How to Optimize a Site for Baidu in the Chinese Market
30 July 2010
All told, you'll find a viable market of around one billion people if you combine Europe with North America. That's an incredibly large market, and the amount of millionaires in the online world can attest to the success of great marketing techniques in two continents. However, what if you could tap into the Chinese market? We're talking about one billion-plus in one country.Breaking into the Chinese market is considered the next frontier for many businesses. There are a few problems present, though. For starters - and not to turn a business article political - the one-party communism in China means infinitely more regulation than you'll find in a union-style Europe and definitely in a capitalist America. Plus there's the adaptability factor.Anyone wishing to break into the Chinese market needs to adapt to the Chinese in order to be successful, not the other way around. This is where Baidu can help you out tremendously - but it still needs to be optimized.
Why go through Baidu? Well, first you have to understand exactly what it is and how big it is in China. Baidu, to put it simply, is China's
Google - a Chinese/Japanese search engine that hosts nearly a billion web pages and offers PDA and WAP-based mobile search capabilities. Baidu is the Internet to a lot of Asia.Optimizing your site for Baidu could be a huge turning point in your business. If you do it correctly, you'll tap into a huge market and almost instantly witness an exponential increase in productivity. Do it incorrectly, however, and you'll have wasted a lot of time, effort and possibly money in the process.Thankfully, the only real legwork you'll have to put in is deciding exactly what to pitch to the Chinese people. With many regulations, and with so many products we're used to already being made in China, the options are limited as to what will be successful over there. When optimizing your site, you have a little more flexibility.The most important thing to remember is that your website has a high probability of being auto translated. To this end, you need to take care in choosing the best keywords. For instance, English to Chinese translation may slaughter a long-tail key phrase. So a shorter key phrase, consisting of a couple of words, is the best bet here.Also, remember that the keywords might not necessarily be the same. You should do your research to make sure the Chinese symbol for the word you want to use doesn't translate into a word they don't use. Yeah, this can get a bit confusing but it's important to make the distinction where necessary. You'll find out through research.One good part about Baidu is that it doesn't have spam filters like Google. You still don't want to turn in a junk page loaded down with keywords, but it provides some flexibility if you happen to go over your usual Google limit.If you really want to nail it, you should translate your own Chinese text/symbols. This will take more time and you might end up having to hire a translator, but we are talking about your business here. But beyond the language difference and the product difference, there's really no difference in optimizing a Baidu site from a Google site.
