FOCUS SERIES. Baidu SEO. Challenges and Intricacies of Marketing in China. Véronique Duong

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5 FOCUS SERIES Baidu SEO Challenges and Intricacies of Marketing in China Véronique Duong

6 First published 2017 in Great Britain and the United States by ISTE Ltd and John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with the terms and licenses issued by the CLA. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside these terms should be sent to the publishers at the undermentioned address: ISTE Ltd John Wiley & Sons, Inc St George s Road 111 River Street London SW19 4EU Hoboken, NJ UK USA ISTE Ltd 2017 The rights of Véronique Duong to be identified as the author of this work have been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act Library of Congress Control Number: British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library ISSN (Print) ISSN X (Online) ISBN

7 Contents Preface... Introduction... ix xiii Chapter 1. Baidu, Its Services and Its Competitors The history of Baidu Very rich Search Engine Results Page Baidu versus HaoSou and Sogou Baidu s services Eye tracking on Baidu versus Google How does BaiduSpider work? Understanding the difference between crawl and indexing on Baidu Chapter 2. Technical Advice and Tips for Baidu SEO Purchasing a domain name with a.cn extension Choosing a domain name Hosting a site in Hong Kong and/or in China Recommended hosting companies Case study Chinese mobile telephone line Optimizing an HTML code for Baidu Is HTTPS protocol incompatible with Baidu? Baidu MIP, a new feature for mobile pages in Encoding a Chinese site Baidu s Webmaster Tools... 25

8 vi Baidu SEO Check that the robots.txt complies with the Baidu guidelines How should a robots.txt with a high number of restrictions be managed? Tags and attributes that are not compatible with Baidu The rel= canonical attribute does not work on Baidu The hreflang attribute does not work on Baidu Micro data tags (Schema.org) do not work in Baidu Baidu s V1, V2 and V3 icons The official site icon on Baidu ( 官网 ) The Pomegranate algorithm ( 石榴 ) The Money Plant algorithm against external spam links Sitemap for Baidu Submitting URLs to Baidu automatically Adapt your mobile site to Baidu Declaring a mobile site in Webmaster Tools Baidu s official good practices for optimizing a mobile site Why should you have a Responsive Design site? Managing the redesign of a site for Baidu Simple and ordinary URLs for Baidu URL formats for press sites for Baidu news The negative impact of empty internal results pages Problems with link analysis and Rapid Positioning Chapter 3. Semantic and Editorial Advice and Tips for Baidu SEO Baidu Index: a useful platform for studying search trends Baidu s keyword generation tool Keywords and ranking: Term Frequency Inverse Document Frequency statistics... 55

9 Contents vii 3.4. The length of the title and meta description meta-tags The influence of keywords on Baidu SEO The importance of keyword density Strategy for keywords and SERP analysis Chapter 4. Subjects Related to Baidu SEO Baidu Certified Marketing Specialist certifications Baidu s browser Connecting to a social network directly from the SERPs Chinese e-commerce and Baidu SEO: current trends AutoNavi is outperforming Baidu Maps Social networks and Baidu Chapter 5. Methodology of a Baidu SEO Campaign First step: kick-off meeting The SEO project reverse schedule How is a Gantt chart created? The technical audit for Chinese SEO on Baidu The semantic audit for Chinese SEO on Baidu Keyword analysis Optimizing Chinese meta-tags Optimizing headings tags Optimizing textual content Optimizing Chinese URLs Optimizing text anchors Optimizing images Optimizing breadcrumbs Dragon Metrics: a special position monitoring tool for China Netlinking: searching for external links Chapter 6. Beyond Baidu SEO Advice on SMO optimization for WeChat Advice for social marketing on Weibo

10 viii Baidu SEO 6.3. Mei Nu in China: a marketing method Wang Hong ( 网红 ): the new online promotion model Conclusion Glossary Bibliography Index

11 Preface Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life. CONFUCIUS I have noticed that Search Engine Optimization (SEO) for Asian search engines is not discussed much in the West. This is particularly true of Baidu, which is the most popular search engine in China and one of the five most consulted in the world. Advice and tips for Chinese SEO are often vague. I therefore decided to write this book, based on official reports from Baidu, in order to help and guide people, companies and brands wishing to be ranked, and therefore visible on Baidu and other Chinese search engines (HaoSou, Sogou, etc.). As well as examples of, and advice on, SEO for Chinese search engines, in the second part of this book the reader will find tips for carrying out marketing in China using social networks, such as Weibo and WeChat, as well as the Meinu tactic, which works very well in China. This book draws on my experience, research and analysis. It is particularly based on 5 years I have spent as a

12 x Baidu SEO CESEO-certified SEO consultant, and on my work with AUTOVEILLE and ASVD (founded in 2010 and 2013, respectively), two organizations specializing in Chinese SEO and e-reputation management in China, which support the most prestigious multinational brands as well as start-ups in their set-up, development and visibility on the Asian Internet. This book is aimed at people who already know a little about Google SEO and SEO agencies wishing to develop on the international stage. Acknowledgments I would like to thank all the people who have supported me and believed in me during all these years of technical and scientific research in the constantly evolving discipline of Search Engine Optimization (SEO). My particular thanks go to all those who guided and supported me in the writing of this book: my family: my father, mother and sister; Alexandre Sisavanh (friend and ASVD partner, who gives me advice and support every day); Zsuzsanna Barabas and Manuela Sánchez Pérez (friends who are always ready to listen); my Master s lecturers: Jean-Michel Daube and Damien Nouvel (INALCO); my friends, who are an important part of my life; the members of SEO Camp; my colleagues at Fabernovel Data & Media (Geoffrey, Antoine, Tony, Steve, among others);

13 Preface xi my former colleagues at Datawords (Yaou, Yufeng, among others); my former colleagues at Red-On-Line (Ros, Alda, among others). Véronique DUONG - 楊傳潔 CEO at AUTOVEILLE April 2017

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15 Introduction In the West, the search engine Google more or less has the monopoly of Internet searches in most countries, but in China, and in Asia more generally, this is rarely the case. Asian Internet users regularly use other search engines, such as Naver, Daum (Korea), Yahoo! (Taiwan, Japan, etc.), Baidu, HaoSou (360) and Sogou (mainland China, etc.), and their market shares are often more significant than that of Google. Baidu is a Chinese search engine created in January 2000 by Eric Xu and Robin Li, two computer engineers. The crawler was launched around 2 years after Google. Considered an imitation of Google, especially in its early stages, Baidu gradually developed and evolved into a creative search engine. Baidu offers more functions and services than HaoSou (360), Sogou, Yahoo!, etc. Each of them is trying to become the number one search engine in China and the competition is fierce. In June 2016, an MIT 1 study placed Baidu among the five most innovative and intelligent companies in the world, 1 MIT Technology Review, June 2016, see

16 xiv Baidu SEO along with Amazon, Illumina, Tesla Motors and Aquion Energy. The aim of this book is to provide, on the one hand, a wide range of practical and technical advice for being present and visible among the sites ranked by Baidu and, on the other, tips for a web marketing strategy based on social networks and some Chinese methods. This book consists of six chapters: Chapter 1 presents a detailed introduction to Baidu and its challengers; Chapter 2 outlines the steps to follow and the pitfalls to avoid in SEO; Chapter 3 devotes particular attention to semantic aspects; the ancillary services offered by Baidu, as well as the characteristics and constraints related to the use of e- commerce and social networks, are discussed in Chapter 4; the methodology and optimization of an SEO campaign are expanded on in Chapter 5; Chapter 6 presents some Chinese marketing models such as Mei Nu and Wang Hong. This book addresses a specific theme step by step. It also contains a glossary of words and techniques used by Internet professionals and a bibliography. The figures in this book are printed in grayscale. However, color versions have been made available online and the e-book will be available in full color.