Language Usage for SEO in Hong Kong

[ecommercebc]

Hi guys,

I was wondering if you could help me with an SEO query for language usage in Hong Kong? Specifically, I'm aware that in mainland China it's preferred to use simplified Chinese.

However, in Hong Kong, if you want to rank well in Google and Yahoo! HK, should you be use traditional or simplified Chinese in your web content?

Any guidance would be much appreciated.

[AlexMcKee]

Interesting question. The Government of Hong Kong uses standard Chinese in simplified characters on its website while the population largely speaks Cantonese which is now found in a written form frequently used online and in social settings.

I suggest you have a look at Google Trends for Hong Kong and see if the bulk of searches are being made with simplified characters or traditional characters. The demographic your website will be targeting will also be a factor.

[ecommercebc]

This is really helpful - thank you.

Something I am struggling with is finding a solid tool that detects if text is in simplified or traditional Chinese. I must admit, I'm not too familiar with either to know the nuances of each one, aside from a few obvious markers like strokes. Google has the best translate tool I know of, but it just translates into 'Chinese'. Are there any language detection tools you'd recommend for detecting if text is simplified or traditional?

[AlexMcKee]

My apologies for overlooking your response. A good tool is https://github.com/jpatokal/script_detector. It is a library for Ruby and you can use the interactive Ruby console (irb) to use the function to identify script in an easy way. If you need help/guidance with that drop me a reply here or by private message and I'd be happy to help.