How Baidu is similar & different from Google — Marcus Pentzek // Searchmetrics

About the speaker

Marcus Pentzek

Searchmetrics

- Searchmetrics

Show Notes

  • ·01:33 : Recap of week so far ·Ben recaps the first 3 days marketing in China week. On the previous days, Marcus and Ben talked about the differences that you will have to consider such as online censorship in China and adapting to their unique social media and marketing cha els. Marcus discussed in detail why Baidu is the top search player in China and how Google fails to measure up in that territory. ·02:00 : Similarities and differences between Baidu and Google ·Marcus talks about the similarity between the search page layout of Baidu and Google. One major similarity is on the results page. For both the results appear in the same list of 10 and include search result snippets and URLs. Baidu carries a sidebar on the right that actually provides additional information which is one of the differences from Google. Ben and Marcus detail the differences and similarities. ·04:02 : Are the ranking factors different in Baidu? ·Ranking factors stay the same across the world. So you can use your google ranking strategies to rank on Baidu as well. Marcus explains that search engines are fundamentally designed the same way around content, keywords, HTML, and backlinks as ranking factors. Ben and Marcus discuss SEO strategies using Baidu and the role of the Great Chinese Firewall in how you rank. Having your content in Mandarin Chinese is important to helping you rank better. Unlike the rest of the territories, Mandarin is the script being used in China. ·07:12 : How does the script in China differ from the other nearby territories? ·Ben and Marcustalk about the different scripts being used in mainland China versus other territories like Taiwan. Marcus details the spoken languages of mainland China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Singapore versus the written language used. The written language is what you would have on your webpages and its important to ranking. So your content migration would span roughly 4 languages among the territories. ·08:53 : What are some other differences to consider for organic growth in Baidu? ·Last year, Marcu did a study on Baidus ranking factors and found out that .com domains actually make up 75% of the results. Marcus talks about using local website domains as against .com domains. Ben and Marcus talk about content density, the use of images, and securing your websites as ranking factors. While backlinking is a major ranking factor, the backlinking strategies are different. Ben and Marcus discuss backlinking in China.

Episode Summary

  • ·“So there are those listings with those, there are the search snippets with the headlines. There's some description, there's the URL, which you can click. This is quite similar and they roughly have 10 organic results just as Google.” ·“So you need content. You need to know where your HTML is. You need to prove that your website has authorities, so you need backlinks. So all these ranking factors are basically all the same all around the world and this is not different for Baidu.” ·“the Chinese market is somehow regulated by this great Chinese firewall... it monitors all the traffic that's coming from outside of China and going into China.” ·“You want to have your content in Chinese. And this is not only Chinese. You want it in Mandarin Chinese and simplified Chinese characters, which is basically the script that is being written in China...” ·“I utilized 50,000 Chinese keywords and checked their rankings on Baidu and analyzed those to see what are basically the ranking factors... it's dot com domains ranking for 75% of all those results. ” ·“Then you want to have longer content. We have been talking about longer content which means around 3000 Chinese characters in length...” ·“only 30% of the top ranking pages actually do have images implemented while I did see there as a positive correlation.” ·“We only see like 50% share of HTTPs on the rankings, but this is growing because it was just introduced very shortly. I think it's like three, four years ago that they started crawling HTTPS websites.” ·“So the backlinking strategy is incredibly important to drive rankings and visibility in China, but it's a little bit of a different strategy than it would be in Google.”
About the speaker

Marcus Pentzek

Searchmetrics

- Searchmetrics

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