China is the most populated country on the planet and boasts more than 640 million internet users. Any marketers are willing to put in the time and effort into launching a successful digital marketing campaign into China, the rewards should be optimistic. China, however, can be a complex market to enter due to a number of factors such as cultural, behavioural, and language differences.
Indeed, we can consider using “black hat” methods and techniques on Baidu Ranking that were powerful techniques in ranking well. In 2013, Baidu did announce two algorithms designed to tackle two main spam issues. These were the Money Plant (绿萝) and Pomegranate (石榴).

Additionally, technical factors are very important to influence your ranking potential on Baidu.

There are some commonly known optimization benefits, such as using meta keywords, but below I’ve listed some of the more common issues such as using Chinese hosting. As Baidu’s primary target audience is the Chinese mainland, data suggests that websites with Chinese hosting perform better within Baidu SERPs. This is due to Local Chinese hosting can be seen as a signal that you’re targeting the local Chinese market. Besides that, The “great firewall” can add serious latency to websites loading outside of China.


HTTPS Protocol 

While it could be argued that Baidu is a lot more advanced than Google in some respects, they only officially started crawling and indexing HTTPS in 2015, with the crawler then updated further in 2016.

When performing a search for software company Moz in Baidu, it returns the HTTP protocol version of the homepage. However, Baidu counts HTTPS as a ranking factor. 

URL Parameters

If you use URL parameters or your ecommerce store’s faceted navigation relies on them, Baidu may have difficulties in processing them – even more so if your URLs contain multiple parameters. 

JavaScript & Libraries

Baidu is a lot less likely to process JavaScript than Google, to the point, that in their own literature, they claim that the search engine doesn’t process any content in JavaScript.

As JavaScript usage is increasing, elements such as JS links, language switches, navigational elements, or content tabs can cause issues in China.

Some content uses techniques that Baidu spiders cannot parse, such as JS, AJAX, etc. Although users can see rich content, they will still be abandoned by search engines. 

It’s also important that any JavaScript and CSS libraries that are used (such as jQuery or Bootstrap) or other CDN hosted files are hosted from within China itself, as most CDNs (and Google’s CDN) are either blocked or throttled.

There are a number of options to host these files in China, including UpYun JS Library and BootCDN.

Other Considerations

In Baidu’s “SEO College”, they have a section explaining how Baidu-spider crawls. There are types of web pages that were filtered out as below:

  • Duplicate Content Web Pages: Content already available on the Internet, Baidu must not necessarily include it again.

  • Short, thin content pages.

  • Some content uses techniques that Baidu spiders cannot parse, such as JS, AJAX, etc. Although users can see rich content, they will still be abandoned by search engines.

  • Web Pages that are loading slow may also be treated as empty, short pages. 

  • Many web pages whose main body is not prominent will be abandoned at this stage even if they are crawled back.

Summary 

Technical SEO shall not be neglected by any international brand who wants to achieve global success and enjoy their buying power on Baidu ranking. Get a Chinese hosting and complete the Chinese content delivery system on the website to begin your SEO works. Last but not least, optimise your technical SEO to rank better on Baidu.