The fundamentals for understanding SEO Baidu in China

With over a billion population and the Chinese economy gaining strength, businesses from across the globe are making a beeline towards China, targeting Chinese customers. The Chinese millennial is well educated with close to a quarter of them attending high school or even university and having well-paid white collared jobs. They are tech-savvy and quality conscious this new generation loves to shop online for the availability of options. Many companies have started online stores, eCommerce websites to lure Chinese millennials.

Having a website for your products or services is almost mandatory in the digital age, but you also need to make sure that it gets that visibility, so your target customers can find it, as also search engines help your customers with bringing up your website in the top page rankings.

Forget Google, think Baidu

We all understand that it is the job of search engines, and worldwide website developers and internet marketers are keeping pace with ever-evolving Google algorithms to get that first-page ranking. In China, however, Google has a limited role to play, with Baidu, the Chinese-owned search engine has about 70% of the market, and is the leader in search engines. Therefore, to be successful in China understanding Baidu,  the Chinese search engine is crucial for your business success. Here are a few tips on getting into the good ranks of Baidu:

Use Simplified Chinese:

Keywords play an important role in search engine optimization; they find the bots of search engines to find your content. You need to use the local Chinese language or simplified Chinese as it is called, so Baidu and the visitors understand your content and your business.

Local Hosting:

With localization gaining ground, it becomes extremely important to use a local hosting service provider, so your website is accessible to as many users as possible. Especially, a local host can help you with local rules, and regulations and make sure your website does not disappear or slow down.

Title:

Titles play an important role in helping search engines find your page, as such every search engine including Google places importance on the title you give to the content on the page. The title appears in the URL of the browser.

Social Media:

The role of Social media in the modern day is immense; the content you develop for social media and publish it there to get into search engine pages, so having a strong social media with an emphasis on search optimization is equally important for your business success.

Technical issues:

Dealing with search engines, you need to develop a website that is highly optimized for Baidu. Some software such as Flash, and Javascript are not recognized by Baidu, if you use these technologies for developing either your website or content, they may not show when the website shows up in the search results and your site looks sloppy.

Use long trail keywords rather than short keywords 

For short and highly competitive keywords you can forget about SEO and cost-efficient solution: SEM, pay per click has become mandatory and Baidu Services are always given priority over other websites. So for keywords like mobile phone “手机,” you go PPC and spend millions to try to get to the first page.

The smartest way to go is to use long-tail keywords: a long trail of keywords that have better chances of avoiding the PPC-intensive policy of Baidu and bring you more qualified traffic.

Want to know more about SEO in China and more advanced techniques designed to make you a well-known brand in China in your industry? Give us a call or send us an e-mail, we will be happy to discuss this with you

Meanwhile, you can check these out :

• Learn more about us and our Baidu SEO/SEM Services
• Top 10 keywords you must know when talking about SEO Baidu there
• Core rules of Baidu SEO in China