A complete Guide on things you must consider when doing SEO in China
Though most Chinese marketers use Google, Baidu seems to be the most popular search engine used in China. Practicing SEO in China is quite unique when compared to various other locations.
Baidu dominates over 79% of the Chinese market share. In order to rank your site on Baidu, you have to implement a good SEO strategy. Indeed, there are other search engines that include 360 and Sogou but these two are not frequently used because of their poor comparison to Baidu. This is the reason why a Chinese marketer must concentrate extremely on Baidu.
If you have to reach out to a billion people in China marketing your brand, you have to consider certain facts.
Below are the things you should consider while you try to rank your site on Baidu.
– Choose a nice domain
This is the basic thing you should consider while trying to rank your site on Baidu.
You have to choose a domain name that is user friendly and easily accessed. However, choosing a domain name doesn’t actually mean that you need to rebrand, so you can still select a domain name that represents the business you promote.
Make sure that your domain name ends with .cn which signifies the Chinese country code. Afterward, you can attach .cn suffix to your selected domain name. if your .cn domain name isn’t secured you can go to Namecheap and do so. It’s advisable to use Namecheap because it’s cheaper than Godaddy.
-Don’t create subdomains
The use of multiple domains is totally unacceptable and hence the site will be penalized by Baidu. This is why it is important you use the top-level .cn domain for any site. Nevertheless, you shouldn’t create a subdomain such as blog.com.cn instead build your hosting on a top-level domain.
The www is also recognized as a component of a subdomain, its necessary to redirect it to a top-level domain too.
-Get the Right Hosting Provider
Choosing an excellent hosting provider is one of the basic features so as to rank your site on Baidu, though it might not be sufficient enough to practice SEO in China. In order to rank your site on Baidu, it requires that you contact a good Chinese hosting provider. This also applies to every other marketer in different countries. In Hong Kong, you can host your site which is a lot easier in case you need a hosting provider with a customer service representative that interacts with clients in English.
The possibility of your site ranking on Baidu is well assured with quality hosting back up. Note that this entire procedure might require many funds.
-Provide a valid Chinese Contact Address
It’s relevant to have a Chinese contact address aside from getting a Chinese domain name and hosting provider. This means that you need an agent in China who can receive mails to be delivered to your estimated company. Some might think getting a Chinese address means setting up an office space or maybe a branch office in China. You should keep it in mind that only site with the present in China that are privileged to be ranked on Baidu. You need a mailing address to surpass your competitors in China.
PS: This might be costly
Owe an ICP License
ICP is an acronym of Internet Content Publishing. An ICP license is a permit issued only by the Chinese government, with this license you can operate a website in China. So it requires an ICP license to start up your website. There is a warning here you need to take note of, perhaps you won’t be able to qualify for the ICP license if you are not operating your website in China. However, if you can’t qualify to owe an ICP license you would need to partner with a Chinese internet-related organization to get one.
Always create new contents
You have to ensure you keep your site updated. Be creative and generate new content because new content is better ranked in Baidu than old content. You should produce a complex content marketing strategy that is associated with the kind of business you promote. The more freshly created content that gets ranked on Baidu, the more people that will follow it up.
Don’t copy peoples content
You should avoid copying other people’s content because copied contents are not highly rated. Just like Google, Baidu doesn’t like copied content. Your site will not be ranked well on Baidu if your contents are not original. Generate a plagiarized free and fresh content not only to be ranked well on Baidu but to get organic traffic to your site.
Copy content won’t do your site any good rather it makes it look useless and irrelevant.
Bad tag and bad Meta description
It’s necessary to check the tags of your website. Tags are the identifiers that enable a search engine or an Internet user to find your website online. If you don’t create the right tags for your website, there is no way people will ever find your website, or it may be displayed on the second page or more of the search engines (people usually pick their point from the first page and stop their searches).
The title tag is the most relevant tag which is considered a lot by search engines. It is the title tag that appears in a search engine so that an internet user will see it when they research. If the title tag doesn’t describe what the website content is or not delectable, people won’t surf through your website to know what is in the website because trying might be the waste of the researcher’s time
The Meta description is the little sentence right below the title tag. It’s the second thing Internet users will see. Internet users normally depend a lot on what they see in this description. Its what they can see in the description that imposes a decision whether to click or not to click on the website.
Chinese SEO is unique therefore it has to be engaged with caution. Considering these 8 things can enable you to get your website ranked on the first page of Baidu. Organizations and marketing agencies are attracted to contact you because of your site’s visibility on the Chinese internet if you implement good SEO.