Recently, I met the Principal of Lala Curio by chance.
I could tell almost immediately after scanning through the 5 finalists for Chivas Regal’s The Venture capital competition that she had something special with her “social enterprise” and despite being friends with the eventual winner, the principal of JobDoh, I felt that Laura Cheung deserved more support for her venture.
As a result, I “ventured” over to one of her two boutiques and spent a bit more time with her and a student of mine who’s a designer. During the conversation, we talked about SEO and how possibly her website could benefit from showing up higher in the search results for phrases related to her enterprise.
Like most entrepreneurs or leaders of important missions, Chueng is very busy. She has no time to learn about SEO, let alone try to even implement all that’s needed to make it work in her favor. As a result, I decided to do a little research on her behalf. So, this pro bono activity didn’t just become another one of my interest projects, I thought I would document some of the research I did for her.
First off, I asked what she thought would be great to show up #1 when people searched on google. Cheung, from what I remember, answered “artisanship.”
As an artist, I could completely understand. As a western educated artist, it makes incredible sense why she chose this term.
In the United States, the term is higher up the chain of top searches when you spawn many more ideas by using Google’s Keyword Planner.
“Artisanship” ranks #19 with related searches in the United States
“Artisanship” ranks #22 with related searches in the World
In the world, the keyword phrase is a little lower on the list, but still around the same place in rankings. There are many “reference searches” basically defining terms of all nature. People like reference online – especially when it comes to searches. There’s a significant reason why Wikipedia shows up at the top of most searches for almost any topic: it’s because people are wanting “to learn about the topics” more than actually leveraging them in many cases.
If you check out my “Most searched topics on the internet” post, you will see the top 3 search topics after adult topics are reference:
- Translate
- Maps
- Weather
And the trends say these topics will only increase:
“Translate” Search Trends
“Maps” Search Trends
“Weather” Search Trends
“Artisanship” is not as popular in Hong Kong
However, Hong Kong, where Laura is located doesn’t think like the west. Westerners who are successful in the East have figured out how to adapt to the local “ways,” but many from the west do not as well. Our mindset of the west would tell us to use “artisanship,” but instead, the phrase is much further down the list of searches:
It’s estimated to be searched at most 10 times a month as well.
“Artisan” is the top search in HK as well as the USA and the World. And the gap between #1 and #2 is significant along with the rest of the searches being quite small in comparison.
Seeing these new learnings for me in the world of “artisanship,” I immediately recalled what I thought about when I listened to Cheung’s presentation during the finals at Chivas: “chinese art.” So, I started digging…
First examining Hong Kong.
Top 25 Keyword Searches for “Chinese Art” in Hong Kong
So, my gut was right finding that there was almost triple the inventory of searches for the #1 search in this category: “chinese art.” Even the #2 phrase, “chinese calligraphy” outdoes the #1 “artisan” search mentioned above.
Moving to the US…
Top 25 Keyword Searches for “Chinese Art” in the United States
How about worldwide?
Top Chinese Art Searches in the World
Total Searches from the “Suggested Keyword Ideas” from Google Adwords
Using the full dataset, I was able to add up all the various phrases and total inventory of searches and get the following:
- Hong Kong: 653 search permutations, 6270 Estimated Searches
- USA: 530 search permutations, 33,220 Estimated Searches
- Worldwide: 526 search permutations, 81,900 Estimated Searches
Top 5 Chinese Art Search Phrases
- Chinese Art
- Chinese Calligraphy
- Chinese Painting
- Chinese Brush Painting
- Chinese Landscape Painting
Despite the numbers in the United States and elsewhere, google tells us that the interest for “chinese art” searches is highest in Singapore:
Regional Interest in Chinese Art (via Search)
Learning that the main focus around the boutiques is to help with “interior design” with the Chinese artisanship, I thought I would provide a little insight about what people are looking for without the “chinese” element. Correlating the two different, but definitely not disparate areas can spawn even more ideas.
Top 25 Interior Design Keyword Searches – Global
800 Keyword Search Permutations equaled approximately 2,119,760 searches globally (note: google sometimes limits some suggestionst to 800)
Top 25 Interior Design Keyword Searches – Hong Kong
800 Keyword Search Permutations equaled approximately 16,350 searches in HK
*Do note that Hong Kong and Asian search landscapes are full of chinese searches. For example, if I use Google Translate and turn “interior design” into Traditional Chinese (i.e., Cantonese) for the Hong Kong market, you’ll see that most of the locals are searching not in English for “interior design,” but ” 室內è¨è¨ˆ” which according to google means interior design. “Interior Design” is searched 3600 times, but “室內è¨è¨ˆ” is searched almost double that amount.
Top Traditional Chinese Interior Design (室內è¨è¨ˆ) Keyword Searches
