In B2B marketing, the website remains the most important channel for driving organic traffic. On-site SEO is essential for achieving a high ranking on Baidu, which holds a 60% share of the search engine market in China.
On-site SEO involves improving a website’s internal elements (content, structure, tags, technical performance) to make it more relevant and visible to search engines.
Compared to Google, Baidu requires more manual intervention and more frequent updates.
Today, we’re sharing practical strategies for on-site SEO on Baidu to help your website rank higher in search results.
Use of Simplified Chinese
For multinational companies, simply translating English content into Chinese is not enough. In addition to localizing the content for the Chinese market, it is also necessary to optimize the articles so that they comply with SEO guidelines.
Baidu’s audience consists primarily of users from mainland China, where Simplified Chinese is the official language. If your site uses only Traditional Chinese or a mix of Simplified and Traditional Chinese, this may negatively impact the user experience. We recommend—except for certain product names or essential technical terms—that you avoid mixing Chinese and English as much as possible.
In addition, Baidu may classify content that is not in Simplified Chinese as “low quality” or “not intended for the target audience,” which can lead to indexing issues.
When translating content, it is also importantto avoid using machine translation to ensure that the Chinese sentences flow naturally. This helps search engines better understand the content and improves user retention rates.
Optimizing Titles, Keywords, and Meta Description Tags
Titles, keywords, and meta descriptions help Baidu understand a page's topic. The search engine places great importance on the accuracy of keyword matches.
On mobile devices, Baidu generally displays only the first 20 to 25 characters of the title. A good title should therefore include the main keyword, be no longer than 25 characters, and place that keyword at the beginning so that it can be quickly identified by both Baidu’s crawlers and users.
For a 1,000-word article, we recommend that the main keyword appear between 3 and 5 times. It should appear at least once in the first paragraph, be included in the H2 and H3 headings within the body of the text, and be mentioned naturally in the conclusion.
For B2B companies, it’s more effective to target long-tail keywords—which are more specific and better align with users’ search habits. For example, “what is the best SEO training in Beijing” is more likely to rank well than “SEO training.” You can use the Baidu keyword analysis tools mentioned inthe previous article to identify the most relevant terms.
The description tag is designed to increase the click-through rate and ensure a better match with users’ search intent. We recommend limiting it to 70–100 characters, while ensuring it aligns with the page’s actual content. It can be structured as follows: “primary keyword + brief description of the page + call to action (CTA),” to help search engines quickly understand the page’s topic.
Optimizing URL Structure
The URL (Uniform Resource Locator) is the full link displayed in the browser’s address bar. When you type or click on a URL, you are redirected to the corresponding web page. We recommend using short, static URLs in English or Pinyin (for example: “/seo-guide”) to make them easier for Baidu’s crawlers to read and for users to understand. Pinyin is a phonetic transcription system for Mandarin Chinese that uses the Latin alphabet.
Although Baidu supports URLs in Chinese, these are automatically encoded (e.g., %E4%B8%AD%E6%96%87), which makes them harder to read and may reduce the click-through rate. If you must use Chinese URLs, make sure the server supports UTF-8 encoding, and ensure that internal links and the sitemap structure are consistent.
URLs should be in lowercase, with words separated by hyphens “–,” and should contain as few directory levels as possible to keep important pages close to the site root.
A clear and standardized URL structure not only improves search engines' understanding of the site, but also enhances the user experience and click-through rate, which in turn promotes indexing and ranking.
Setting Up an Internal Linking Structure
Internal links on a website are hyperlinks that connect different pages within the same site, with the goal of optimizing the user experience and search engine crawling.
They play a central role in indexing, authority distribution, and keyword ranking. Baidu Spider crawls pages by following these links. A well-designed structure makes it easier to discover new pages, particularly recent articles, product pages, or deep pages.
Use descriptive anchor text for links to important pages, such as the homepage. Avoid phrases like “click here.” Also, consider adding suggestions such as “previous article,” “next,” or “you might also like” to encourage users to continue browsing.
Optimizing the ALT Attribute for Images
Baidu Spider cannot read images, so it relies on the ALT attribute to understand their content. A clear description helps link the image to the page’s topic and improves its ranking in image search results. This also contributes to overall semantic consistency.
Write a descriptive, simple, and relevant ALT text. This also improves accessibility for visually impaired users, which can have an indirect positive effect on SEO performance.
Update Frequency
Baidu's algorithms prioritize active websites that regularly publish high-quality content. Frequent updates indicate that the site is well-maintained, which increases the frequency with which the crawler visits the site and, consequently, the opportunities for ranking on new keywords.
It is recommended that you post at least once a week or update older articles with new information.
For websites hosted outside of China, indexing on Baidu is slower and often requires manual submission. It is recommended that you submit each new piece of content via the Baidu Webmaster platform (up to 20 links per day). Indexing generally takes place between 48 hours and one week after submission. You can check whether a link has been indexed using the command `site: page-name`.
By following the recommendations outlined here, you will see a sustained improvement in your rankings on the Baidu search engine. On-site SEO is an ongoing process: you should evaluate your results, adjust your strategies in response to algorithm changes, and maintain a long-term perspective. It is this consistency that will ensure you maintain a stable and visible position on Baidu.
If you have any questions about SEO in China, please feel free to contact our expert on the Chinese market.