Baidu SEO : An Understanding Of Your Audience & User Intent

Understanding your audience is one of the most important parts of marketing in general. Many companies entering the Chinese market expect that their audience in China will like the same things that their audiences in other markets like. While this can be true, it is often not.An Understanding Of Your Audience & User Intent

Market research can be costly in terms of both time and money, so many companies skip this step and jump right into marketing. This can lead to major mistakes and wasted budget for foreign companies.

One of the most important steps to achieving success in SEO on both Google and Baidu is understanding user behaviour and search intent. Both of these should play a key role in formulating your SEO strategy, so take the time to understand your audience in terms of their expectations and how they interact with companies in your industry.

 

Baidu SEOA Well Thought Out Keyword Strategy

Keyword research is one of the most important parts of SEO. Like with Google, there are plenty of keyword research tools available in the China market.

These tools allow companies to determine the difficulty in ranking for a specific keyword and an estimate of how many times users search that given phrase per month. This can be very helpful for determining which keywords to target for your company’s content team. You can check out a fewof these tools below:

Chinaz keywords Tool
Baidu Keyword Planner
5118 keywords Tool
Ciku5 Keywords Tool
One thing these tools can’t tell you is the user’s intent when searching a given keyword. Having no knowledge of user intent can make it a bit more difficult to determine which keywords to target.

Baidu SEO Keyword Strategy

For example, imagine you ran a Facebook marketing agency. You want to try and rank #1 for the keyword “Facebook.” Ultimately you would have a very hard time ranking for this keyword, because the intent of users searching for this term is almost certainly just to go to the Facebook website. Chances are you don’t even want these users searching for Facebook on your site either as they likely aren’t looking for Facebook marketing services.

Focusing on longer more specific keywords can often yield better results. It usually takes less time to rank for these keywords given that they have smaller search volume and less competition. Not only but the traffic you receive from these longer keywords will likely be exactly the audience you’re looking for!

Achieving success on Google in English is tough enough, so if you’re looking to succeed on Baidu I always recommend working with a Chinese SEO Agency.

 

Baidu SEO : Tips & Tricks for Ranking On Baidu

Create a Positive User Experience

The Chinese internet is full of spam, pop-up ads, and low quality content. Baidu’s latest algorithms have been focusing on trying to improve the quality of content appearing in search results by punishing sites that implement these tactics.

This has been a long time coming, and is expected to have significant effects on Baidu’s search results. This is an important point for Baidu, as it has had quite a few scandals over the last couple years resulting in a lack of trust for the platform. By improving the quality of its search results it hopes to improve its brand image and regain the trust of users in China.Baidu SEO Create a Positive User Experience

It’s due to these reasons that these updates will likely be strictly enforced in the coming years. Baidu’s goal in introducing these updates is to improve the overall quality of its search results in terms of user experience and correct information.  If you have features on your website that severely detract from the user experience it’s best to remove them if you want to rank on Baidu!

 

Build Links, But Be Careful!

If you know anything about SEO, you know that links are an important component of every SEO strategy. While links on Baidu play an important role in determining the authority of a website, they also help to enforce Chinese censorship laws.

Zhihu

Website authority is an important factor in ranking on Baidu. Websites like Zhihu (知乎) for example have very high authority which results in their content appearing on the first and second pages of Baidu search results. This authority stems almost entirely from links. Building links is a time-consuming process but is incredibly worthwhile.

Links are important both in China and the West, there are some additional risks associated with link-building in China. While almost every company knows not to put any politically sensitive content on their websites many don’t realize that they can even be punished for linking to sites that contain this kind of content. Sites could also be punished this makes monitoring links much more important when working in China.

 

Mobile Optimization for Search

Linda Lin, General Manager of Baidu reported that over 80% of searches on Baidu were made through mobile devices. This trend of users accessing search engines through mobile devices has made Baidu place a higher emphasis on the mobile user experience over desktop. The China Network and Information Center (CNNIC) confirmed this trend in its latest report when it found that over 99.1% of Chinese internet users access the internet through their mobile devices.Mobile Optimization for Search

However, Baidu isn’t the only one to notice this trend, Google also recently introduced mobile first indexing for its search results, which also places a higher emphasis on the mobile version of a website as opposed to desktop.

So what does this actually mean I’m sure you’re wondering? It means that while having a desktop site is important, mobile should now be your first priority. While mobile phones have become a part of our daily lives for what seems like forever now, many companies treat their mobile websites like an after-thought.

Baidu SEO mobile page

These latest updates from Baidu guide and Google are both aiming to change the way that we think about mobile websites and placing a higher priority on providing a good user experience for mobile users.

 

If you want to succeed in SEO on Baidu, you’ll need to ensure that you’re delivering a satisfactory experience on mobile. As with the current state of affairs you likely won’t be able to rank without it!

Baidu SEO – the China Tips, the Search Approach

China’s #1 Search Engine – Baidu

As you likely already know, China’s search engine market isn’t dominated by Google like in the rest of the world. Google left the Chinese market way back in 2010 after it suffered from a cybersecurity attack that had originated within China. In place of Google several domestic Chinese search engines have risen up to dominate the market, with the most successful being Baidu. Baidu has maintained its leadership in the Chinese search engine market for over a decade and is the go-to search engine for most people in China. Chinese internet users turn to Baidu to answer their questions and when they need more information on a given topic, that makes Baidu SEO very important for companies in China.

Baidu Search Engine

This makes Baidu guide a powerful tool for brands to get the word out about their products and services, particularly for those in more niche industries. As social media has begun to consume more and more of the average internet users time, many brands have begun to get a bit lax in their efforts on search engines.

This can be dangerous for brands, as not every industry is well-suited to marketing on social media, particularly if the goal is to generate leads or drive conversions. B2B brands for instance aren’t going to get the best results on platforms like Weibo or WeChat.

 

What You Need to Get Started Ranking With Baidu SEO

A Locally Hosted Website

Before you even think about getting started with SEO, you we will absolutely need to ensure that your site loads quickly for users in China. One of the most common reasons for a slow website in China is hosting. Where you host your website is an incredibly important factor in the loading speed of your website. Just hosting your website in China isn’t some magical way to get your site ranking on Baidu, but it puts you on an even playing field with other sites in China.

Most foreign companies naturally have their websites hosted in places closer to their home markets to ensure that they maintain their quick load times in their primary markets. Combined with a content delivery network (CDN) this allows businesses to ensure that their site loads reasonably fast across the globe.content delivery network (CDN)

This strategy simply doesn’t work in China. Due to the great firewall and other factors websites hosted abroad tend to load very slowly in China. Not only does this deliver a sub-par experience to users of the website, it also has a drastic effect on search engine rankings.

In determining search engine rankings, Baidu crawls millions of websites to find the best sources of information for different queries. Given that the company needs to crawl hundreds of millions of websites it can only spare so much time per website. If you’re website fails to load in that given time frame, Baidu can’t accurately read what’s on your site. Without having Baidu crawl your site you have an almost zero chance of showing up in search engine rankings.

In a nutshell, don’t even attempt to rank on Baidu before ensuring your site loads fast in China, and if it doesn’t strongly consider hosting the site within Mainland China.

How to Setup Your First Baidu PPC Campaign

1. Enter your login information

You can login to your Baidu PPC account directly from the Baidu PPC advertising official website (www2.baidu.com).

Enter your Baiu PPC Login Information

2. Find Search Ads Promotion

After logging in, you will be able to see an overview of your account, including network and search promotion. Directly click “Search Ads Promotion” on the left-hand side of the page.

Baidu PPC Search Ads Promotion

3. Preview your Account Structure

You can play around with some of the features on the search promotion page to get a better understanding of the account structure. Different factors and settings are included at each level.

Preview your Baidu PPC Account Structure

4. Build your Baidu PPC Advertising Plan

After you are familiar with your account, it’s time to start the first steps of setting up your campaign plan. One account can set up to 100 campaigns. You can name your ad plan according to your business, products or brand characteristics.

Build your Baidu PPC Advertising Plan

5. Select your Ad Target Location

Your promotion can be set to your target location, which is important for getting the right ad campaigns to the right customers.

Select your Baidu Ad Target Location

6. Select the Time to Run your Ad

You can select anytime you would like for your campaign to run and customize to meet your target customer needs.

Select the Time to Run your Ad

7. Campaign Bidding Price & Budget Setting

Select the primary device either PC or mobile and the bidding proportion for devices. After that, fill in the campaign budget and any other audience groups or keywords matching mode.

Select the Time to Run your Ad

8. Setup Ad Group for Baidu PPC Account

After the campaign stage has been setup successfully, you need to start building the Ad group. You may name your ad group either by using your product name, campaign name and so on. Again, fill in bidding price. Please note this is at the ad group level only, it will not affect or exceed what you have filled in at the campaign level.

Next, adding keywords is the most important step of your campaign. If you don’t have any keywords, then your ad cannot be displayed and your promotion will not be effective at all. You can use the keyword add tool to search keywords and manually add them.

Setup Ad Group

9. Strategize Creative Content

Now, it’s time to customize your campaign ads with content that will entice users to click. A Baidu ad consists of a title, description and display url. The title cannot exceed 50 Chinese characters and the description cannot exceed 80 Chinese characters. Do not forget to include at least one image to add to the creative section.

Strategize Creative Content

10. Add any Additional Info in Baidu PPC account

Furthermore, you can add additional supplementary informational within the advance creative section if you think will be beneficial to potential customers, including your business phone, app, add extension etc.

Add any Additional Info

11. Utilize Baidu Analytics and Live Chat

Before your campaign starts, you can link your PPC account with the free analytic tools to better keep track of performance, monitor and track visitor behavior. Meanwhile, you may consider to activate the Live Chat feature provided by Baidu guide to increase your chances of receiving inquiries.

 

Utilize Baidu Analytics and Live Chat

12. Analysis Results and Make Adjustments

In conclusion, effectively analyzing your data can reduce your advertising costs and improve conversions. This will also give you the insights you need to make the right adjustments to your campaign.

Above all, as you can probably see by now, advertising in China can have its challenges. Brands looking to effectively utilize Baidu PPC need to understand how Baidu PPC works and how Baidu ads differs from Google ads. Ultimately, this will help brands leverage Baidu tools and features for an ad campaign that will yield results. Sekkei Studio knows the ins and outs of Baidu PPC advertising and is here to get you setup with your own account. If you’re ready to expand your business or want more insights, contact us.

Baidu PPC: Ultimate Guide to Advertise on Baidu

With Baidu being the most popular search engine in China, it’s an undeniable good place to start when it comes to reaching Chinese consumers. Brand positioning plays a fundamental role for facilitating this reach and brands need to utilize search in a way that ensures their advertising resonates with the right audience in the most compelling way.

Baidu PPC has been a proven Chinese search marketing platform for both large companies and SMEs. And as long as Baidu remains the largest search engine in China, Baidu PPC advertising should always be the first choice among pay-per-click campaigns for brands looking to reach Chinese consumers. To start your Baidu PPC campaigns, we’ve put together a step-by-step ultimate guide of everything you need to know for setting up an account.

Getting Started with Baidu PPC

Baidu pay per click (Baidu PPC) advertising offers a fast and effective form of digital promotion with instant results. Brands can create rich ads using relevant keywords to target their desired audience. When Chinese consumers search for those targeted keywords, Baidu PPC will show the most relevant search advertisements and website banners on the search results page. You can also target specific audiences or customize the location and time for your ad to appear.

How to Open a Baidu PPC Account in 2020

1. Prepare your business license

Firstly, a scanned copy of your business license in color is required with a company stamp or signature. The license can be in any language, but Chinese or English is the preferred language. You also need to provide a translated copy of the same license in Chinese, including the company stamp and the handwritten statement “翻译件与原件一致”, which means the translation is the same as the original license.

Baidu SEO: How to optimize for China's biggest search engine - Search  Engine Watch

2. Build a localized website

Secondly, Baidu PPC only recognizes Chinese websites and landing pages. It is always best practice to hire a specialized team or translation if you need a Chinese website. When translating your website, Baidu requires for companies to clearly display company information on the About Us and Contact Us pages. Your company name must be the same one that is listed on the business license.

3. Take a screenshot of your website’s homepage

Thirdly, once your Chinese website is ready to go, take a screenshot of your homepage with the address bar included. The screenshot also needs to have your company stamp or signature, as well as the handwritten statement “与网站内容一致”, which means it matches the website content.

4. Locate your company on a Government website

In addition, Baidu wants a legitimate business record check of every business that applies for a Baidu PPC account. Therefore, simply take a screenshot of Government website where your business is listed for public view. The screenshot must also include the address bar of the browser, including your company stamp or signature. A translated screenshot is also required with the company stamp or signature, as well as the handwritten statement “与网站内容一致”.

5. Prepare your business bank account statement

Certainly, this can be any document from your bank as long as it includes:

  • Your full business name, which must be the same name on your business license.
  • A brief record of your recent transaction history.

This document also needs your company stamp or signature along with a translated copy, including the signature and the handwritten statement “翻译件与原件一致”.

6. Contact Baidu

Once you have all of the above documents prepared, you can reach out to Baidu to apply for your pay per click account. You can work with a local branch of Baidu, a Baidu reseller or do the process yourself. It’s recommended to use a reseller because the reseller can streamline the process and help you prepare the required documents. Sekkei Studio has been helping many companies with establishing Baidu PPC accounts, contact us to know more.

7. Sign your Baidu PPC contract

Once everything meets Baidu’s account requirements, Baidu will send you the service contracts. You can also request the English contracts.

8. Make an initial deposit to your Baidu PPC account

Please take note, the initial fee to open a new Baidu account is 20,000 RMB, where 19,000 RMB will be deposited into your account, and 1,000 RMB will be deducted as a Baidu Technical Support charge. Currently, Baidu does not accept credit cards or PayPal. Alternatively, your deposit would have to be paid via wire transfer.

9. Get started with Baidu PPC

Lastly, once your payment is received, Baidu will send your account details within 4-5 business days and you will receive your username and password via email.

Note: Baidu may have new requirements from time to time, get a consultation from Baidu guide