Baidu is the most popular search engine in China, a nation of more than 1.3 billion with an estimated 193 million online shoppers. In addition to offering search services, Baidu provides users with many other community services including discussion forums and an online encyclopedia. The search engine ranked as the world’s sixth highest website in terms of traffic according rankings by Alexa in 2010. In 2007, Baidu became the first Chinese company listed on the NASDAQ-100 index.
Baidu SEO requires a somewhat different approach than that used for popular Western search engines.
SEO for Baidu
Use a Chinese domain and host
The first thing that you must do to appeal to the Baidu engine is locate your website on a China-based domain and host. Unlike marketing for Google and Bing, you will need a completely new website to target consumers and web surfers in China.
The domain names will end with either the extension .cn or .com.cn. As well, the URL should be in Chinese characters using the PinYin system of transcription rather than in English. Additionally, you will need to look for a host in China to gain juice on Baidu’s search ranking algorithm.
Fortunately, it is easy to find and obtain both Chinese domain name and local host online using a standard credit card.
Translate your website
Since Baidu focuses on Chinese web users, the site should obviously be translated into at least one Chinese language. The most important language to include is Mandarin, although this may depend on whether you plan to target a specific region or ethnicity within the country.
If possible, it would be good to translate the site into a number of the major languages in China in order to get the best results. Unlike America, where almost everyone speaks English, Chinese has a wide range of languages and dialects that people use as their first language.
Note that services like Bing or Google Translate or any other professional translating software simply will not get the job done correctly. In order to translate web pages properly, you will need someone that it is truly bilingual in the two languages involved.
Again, there are many Internet options available for this task. Maybe the cheapest way to translate a site is to use freelance services like Gigbucks.com. Click here to read more about Baidu.