Here’s How You Can Optimize For Baidu SEO In China
Optimize Your Baidu SEO: Congratulations! You’ve figured your way through the Chinese market and now you’re all set to take it up by a notch with optimizing your Chinese website! That in itself is a stepping stone towards establishing a strong presence in the Chinese digital world and ultimately the Chinese market.
You’ve only heard of Google SEO so far and you’re probably wondering how this Chinese search engine thing works. This ‘thing’ is not as complicated as you imagine if you put two and two together. Think about it. The ultimate goal of the two search engines is to get your website up and ranking but the pathways are slightly different. It’s like taking a different route to your destination. Now that you’re focused on this goal, let us simplify Baidu SEO for you.
What Is Baidu?
Baidu is one of the most popular search engines and one of the largest internet companies in the world (We mean it when we say largest because well, the population of China). Baidu controls 75% of China’s market share and provides a wide variety of services, most notably internet-related and AI services. Like Google, Baidu’s primary revenue stream comes from search engine marketing services.
Now Let Us Tell You How Baidu Works
Baidu’s algorithm is slightly different from Google, Bing and Yahoo. Baidu likes keeping it old school, so its algorithm is similar to older search engines from many years ago when the internet just came into the picture. In order for you to understand this architecture, all you’ll have to do is walk backwards. What comes as a non-surprising fact is that Baidu and Google despite being exes that don’t communicate, influence each other’s algorithms. For example, Google’s Panda algorithm was launched in 2011 to combat low quality content, 2 years later, Baidu’s Pomegranate Algorithm was released for the same.
How To Optimize For Baidu SEO In China?
Get Yourself A Baidu Translator
Baidu’s webmaster tools are displayed in Chinese unlike Google, which is why you will need a native Chinese speaker. In addition to that, Baidu is particular about what content it can support. You need to be fluent in Chinese, on top of what’s trending in China and understand what Chinese consumers want. In order to launch your Baidu SEO strategy, you have to understand Baidu as a whole and Baidu users.
Mobile
If you know Chinese people, you’re probably aware about their love for mobiles. That tiny device is their portal to the world. Google places utmost emphasis on mobile indexing as well because, how else are you going to prove your friend wrong in an argument about the black hole and its origin? You certainly don’t plan on reaching for your desktop or laptop, googling it and then emailing it to your friend, do you? Similarly, Baidu places a strong emphasis on mobile indexing. Baidu has its own version of AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages) and you can bet that much like Google ‘s mobile indexing, it will continue to bake mobile deeper and deeper into their algorithm.
Inbound Links
Baidu is stepping up with its game when it comes to link metrics. The ‘Green Radish’ update is one such example that is similar to the Penguin update, targeting spammy link building practices. It stands to reason that Baidu will continue to observe Google’s updates and learn from them, subsequently implementing their own updates that focus on preventing such manipulation. Baidu products like Baike, Baidu Zhidao, Tieba and other platforms have been released for brand exposure.
Master The Webmaster
You’ve understood Google webmaster and now it’s time for you to understand Baidu Webmaster. The Resource Platform is the world’s largest official platform for Chinese Internet administrators, mobile developers and entrepreneurs to manage search traffic. It provides tools, SEO suggestions, API interfaces, multi-terminal service adaptation capabilities to help search engines index. In order to improve the search experience, Baidu will periodically adjust the algorithm, and will publish the main direction of adjustment on the webmaster platform. In this way, webmasters will learn how to avoid the loss of the website caused by the algorithm adjustment.
Identify Chinese Keywords
Remember we told you this is a Chinese search engine? Keywords are the key to optimizing all your websites be it on Google, Yahoo or Bing. You need to find the right Chinese keywords to optimize for. This might be a challenge because the Chinese language has many dialects and the same words have different meanings in different dialects. However, the good news is that Pinyin Chinese is your prince to the rescue. So stick to Pinyin Chinese for your content as well.
Nail Your Metatag Game
Plan your metatags in a way that reflects search from the early 90’s but in Chinese. Meta tags are extremely important, but make sure you don’t stuff them with keywords.
We Hope Your Site Is Crawlworthy
Baidu uses crawlers just like any other search engine, so make sure your site is spiderable. Use a spider stimulator to check what is accessible from your site and what isn’t.
Conclusion
As you see, optimization for Baidu isn’t totally different from optimization for any other search engine but it certainly has its specifics. Follow the rules, be patient and sooner or later success will come to you. When you have so much content in Chinese and a Chinese domain name, this will inevitably help you to achieve better rankings for your Chinese search terms in any other search engine.
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