10 Tips to Increase Baidu SEO Ranking

Last updated on March 20, 2024

With more than two-thirds of Chinese web traffic coming from Baidu, brands must have a strong SEO strategy specifically designed for China’s leading search engine.

Even though Baidu has some similarities with Google, it’s important to grasp the distinctions and subtleties between these two platforms. The following 10 tips will help you allocate the right resources and optimise your marketing efforts effectively.

1. Importance of web hosting in China

Baidu gives priority to Chinese websites, which means websites with a .CN domain that are hosted in mainland China.

Web hosting in China is worth the investment of time and money — using Baidu SEO strategies on non-Chinese websites is unlikely to yield results.

2. Baidu sites have ranking advantage

Baidu prioritises its products over external sites. Interestingly, even if these Baidu sites don’t optimise for the search engine, they can still rank on the first page of results.

So, if your goal is to achieve short-term results, consider using Baidu’s platform.

3. Everything should be written in Simplified Chinese

Every aspect of the website, including content, keywords, and meta tags, should be written in Simplified Chinese.

To truly connect with your target audience, it’s essential to hire a first-language Chinese speaker. Mastering the subtleties of the language is crucial for organizations aiming to create content that truly resonates with their audiences.

4. Frequent fresh new content

Baidu favours websites that frequently update their content.

In fact, the Baidu search engine prioritises fresh content even more than Google does. Numerous global companies with Chinese websites have noticed that their rankings quickly decline after only a few weeks of inactivity.

To achieve and maintain a first-page ranking on Baidu, it’s crucial to consistently update your website with new and relevant content.

5. Website loading speed

One crucial ranking factor for Baidu is a website’s load time.

Baidu considers slow-loading webpages as empty and, as a result, they won’t be indexed. It’s also essential to keep in mind that the loading time of advertisements is also included in the overall load time of a webpage.

6. Avoid deep website structure

Baidu’s spiders may encounter difficulties when indexing sites with a deep website structure. Therefore, it is essential to ensure your important pages are easily accessible and linked directly from the homepage.

7. Meta descriptions and keywords still matter

For Baidu, meta descriptions and meta keywords are still relevant.

While Google is now ranking content based on quality and relevance, Baidu is still very much focused on the simpler elements of SEO.

8. Optimise image's alt text

Baidu ranks images based on their alt descriptions. Optimising an image’s alt text is crucial to ranking in Baidu’s image results.

9. Mobile is important

Mobile optimisation is important to both Google and Baidu, but Baidu is particularly focused on serving a mobile audience because its app has over 657 million monthly active users in the first quarter of 2023.

10. Social links should be China-focused

Avoid including links to banned sites like Instagram, YouTube, and Facebook.

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