Baidu is the Chinese largest search engine patented by programmer Robin LI and Eric XU. Founded on the18th January, 2000, the localised search engine has greatly impacted online business and information architecture in China. Baidu commands approximately 64%of all organic searches in China and serves an online community of more than 513 million users.
Image courtesy of G. SHI from Flickr - http://www.flickr.com/photos/79905212@N00/48949888/
Baidu has spidered more than 800 million web pages, 80 million images and boasts over 10 million searchable multimedia files. The search engine popularity and success is attributed to custom searches based on simplified Chinese. Baidu is among the top Chinese companies making huge profits and with Chinese economy slowly overtaking United States; its potential can not be overlooked by web marketers. It is therefore advisable to understand the pros and cons if one is aspiring to enter this giant market and unbeatable search engine.
Importance of Baidu
One of the greatest benefits of Baidu is offering tailored searches in a local language that native Simplified Chinese speakers understand. As opposed to English, many Chinese are mother tongue oriented and the service of Baidu is a breeze to them. Licensed sellers complying with Chinese regulations benefit from paid campaigns targeting certain keywords. The many users of Baidu contributing to millions of searches each month can easily be translated to customers with well crafted web marketing efforts.
Factors affecting Baidu for Search
Baidu values quality content and penalises stolen or duplicated contents. Like its predecessors, its algorithm gives great value to titles, keywords, meta descriptions and heading tags. To succeed in this Chinese search mammoth, it is advisable to have well written page titles and keyword rich posts. Place most significant materials at the top of the documents and take advantage of heading tags (h1…h3) in titles/subtitles for high ranking.
Make content specifically for people and not for search engines. To put things straight, write unique and readable contents. Page descriptions should be promising, catchy and focused on a summary of what users expect on the body. Your choice of domain can make or break your efforts and inclusion to Baidu’s database; go for ‘.cn’ or ‘.com.cn’ locally hosted domain to avoid censored firewall blockage.
Baidu search engine is among the top services that completely censors information in China. It’s therefore advisable to avoid hate speeches, adult content or materials talking about racial intolerance. The primary language of your website must be Simplified Chinese as opposed to traditional Chinese or English; China is language biased. If you prefer marketing your products, Baidu Union Ads are perfect fit for you after conducting a keyword research on Baidu Index and bidding for the competitive matching keywords.
What Now?
Capitalising on Baidu for search can greatly affect your online business popularity which translates to more sales and profits. It is easy to follow these guidelines to build an interesting website for your sales campaigns and eventually become a victor rather than a victim. When you dot all the i’s and cross all the t’s, submit your site to Baidu index (http://www.baidu.com/search/url_submit.html) for quick inclusion and get ready for more visitors related to your market!
About the guest author: James is an international search expert, specialising in Chinese SEO. He write for sites like qumin.co.uk London’s first Anglo – Chinese Digital Marketing Agency.
This is a unique article published on SEO Desk with exclusivity.
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