According to a post at the Marketing Pilgrim, Baidu is experiencing great success as a search engine in China. Baidu currently holds 64.5% of the Chinese market, up from 62.3%, according to Bernstein & Co. It will be very interesting to watch these numbers over the next several years as more of the population gains internet access. Recent reports show that only about 13.4% of the Chinese population has access to the Internet…while only an an astonishing 5% of the Chinese Internet population uses the Internet from work.
What does this mean for advertisers? If China isn’t one of your target demographics, then nothing right now. If you aim to reach Chinese users, it is time to optimize! This is extremely important for B2B customers who are looking to reach that market. The Baidu search engine can be optimized much like Google optimization a few years back. Baidu pays attention to Meta tags, content, links, etc. Gaining links is currently easier than Google, as quality does not really play a roll. Baidu will look for a variety of links from various domains. For best results the anchor text of the links should use Chinese characters. Another best practice for the Baidu search engine is for the pages to have all content in the Chinese language. Using a translate tool on an English site will not do if you are looking to have success in Baidu. A best case scenario is to get a .cn top level domain if you can get your hands on one. They were originally designated for only Chinese businesses, but they are now available to the rest of the world.
For Baidu SEO, remember your best practices and implement strategies that would have been used in past versions of Google. But, don’t put all of your eggs in one basket! Just like Google and other search engines have changed their algorithms over the years to improve user experience, Baidu will certainly change as well. Keep up on the Baidu SEO news and adjust accordingly.
Contact us for Baidu SEO consulting or for questions about general web marketing.
