Creating a Chinese language site

Comments and suggestions welcome!

[HarryM]

There have been several threads about this, but they mainly concern commercial sites. My proposed site is a much more humble affair - an info/hobby site which (hopefully!) may earn its keep with AdSense.

Currently I have a multi-lingual .com site hosted in the UK with approximately 60 pages each in GB2312 and Big5. (In my profile.) It gets traffic from China, HK, Taiwan, etc., and is indexed in Baidu, etc. The GB pages carry AdSense. I propose to split the pages off and create a new Chinese language only site, which I then intend to expand.

I would welcome comments on any of the following.

Hosting - am I correct in assuming the best location would be Hong Kong? I am thinking of speed of access within the region.

(I am currently considering a specific HK hosting company, but as to name it would be against the TOS, let's just say
it has a name that sounds very athletic, or something you do to start your car when the battery is flat.)

I assume a .com would be best in order not to get regionalized by the search engines. Or would a .hk be better?

Domain name - in English? In Pinyin? In abbreviated Pinyin (e.g., zg for Zhong Guo)? But does Pinyin mean anything to Big5 users?

Directory names - In English? In abbreviated Pinyin? What's the best practice?

Each page will have a link to toggle between a GB or B5 duplicate page. As the GB pages carry AdSense, I propose to make the default home page the GB one. Is there any alternative approach?

Any opinions when Google may make Traditional-character Chinese an approved language? Or is it worthwhile considering some other form of advertising on the Big5 pages?

As I said I would welcome comments or suggestions.

[HarryM]

<bump>

Anyone?

[redstorm]

I'd like to give you some feedbacks considering this matter:
I do not think the place of hosting is a problem. But if you have confidence in your site and want to bring it with a bright future, i advise you to host in Mainland China for most Chinese population lives here.
you can either choose pinyin or English to name the domain ,do not use abbreviated Pinyin because it's meanless most time.
A com is also suitable for most domain names in China.
what's Directory names?
if you want the site performs well, place the simplified Chinese content on a different domain name with the tradional Chinese content.
Do you know google also has its Taiwan version?
Just some feedbacks for your reference.
Redstorm

[HarryM]

Thanks redstorm,

By directory names I meant folder names. I note that the site in your profile uses a mixture of English and pinyin for directory names, for example /newscenter/ and /ziliao/. It also uses abbreviated pinyin for some file names, e.g., rsrm.htm.

As I am starting afresh which is the best way to follow, or doesn't it matter?

[bill]

Hosting

I don't know that the hosting question [webmasterworld.com] has been definitively answered. I've hosted my Chinese sites outside China for years without difficulty.

I assume a .com would be best

All of my Chinese sites are currently .com as are those of most of my competitors in the SERPs. If you're going for a wider language based audience rather than the country based audience then this is a safe option.

Domain name

After much debate I went with pinyin spellings for the main domains. I registered every permeation of the names in English and pinyin, but only market the pinyin name. In most cases the pinyin spelling is the same keystroke pattern as entering the characters on a keyboard.

Directory names

In CJK sites the file naming doesn't really come into play on an SEO level, so you can really go either way. However, your users may appreciate it if you do romanized directory and filenames.

[guoqi]

Domain name - in English? In Pinyin? In abbreviated Pinyin (e.g., zg for Zhong Guo)? But does Pinyin mean anything to Big5 users?

Pinyin was approved by the "wonderful" leader of mainland China - Mr. Mao half an centry ago with the idea of making Chinese writing same as English writing in the future.

Taiwanese people has no idea what pinyin is.

[redstorm]

I agree with Bill on "Directory Names"

Pinyin was approved by the "wonderful" leader of mainland China - Mr. Mao half an centry ago with the idea of making Chinese writing same as English writing in the future.

it seems interesting. But i think Chinese language is on another parallel line to English language, both of them have no chance to be similar. Pinyin is used for pronunciation, not used to replace the "square form" Chinese character.

[HarryM]

Thanks all,

Redstorm suggested creating two seperate sites, one for GB and one for Big5. Is this a good idea? Or just stick with internal redirects on one site?

With two sites I would probably use pinyin names on the GB site and English on the Big5 site. Chinese names are difficult for a Big5 site where there are so many different transliteration systems. However two sites costs double the money. :(

I have also seen one CJK site which uses javascript to direct the user to the page suitable for their browser encoding. It screwed up for me because my browser is set to EN and they didn't have an English page, or any sort of default. But is this something worth pursuing?

[tntpower]

There are many server-side GB<->Big5 software choices. Purchase one and install it on your server. You do not need to create two websites.

[bill]

Multiple sites can make sense in this case as well. It gives you more opportunities to focus on the local aspects of a lot of search engines and directories. If you have the resources then multiple sites with .cn, .hk and .tw domains can take advantage of a lot of the region specific SEO tactics. You would need to tailor the content to each market.

I would not resort to any type of JavaScript redirects for language selection. Although this may sound like a good idea you'll soon find the limitations and frustrations this will cause you and your users. I would suggest clearly separated content with language selection options on each site.

[HarryM]

Thanks Bill,

Basically its an information site, not marketing orientated, so all I really need is to split GB pages from B5 pages. So this could mean two sites. The GB pages I would like to be visible in serps to users in China, Singapore, and anybody else who uses GB. While the B5 pages should be visible for HK, TW, and diaspora Chinese who use traditional characters.

I am not very clear about regional serps as applied to Chinese pages, but I suspect it may be difficult to cover all these regions unless both the sites were .com. Unless you have any suggestions?

[guoqi]

Pinyin is used for pronunciation, not used to replace the "square form" Chinese character.

Pinyin was designed with the idea to replace the "square form" as well. It will come one day. Maybe 50 years later, we will give up the square form.

[tntpower]

Pinyin was designed with the idea to replace the "square form" as well. It will come one day. Maybe 50 years later, we will give up the square form.

It's impossible.