BAIDU SEO Tips and Trick

Baidu is very different to other prominent search engines such as Google or Bing. When looking to promote your site and rank on Baidu you need to approach SEO in a very different way to the other search engines.
Get a local Chinese domain and host your site in China
If you are looking to have any prominent presence in China and Baidu you must get a local Chinese domain, either a .cn or .com.cn. Make sure your URL is in PinYin rather than English (PinYin is the official system to transcribe Chinese characters into Latin script).  The Chinese market trust PinYin and local Chinese domains much more than foreign domains.
You can register your Chinese domain name here - http://www.onlydomains.com/country/domain/China/
You can use SINO hosting to host your Chinese site in China - http://www.sinohosting.net/
Keyword Research
Just like any other SEO campaign you would run for Google or Bing you must also do keyword research when optimizing for Baidu. It works in a similar way with looking at keywords that have high search volumes and relatively low traffic. Here are two tools by Baidu that shows just that - http://index.baidu.com and http://top.baidu.com/
Baidu also have a tool which is part of their Paid Search product. You can use this tool when looking for keyword to taregt from a PPC perspective. You can use this for SEO for Baidu as well. Here is the tool: http://is.baidu.com/keyword_tool.html

Translate your site to simplified Chinese
You must translate your page into simplified Chinese/Mandarin. This is extremely crucial to building out an effective campaign in the China market. Ensure the translation is done by a human who is competent in the Chinese language. Don’t use any automated translating services like Google Translate. Make sure the page is translated properly and communicates to the Chinese in a clear and effective manner.
If you are promoting certain products or services to the Chinese market you can simply create a Chinese translated landing page as opposed to translating your entire site.
This comes straight out of the horses mouth (Baidu) – “There is an 85% drop off rate on Baidu, when users hit a page in English.  If you provide a Mandarin landing page, you have a much better chance of campaign conversions.”
Baidu SEO – On Page
Baidu concentrates quite heavily on meta tags. Make sure you have them all filled in. Ensure you have a keyword rich title tag with your main targeted keywords as H1 and Hs as well as alt attributes for images. Also use the keywords tag as this is important for Baidu. This is very different to Google as they never used the keyword tag as a ranking factor.
Another on page SEO factor is unique content. Much like Google, Baidu rewards unique quality content. Make sure it is  Baidu crawlers want to get as much information as quickly as possible so make sure your most important content is higher above the fold as possible. A well known international SEO, Bill Hunt wrote regarding Baidu SEO, “Put the most important content at the top of the page. Due to poor connectivity, Baidu’s crawlers want to get as much content as they can and will often simply crawl only the first 100 to 120k of content on a page.”
It is also important to remember that China censors their content so be careful what you are putting on your site that you want to rnak on Baidu. Make sure there is nothing adult or gambling related. Many social networks have also been banned such as Facebook and Youtube.
Baidu SEO – Off Page
Just like at Google Baidu also look at off page SEO factors. Link building is a strong Baido ranking factor however they look at purely the quantity of links instead of both the quantity and quality. This opens Baidu up for potential SPAM which may be an issue as they penetrate into other markets. Link building within the Chinese market is important and will help with Baidu rankings. Build links from similar and industry related Chinese sites to show Baidu that you are important in the industry to the Chinese people.
Anchor text is also used at Baidu as a ranking factor. Make sure you develop and implement campaigns that encourage keyword rich anchor text. Remember keywords will be in Chinese so ensure your anchor text is too. Baidu does not put as much weight into anchor text as Google but it is definitely a factor.
Here is a great table from Code That which shows the difference in on page and off page ranking factors between Google and Baidu.

Baidu PPC to keep rankings
Baidu have 3 different advertising products that they offer. They are:
Paid Search
Banner Ads (Baidu Content Network)
Brand Zone
Spending money using any of these Baidu products will help with rankings and Baidu SEO. It has been known that you may potentially lose organic Baidu rankings if you previously used one of these paid products and then stopped.
Paid Search is similar to Google Adwords. It works on a Pay Per Click model at a keyword level. Internationally focused keywords have very low competition so the cost per clicks are much lower than at Google. For example if you run a tourism site in Australia looking to attract Chinese tourists you you could use Baidu’s paid search and pay relatively low CPC for highly targeted traffic.

Banner Ads are served throughout Baidu’s content network. Baidu has a network of over 300,000 websites and offers advertising banner advertising opportunities that can contain:
imagery
flash
text
interactivity
Average CPC for Baidu Banner Ads is $0.20.
Brand Zone is used by Blue Chip companies to gain more presence and exposure. Here is an example of Air China who purchased the Baidu Brand Zone product. You can see the different components that are included:
Title,
Description with in-text links,
Brand logo,
Category links,
Image (which is animated but could also have launched a video in the banner frame).
As you can see the next search result is a full 450 pixels below which gives Air China massive exposure above the fold.

Read more about Baidu’s products on their Baidu International site
Submit your site to Baidu search engine
This is a really simple tip and should be done once you have created your Chinese site, hosted in China, on a Chinese domain with unique and perfect simplified Chinese/Mandarin. Submit your site to the Baidu search engine so you can be crawled and indexed by the Baidu Bot.
Here is where to submit your site:
http://www.baidu.com/search/url_submit.html
An extra tip to this is to submit any news content you may have to Baidu News. This is great for Press Releases and other news coverage.
http://news.baidu.com/
Much like Google you can also submit your sitemap. This will help Baidu crawl your entire site and index it.
http://sitemap.baidu.com
Conclusion
Overall Baidu is a very different beast to other search engines like Bing or Google. It also has dominant market share in a country where their culture is very different to the English world however if you are looking to market and penetrate the Chinese market you will  need to think about ranking on Baidu and using their products. If you follow the above Baidu SEO best practices you should set yourself up for strong ranking in China’s biggest search engine.
Other Resources
http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2065904/Baidu-The-SEO-Perspective
http://www.searchenginejournal.com/everything-you-need-to-know-about-baidu-seo/32113/
http://www.webseoanalytics.com/blog/10-seo-tips-for-baidu-search-engine/
http://www.koozai.com/blog/search-marketing/baidu-seo-guide-part-1-on-page-and-technical-seo/
http://www.codethat.co.uk/blog/search/baidu-seo-guide
For more information about Baidu and Baidu SEO & SEM follow @BaiduEnglish. This is aTwitter account I have created to help people learn more about Baidu as a website and search engines as well as learn how to better optimize their sites for Baidu.
Feel free to ask me questions by commenting on this post, asking a question on the right hand side question widget or by tweet me at @BaiduEnglish
 

1. Find the right Chinese keywords

Of course, as with other search engines, keywords are important for good rankings. You need to find the right Chinese keywords to optimize for. This might be a challenge because Chinese has many dialects and the same words have different meanings in different dialects. However, Pinyin Chinese is preferred by Baidu and this is why Pinyin Chinese is your best choice. You should stick to it not only for your keywords but for your content as a whole.

2 You need LOTS of content in Chinese

Even if Chinese is not the official language of your site, you need to have many pages in Chinese. With Baidu, content is king – the same as with other search engines. When generating tons of content in Chinese, follow the official guidelines for what content is acceptable in China because there are strict rules there and if you don't obey, this could cost you not only your good rankings with Baidu.

3 Metatags weight a lot

Similarly to the early days of the other search engines, with Baidu metatags are very important, so don't forget to make your metatags top-notch. However, don't abuse metatags and don't stuff them with keywords.

4 Get a Pinyin Chinese domain name and host your site on a Chinese host

Domain names are important with Baidu as well. In addition to having keywords in your domain name, you need to have a domain name in Pinyin Chinese. You can use a .com, .net, or .cn extension with it. For even better results, host your site on a Chinese host because this gives you an additional bonus with Baidu.

5 Use simple navigation structures

Simple navigation structures are a must with every search engine but for Baidu they matter even more. Baidu won't follow links that are deeply buried in all kinds of messy code or that go many levels deep in the site hierarchy.

6 Watch for duplicate content

Baidu is very strict about duplicate content. With the other search engines you might also have problems, if you have duplicate content but Baidu is even less tolerant. Use a robots.txt to tell what not to index and you are safe.

7 No links to bad neighbors and no link farms

Linking to bad neighbors and getting links from link farms isn't a good idea with any search engine but penalties with Baidu are even more severe, so you need to consider this. Also, don't put too many outbound links on your site because this also affects your Baidu rankings in a negative way.

8 Plan in advance

In Google you can get top rankings for a week (though this certainly isn't the norm and we don't mean you should use blackhat strategies to achieve it) but with Baidu success doesn't come that fast. In Baidu it can take 6 months or more to achieve the good rankings you will achieve in Google overnight and you need to take this into account. For instance, if you are promoting a summer-related site, you should start optimization not later than November, so that when the season comes, your site will have achieved the rankings you want.

9 Baidu doesn't deal with Flash and JavaScript

Flash and JavaScript aren't Google's favorites but Baidu absolutely hates them. This is why you should use Flash and JavaScript only if you provide altenative HTML versions of the content you have incorporated in the Flash/JavaScript. Baidu doesn't like iFrames either, so avoid their use as well.

10 Make sure your site is spiderable

As any other search engine, Baidu uses crawlers, so make sure your site is spiderable. Use aspider simulator to check what is accessible from your site and what isn't.
As you see, optimization for Baidu isn't totally different from optimization for any other search engine but it certainly has its specifics. Follow the rules, be patient and sooner or later success will come to you. When you are done with your Baidu optimization, it won't be a surprise, if your site starts ranking better with Google as well, especially for country-specific searches. When you have so much content in Chinese and a Chinese domain name, this will inevitably help you to achieve better rankings for your Chinese search terms in any other search engine.