5 Factors to Determine A Successful Baidu SEO

How to rank well in Baidu? This is the most common question people ask me when it comes to Chinese SEO. Baidu, the most popular and powerful search engine in China with active users more than the whole UK population and hundreds and thousands of websites being published everyday, what exactly are the major factors that can maximise your website visibility in Baidu ranking? The answers are simple:

1. Speak your audience’s language

Speak the users’ language is the best way to get to the users’ heart, so having your site content in simplified Chinese is absolutely vital. Hiring a native Chinese translator is preferable. If not, always ask a Chinese linguist to help you localise your web content as apart from China, Chinese language is widely used in countries like Taiwan, Singapore and Malaysia, and each country all has it’s unique way of expression in the language. What makes sense in one country doesn’t always make sense in another.

2. Create unique text content

Baidu is like most search engines, still not able to see content in Flash. Creating unique and rich text content not only enable your website to be indexed by the search engine but also draw the visitors’ attention and hence decrease the bounce rate.

3. Keyword your content

Understanding the search trend of your target market is the base of a successful marketing campaign. Having the up-to-date keywords that searchers use to optimise your web content not only can increase the conversion rate but also improve your web page ranking. More information about what tools to use for your Baidu optimisation, please refer to Keyword Research Tools for Simplified Chinese SEO Campaign.

4. Links, Links, Links

Link is one of the major factor that Baidu takes into consideration whether it should serve your website in its SERP. Get as many quality links from authority sites and sites with topics related to yours as possible can only do you good. Don’t worry if your website server is outside China, as long as you can build enough backlinks from sites based in China, Baidu is happy to serve it as well.

5. Create an User Oriented Website

Usability is what marketers tend to forget when it comes to SEO. Only websites that are genuinely related to what the searchers are looking for have the best chance to draw the users’ attention and stand out. A pure search engine oriented website can drive the visitors away after they click through the landing page as what’s on the page tends to be not what they are looking for. So the best way to stand out in Baidu, apart from achieving the above 4 factors, is to have a genuinely interesting site!