Usually SEO efforts are directed towards achieving top
rankings with Google and sometimes with Yahoo and Bing. However, in addition to
the Big Three, there are also other search engines that might be of interest to
you. In fact, some of these search engines might prove a better option than
Google, Yahoo or Bing. If these search engines are used by your target
audience, they will be more efficient and it is worth to spend some time
optimizing for them.
If you haven't heard about Baidu, don't worry. It is a
popular search engine but its reach is not global and this is why many people
don't even know about it. Still, Baidu is certainly not just one more search
engine to waste your time with. Baidu is big in China and since the population
of China is more than a billion, if you rank well with Baidu, this can make
quite a difference. In fact, if you are operating globally, not to mention if
your visitors are based mainly in China, you can't afford to miss this market.
On the Chinese market, the share of Baidu is around 60% and it is the most
popular Chinese language search engine. Google is less popular in China than
Baidu, so if your traffic comes from the Chinese market, it pays to optimize
your site for Baidu.
The algorithm of Baidu is different from the
algorithms of Google, Bing, and Yahoo. In a sense, it is less sophisticated and
it kinda resembles the algorithms of the other search engines from many years
many years ago. Here are some tips what you should do in order to get decent
rankings with Baidu:
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
As any other search engine, Baidu uses crawlers, so
make sure your site is spiderable. Use a spider 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.
from: http://www.webconfs.com/seo-articles.php
from: http://www.webconfs.com/seo-articles.php
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