Authored by: Sanni Rajaniemi
Introduction:
Businesses operating in China are required to have an internet presence. Chinese consumers' lives revolve around the internet, particularly when accessed through mobile devices. For firms to become more visible online and build a reputation, search engine optimization, or SEO, is essential.
In China, the most popular search engine tool is Baidu, with a market share of over 70%. Before making a purchase, Chinese buyers usually conduct internet research on products and typically turn to Baidu for reliable information.
This blog will discuss off-page SEO, which includes backlinks, Baidu's significance, the principles of SEO, and content localization for Baidu.
1. Baidu’s Leader Role in China
Chinese netizens are very tech-savvy and depend on thorough information, before any buying decisions. They tend to trust comments and suggestions from buyers and choose sellers with a large online presence, especially on Baidu. As a result, if you want to stand out in China, you must adjust to this particular demands of this market.
It's vital as a first step to increase your position on Baidu is acquiring an Internet Content Provider (ICP) license. This is mandatory for any website that is hosted so the Chinese visitors can have access to. These licenses are issued by the Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT). Holding this licence will help your search engine ranking and trustworthiness within Baidu visibly.
Additionally, Baidu's ecosystem is growing quickly. Baidu launched its latest AI model, Ernie 4.0 this year, making more individualized search results accessible. This reinforces the significance of matching your SEO plan with Baidu's most recent advancements.
2. Fundamental Principles of SEO
2.1 Content Localization is Essential
Baidu’s algorithm prioritizes content that reflects Chinese culture and language. This means that merely translating content is insufficient—content must be localized to resonate with Chinese users.
Your website should be written in Simplified Chinese and aligned with the country’s legal and regulatory standards. Moreover, Baidu’s algorithm places significant importance on social proof. Therefore, building a presence on platforms like Weibo, WeChat, Xiaohongshu, and Douyin is crucial to improving your online visibility.
As part of your SEO strategy, focus on how Chinese users search for information. Voice search is gaining popularity, as Baidu’s voice search features become more sophisticated with the rise of digital assistants like Baidu’s Xiaodu. Optimizing for voice queries and conversational search is growing its importance, as voice search often involves long-tail queries that are in natural-language.
2.2 Mobile-Indexing:
Just like it here in the West, Chinese Internet users go online primarily with smartphones. This means that mobile-first indexing plays a vital role in SEO. Baidu continues to prioritize websites optimized for mobile users, rewarding them with higher rankings.
A mobile-friendly website can be translated as fast loading times, a responsive design, and layouts that are easy to navigate on smaller screens. Baidu’s version of Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP), which is called Mobile Instant Pages (MIP), is a key factor for improving mobile site performance. Implementing MIP can significantly enhance your rankings in Baidu’s mobile search results.
With the growing presence of 5G in China, fast load times and seamless user experiences are expected, making mobile optimization critical for SEO success. A sluggish mobile site can result in lower rankings, even if your desktop version performs well.
2.3 Security and Hosting
Your site's hosting is an influential factor on your SEO ranking. The best practice is for you to find a local server to host your site. This is because your site will significantly load faster this way, making it easier for Chinese user to access, and therefore preferred by Baidu. Additionally, Baidu increasingly favors secure websites. This is due to the secured websites can foster confidence. It is vital that your localized website is secured using HTTPS.
Baidu search results for websites that are quick, safe, and locally hosted are more favorable, which enhances visitors' experience overall.
3. Content Localization
Content localization is critical to rank on Baidu. Here are some reasons.
Language:
Chinese audiences often don’t understand English, and Baidu only analyzes websites written in Mandarin, so it prioritizes websites written in Chinese. Therefore, it is crucial to have your website in simplified Chinese characters when operating in China.
Keyword optimization:
When your website is in Chinese, it has a much better chance of ranking high on Baidu’s search results. Baidu has a precise Chinese keyword algorithm, so consider identifying Chinese keywords to use in your content by conducting keyword research. As you incorporate popular keywords relevant to your business, your website is more likely to appear in the organic search results on Baidu.
Relatability and cultural sensitivity:
You can enhance the user experience by including culturally relevant, relatable, and understandable information on your company page. Your content will resonate more with Chinese customers when you adapt to the local culture and show respect for the local norms and values. By doing this, you can establish a positive brand image.
4. Off-Page SEO and Backlinks
Off-page SEO is critical to generating traffic on your website. When you work properly on off-page SEO, Baidu ranks you higher. Make sure to promote your website on other Chinese websites and add relevant articles and things like that.
Off-page SEO includes backlinks, as link-building is a crucial part of any SEO strategy. You are more likely to get more backlinks to your website from other pages by doing content localization. A backlink, also called "an eternal link" or "an inbound link", can be a link on a blog or other Chinese websites or social media that leads to your website. Backlinks provide more traffic and improve your page’s performance on Baidu.
An effective link-building strategy can be a challenge. Baidu’s crawler picks up the backlink, and it gets assigned a value, which can be called "link juice". Again, Baidu places more value on links on websites in mainland China than on foreign ones. One strategy for link-building is outreach, which means paid PR articles, press releases, sponsorship links, etc.
It is important to have a social media presence for your company in China. Backlinks can be built by creating self-created content, for example, microblogs on Weibo, links in comments and forum profiles, or signatures. People can also reference your page if you do reliable industry research, as an example. Additionally, if your team is very tuned into what’s happening in your industry, you can do newsjacking and be the first to post about it. So, you will have to pay attention to Weibo and Toutiao, for instance.
Final Thoughts
There are many aspects to take care of when managing your website in China, from cultural sensitivity to backlinks. This blog covered some of the most important parts of search engine optimization on Baidu that can get you started on doing SEO for your website. It might be different and challenging to do well in SEO on Baidu compared to Google, but it is possible to succeed with the right strategies.
At Hohot Consulting, we specialize in helping businesses through the challenges of entering the Chinese market. We look forward to facilitating your business success with our broad expertise in Chinese and international markets. Learn more about us here.
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