Search engine optimization in Chinese language and for Chinese search engines is somewhat different than what we generally know about SEO. First of all, who are the major search engines in China that should be considered? The search engine with the highest market share is baidu with +60%, followed by Google with appr. 20% and yahoo with roughly 10%. The rest is distributed among other local search engines.

So, what is about?

You can often hear the sentence: "as Google is more sophisticated, once you optimize for Google you automatically optimize for baidu". Well, partly true but not that easy. If you optimize for Google you will get quicker results from baidu, that's sure. Baidu's ranking algorythms are not yet that sophisticated so they focus more on page titles and head lines. Also keyword density counts, and here comes the big advantage of Baidu. As Baidu is a local Chinese search engine, they are more familiar with extracting keywords from a Chinese text. In Chinese language it is not that obvious when a word starts or ends as there are no word separators like the space in Western languages. To find a keyword in a meaningful context is for Baidu still easier than for Google.

On the other hand, as it is easier to optimize for Baidu, its index is often full of unrelevant results. Many Chinese quality searchers rely on Google as they nevertheless can offer better search results.

Take care of keyword advertising when you do SEO for Baidu

Baidu displays the paid search results before the index search results. That means, for very competitive keywords there can already be ten or more paid search results. Thus, the first natural search result will often be on page two. You have to think twice if SEO for Baidu makes sense at all. Imagine the situation in one or two years. I expect that Baidu has to change the display of the paid ads or it will be only keyword advertising when we talk about SEO China.

Also in China, search engine marketing is a very important part of the Internet marketing mix. Although the piece of the online marketing cake is not yet that large as in Western countries, it will grow more and more. Currently, banner advertising plays still a larger role, also due the fact that portal traffic is relatively cheap.