My SES China Experience
I just recently attended the SES Conference held in Nanjing, China, and just thought i should share some of my experience on the SES Conference.
Before the actual conference, there was an SES Networking Party held at Xuanwu Hotel. The party is sort of a get-to-know different individuals who will attend the conference. Honestly, i’m not a “marketing/networking” guy, i’m just a “technical” guy. I’m not really comfortable with this kind of network party thing. Though i meet some individuals, i’m not really accustomed to doing this “networking”. So, I went back to our room, and chat with my friends and my family.
The conference was held in Nanjing International Exhibition Center. Luckily, it wasn’t that far from our Xuanwu Hotel , the cost of the taxi is around 10 yuan. The place is still around 70% under construction. I guess this was the only place in Nanjing where the organisers can accomodate such an event. There were around 400+ attendees (80% chinese). Before entering the conference, a headset was provided for attendees who doesn’t understand chinese/mandarin language.
The conference kick-off by Chris Sherman doing an interview with Johnny Chou (Google China President), and Jack Ma (Yahoo! China & Alibaba CEO). They talked about the present and future status of Google and Yahoo in China. I actually was amazed by the response of the attendees with regards to Jack Ma, i guess he was really popular in China. I think he’s the internet version of Yao Ming in China. 
The first session was about an overview of Search Engine Marketing presented by Chris Sherman. Majority of the attendees were actually new to SEO (most are into marketing and business stuff), so i think this serves as an eye-opener for these guys. He talked about the basics of organic SEO and Paid Listings, as well as discuss some important aspects of the two topics. I really liked his presentation, i just wish i could have the copy of his slides.
Update: Thanks Chris for giving me the slides!
Another speaker (forgot his name) discussed about the statistical data of Search Engines in China. In summary, the No. 1 search engine in China is Baidu, followed by Google, and Yahoo. The speaker also shown some stats based on age bracket, and found out that Baidu is very popular for students/teenagers, whereas Google is popular among professionals. But where is MSN in the stats? 
The afternoon session was divided into 2 parts, the Basic and Advanced Tracks. The first track focuses on the Organic SEO while the Advanced Track focuses on Paid Listings. Since i can shift to both tracks, i just selected which i think is best for each track. I attended the PPC (Advanced), Meet the Search Engines (Basic), and Search Term Research (Advanced). Of the 3 sessions, i really learned a lot on the PPC session, specially the presentation of Dale Hursh about “Compelling Content and Landing Pages”. It gave me a better view of how PPC would actually work or fail. I think i should really try the PPC and mix it with my organic listings.
Meet the Search Engines session was sort of like a “political rally” :). Representatives from Baidu, Yahoo, Google, and the other search engine (i forgot the name) were really firing indirectly at each other. One guy asked a question about a survey conducted in China on what Search Engine is the most commonly used among Chinese. Based on the survey, 12 out of 13 questions/categories was won by Google. Another thing is, the survey was sponsored by Google :D. The speaker for Google quickly defended his company saying:
“Google doesn’t not sponsor surveys with predicted results”
The last session, didn’t actually talked about Search Term Research, but one speaker from Google, talked about Google Adsense. Someone made a inquiry on how much percentage of amount does Google Adsense gave on a Google Adsense publisher, asking if it’s fixed or not. To my dismay, i wasn’t satisfied with the answer of the speaker. It seems that there’s something that he’s hiding :).
Google was sponsoring a Google Dance Party after the Day 1 session to be held in another hotel. I attended the party, but i didn’t dance :). Fortunately, i got a Google T-shirt! I hope it’s not fake/pirated t-shirt
Day 2 session focuses about Google Sitemaps, Link Building Strategies, and SEM Campaign Management. As i noticed, the number of attendees were relatively small compared to Day 1. At least now i know that Google Sitemaps were supported by Yahoo and MSN, as one of the speaker confirms it. Need to try it out myself. Another good speaker in the event was Mike Grehan, he’s really prepared for his presentation. Together with Dale Hursh, i think they were the best speakers in the event.
To summarized everything, here are my observations and comments:
- There’s a big opportunity in China, because they’re just starting to realize the value of SEM. If i could just contact a manufacturer in China…
- PPC is also key to SEM. I need to get an Adwords account to test it out.
- Only a few chinese individuals were “SEO specialists”. Judging on the presentation of the chinese speakers, they didn’t actually talk about the SEO/SEM, it’s more of a “product launch” type of session when the speakers are chinese.
- Never attend a conference if you don’t understand the language. Although, a translator was provided during each session, it’s still hard to comprehend the translated words
Overall, it was a good experience, and hopefully i could attend other SEO/SEM conferences in the future.
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