wrote market-specific pages on the new domains, I am likely to have limited number of pages, am I likely to rank high with that?
Would love to hear comments and suggestions.
Thanks
If I run an English site (with a .com name) and wish to target the English speaking people in Japan, Korea and China, who are likely to search in English using the locally popular searchengines, what are my options?Generally the local engines index sites in the local language, so there aren't too many options. Truly your best bet is to place well in Google in English for your keywords. In Japan the only engine you can submit English sites to other than Google is Goo.
Is it necessary to book domains with local extensions? Can I have an English site with the local domain extension?Not necessary, but possible in Japan and China (not sure about Korea). I've got some English language sites in Japan and China with local domains and it does help for some local engines to a small degree.
If I wrote market-specific pages on the new domains, I am likely to have limited number of pages, am I likely to rank high with that?If it was that easy to rank high I'd be a rich man by now ;) If you're targeting the local market I see no reason why not to go with the local domains. It's a nice touch. However, don't expect a ton of traffic from the English speaking market here. Understand that you're targeting a very small niche.
Not necessary, but possible in Japan and China (not sure about Korea). I've got some English language sites in Japan and China with local domains and it does help for some local engines to a small degree.
If you would not have a local presence in China, I do not think that registering a local domain would help you much.
It would totally depend on your website (content-related or ecommerce-related) and your goal.
My recommendation would be that you had better stick with your ".com" domain but add a subdomain in Chinese to cover your key service/products and this would be portal to access those local visitors not speaking English.
In fact, more and more Chinese could communicate with English, especially those "business-related" people.
