Baidu, the leader among China’s internet search engines, captures almost 70% of the online world in the Asian country. This means that digital campaigns targeting the users in China should optimise their websites for Baidu SEO. Optimizing your website for Baidu means you are increasing your website’s visibility for the second largest economy in the world.
However, optimising for Baidu and Google is completely different. Baidu has different set of parameters considering Chinese regulations, compliance issues, censorship, technical considerations, etc.
There are some similarities between optimizing for Google and Baidu. Both pays value to high quality content and regularly updates the algorithms to ensure that content quality and originality get priority in search engine results.
Majorly you need to get used to certain key metrics while optimizing your content for Baidu SEO like keyword phares, language, backlinks and website hosting, design and censorship. New laws in China have significantly reduced the amount of ads in Baidu’s SERPs, but there are still quite a few.
Technical and On-Page Optimization for Baidu
The goal of On-page and Technical SEO optimization is to make the search engine crawler’s task easier in indexing and ranking relevant pages of your website for any query. If your website is optimized for Google, you are half way done in optimizing for Baidu, but still there are additional factors. Here we will discuss the best tips and tricks for optimizing your website for Baidu.
Best Technical SEO Practices for Baidu
- Hosting
- ICP Licence
- CN ccTLD
- Accessibility and Speed
- Use CDN
- Handle HTTPS
Best On-Page SEO Practice for Baidu
- Meta Title and Meta Description
- Heading Tags
- Image Alt Tags
- Website Depth and Internal Linking
- XML Sitemap
- Breadcrumbs
Optimizing Baidu for Mobile Search Engine
Mobile devices are the most common means of leveraging the content online in China. According to a study, 61% of the internet traffic in China comes from mobile. This gives clear indication that you need to optimize your website for mobile crawling and indexing.
You need to optimize your website pages, social posts, ads and emails as per the latest Baidu’s algorithm. Just like google, Baidu also prefers mobile-first indexing. Baidu has its own version of AMP, which is designed to create better user-experience and ensure faster browsing for mobile users.
Make sure all your efforts from using meta to sitemaps are recognised by Baidu to help you rank on mobile. Page load speed is another key factor and plays a crucial role in ranking your website on Baidu SERP. Along with the above mentioned tips and tricks, make sure you are also consider below given points –
1. Page Structure – This is the most actionable part of your Baidu SEO strategy. The page structure shows how all important pages of your site are interlinked and follow hierarchy. On a mobile device, a good page structure is important along with the content, which is optimized according to the users screen and can be easily scrolled, zoomed and pinched. The relevant content should be in the middle of the screen to increase the readability.
2. Page Readability – Always organize and style your page as per the Baidu’s recommendation –
a) Use font size of 14px with a line spacing between 0.42 – 0.6 for the body text
b) Use consistent image width
c) Use font size between 14-16px with 13-14px padding for text links
3. Resource Accessibility – To improve the resources accessibility, Baidu recommends –
a) All links should be clickable
b) Neatly format your FAQ , Q/A and Forum pages
c) Entries on form pages must be accessible and submittable
d) Product pages should describe easy purchase flow.
e) Document and files should be directly accessible within the mobile device.
4. Search Appearance – Optimize your Meta title and description tags because mobile view on Baidu has limitation of screen size.
a) Meta Tile should be under 17 Simplified Chinese characters
b) Mention your brand name in the title
c) Write eye catching title to get clicks
d)Write meta description to describe your page content accurately. Keyword stuffing might penalise your webpage.
Optimizing Content for Baidu
Here are few tips to easily optimize your website content for Baidu –
1. Language – Don’t use translation tools to generate content for your Chinese website. Rather appoint someone who can help you in drafting content in Chinese language from the scratch.
2. Keyword Phrases – Just like Google, Baidu doesn’t consider it as an important ranking factor. But, still it is recommended to do a keyword research for your target audience and include them in title tags, meta descriptions, headers and content.
Optimizing Website with Baidu Webmaster Tool
As like GSC, Baidu Webmaster tool is there to monitor and maintain the website presence on Baidu search engine. This is an incredibly important tool to win the SEO game on Baidu SERP.
But, with the every helping hand, comes the obstacles – This tool is only available in Chinese language and you cannot translate the technical terms with translation tools. This instead becomes a frustrating experience in managing your website on Baidu GWT.
Useful Features of Baidu GWT
- You can submit content for Indexation
- Submit Broken Links to Baidu
- Track website indexing status
- Track keywords ranking, clicks, impressions
- Track crawl errors
- Track broken links and backlinks
- Conduct site security test
- Track mobile performance
- Submit Structure Data
- Validate HTTPS site
