In general, the reason Baidu PPC advertising can be highly effective is the fact that users who are actively searching for something already have a buying intent. It means that they are more likely to convert, in other words to become the actual customers compared to those who are passively looking at ads or are still in the process of discovery of a specific product or service.

Baidu PPC advertising is, in principal, identical to Google’s equivalent, although there are several important differences to keep in mind. First of all, due to the fact that Chinese internet is tightly controlled and regulated by the government, opening a PPC account is, by far, more complicated process than with Google.

In contrast to Google AdWords account which is free and only asks for a Gmail account and a credit card, Baidu requires some serious paperwork, a fee and a deposit to get it going.

Currently, only legally registered companies, domestic or foreign, can advertise with Baidu. Obviously, opening Baidu PPC advertising account for a Chinese company is much easier than for a foreign one, it is also cheaper and faster. Overseas business entities are required to provide business registration certificate at the minimum and are often asked to submit additional documentation. This is why it is recommended to enlist a help of professionals who are experienced in dealing with Baidu on behalf of a foreign company.

Once the account has been registered and activated, it operates in a similar way with Google, although the back end interface is entirely in Chinese. In addition, the structure is significantly more confusing and takes some time getting used to. Once again, even if you are fluent in Chinese, it is always a good idea to outsource Baidu account management to someone who is well familiar with it instead of attempting to do it yourself.

Baidu PPC advertising with search ads

On the most basic level, there are two sections in Baidu account: search ads and display ads. Search ads are those that are displayed on search results pages in response to user query. In Baidu, they come in a few different formats.

The most basic format is a text ad complete with a title, two lines of description and URL at the bottom – quite similar to Google. There is also a verification level assigned to an ad which is designed to inform users on trustworthiness of a particular website and an advertiser.

Some text ads can also include additional links to separate landing pages. By offering several options, such arrangement increases likelihood of that ad being clicked, although this format is more expensive.

Baidu brand zone

Baidu Brand Zone is another option that is most suitable for businesses looking to build brand awareness rather than achieve direct conversions. This type of ads typically include images, text and multiple links. Such ads are CPM (cost per mille/1000 impressions) based and therefore harder to measure. The price for such ads depends on their size and the position making the advertising in Baidu Brand Zone to be the most expensive type of Baidu marketing.

Using images with Baidu PPC advertising

In general, in order to increase the CTR (click through rate) advertisers would try to include images in the ads whenever possible as well pack more links into an ad. Carefully designed text that fits well with dynamic keywords (those that show up in response to the relevant query) is another important factor to consider. This is where A/B split tests come handy and, fortunately, Baidu offers unlimited ways to test and fine tune the best performing combinations.

Another good reason to include images with the ads is the fact that more users, especially on mobile, use pictures to search for products. Baidu’s picture matching algorithms continue improving offering more opportunities to display matching ads.

Baidu PPC advertising for mobile

Mobile search is another major area of Baidu strength where it holds even larger market share than on desktops. Optimizing ads for mobile involves setting up a call button that dials the number automatically by user simply tapping it from their phones. It works in both mobile browser and Baidu app.

If the business is particularly interested in reaching mobile users, it is worth investing in creating mobile friendly ads with suitable images and shorter, more concise text.

Baidu display ads

Display ads is the second major method to advertise with Baidu. It involves placing image ads (banners) at the most relevant sites that are part of vast Baidu ads display network. This is what is often called remarketing (or retargeting) – the ads are displayed based on a specific user’s history of visiting sites or searching for a particular term.

Technically, it is identical to a much larger Google’s ads display network, which, like many other things, has been copied by Baidu.
Both search ads and display ads are managed within the same Baidu PPC account sharing advertising budget that can be split between the two methods.

Typically, it is hard to predict in advance which PPC method would bring better results, therefore you should expect it to take some time to determine how to best allocate the budget between search and display ads.

The post Overview of Baidu PPC Advertising, Best Practices first appeared on Sampi.co.

The post Overview of Baidu PPC Advertising, Best Practices appeared first on Sampi.co.

Up until the middle of 2016, Chinese PPC, especially with Baidu, was, on average, delivering better returns than SEO. This was due to several factors:

• First, the search results, especially for popular terms, were dominated by paid ads. In some cases, hardly any organic results would be displayed in the first page;
• Second, there was little visual distinction in Baidu between paid and organic results and most people couldn’t even tell the difference.

Things have changed significantly since the most recent scandal involving fraudulent Baidu medical ads that led to the death of young cancer sufferer. Following public outcry and negative publicity, Chinese government published new rules concerning Baidu advertising that, among other things, recommended limiting paid results to no more than 30% of SERP (search engine results pages).

Also, the new rules require ads to be more easily distinguishable from organic results in order to minimize the confusion between them.

Baidu, as well as other Chinese search engines, have announced their commitment to comply with the new rules (not that they had any choice in the matter anyway). Less advertising space has inevitably led to increased cost of PPC advertising which has made such campaigns more expensive than they could have been in the past.

On the positive side, the quality of ads is supposed to improve which may, at least in theory, increase trustworthiness of paid ads from a user standpoint.

How to choose between PPC vs. SEO for Chinese market

When it comes to SEO, organic results are now guaranteed to feature prominently in Chinese SERPs which makes SEO a more worthwhile investment than it would have been before the new rules were implemented.

On the other hand, you still need to consider different pros and cons of each strategy.

One of the most important consideration is the time frame. Getting results from PPC is almost instant while building SEO traffic takes time. Typically, it would take somewhere between 3 to 6 months to start seeing some benefits from SEO and 9-12 months of consistent efforts to build a stable organic ranking to show up high enough in SERPs. If you can’t wait that long than PPC is probably the best route to choose.

In addition, since the feedback is fast and measurable, PPC is best at testing different keywords to see which ones work better. Tweaking SEO keywords takes much longer feedback loop.

Calculating which strategy would be more profitable also requires knowing LTV (life time value) of a customer. This figure can then be compared to the cost of acquiring that customer with either SEO or PPC. As a general rule, SEO tends to be a better fit for high volume, low LTV cases.

Another disadvantage of SEO for Chinese market compared to PPC that is worth mentioning is its sensitivity to Baidu algorithms changes. When that happens, an optimized site can lose ranking practically overnight which makes SEO an ongoing, hence expensive, effort.

Obviously PPC doesn’t have this weakness since you are paying Baidu for getting visitors bypassing their ranking algorithms.
On the other hand, organic results are generally considered to be more trustworthy and therefore are more likely to be clicked than the ads. Since now Chinese engines are required to implement more visual distinction between paid and organic results, visitors are becoming more aware of which is which and tend to favor organic ones.

Considering the above point, SEO for Chinese market seems to offer the better value in search marketing than PPC as a long term strategy. There is an exception however: if your niche is dominated by established players or authority sites that have been building their reputation for years, it is highly unlikely that you would be able to unseat them. However, if you employ PPC you still may be able to outbid them.
In conclusion, choosing between SEO and PPC requires answering three basic questions:

• Can you afford waiting a few months for the results or time is of the essence?
• How LTV of your customer stacks against the cost of their acquisition with either strategy?
• How competitive is your space and whether you have a realistic chance to achieve high organic ranking vs. existing sites?

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Moreover, Baidu is also the leading choice for searches on mobile devices, the increasingly important Chinese search engines market. In June 2016, it was reported that Baidu had 667 million monthly active users (MAU) just for that month alone.

Baidu is still the leader of Chinese search engines market

The entire Chinese search engines market has been growing at fairly steady rate since 2010, adding each year somewhere between 50 and 70 million new users. This year, it is estimated to have reached about 600 million regular users, about 3 quarters of which go to Baidu as their service of choice.

In many ways, Baidu has been following, if not copying, Google’s business strategy. It has diversified its business into areas that are identical to Google’s: from navigation and self-driving cars to AI (artificial intelligence) and VR (virtual reality).

Although, it did hit a few bumps on the road, such as recent scandals with its medical ads and illegal promotions of gambling sites, it is hard to imagine Baidu being knocked off its primary position among Chinese search engines any time soon.

The other Chinese search engines that are worth mentioning are Qihoo (aka Search360) and Sogou. Qihoo in particular has been growing relatively fast in recent years and was the only one that was ever in a position to somewhat threaten Baidu’s dominance in Chinese search engines market, although it is no longer the case.

When it comes to advertising, Baidu should always be considered as the first choice, mainly because of its largest reach. On average, Baidu CPC (cost per click) tends to be higher than Google across almost all industries. Most likely, it will continue to increase as Baidu has been experiencing fall in profits and will probably increase prices as time goes by.

Another reason to focus on Baidu is the fact that its technology is the most advanced. This ultimately affects advertisement CTR (click through rate) through higher relevancy with the search terms.

Baidu has also been active in the video market and currently owns one of the largest online video hosting platforms called iQiYi. As videos are quickly becoming one of the most popular types of content consumed online, Baidu is in a good position to take advantage of that market as well.

In addition, Baidu, like Google, is very good at remarketing which is built into its display network with over 600,000 partner websites in China. Managing both search ads and display ads is done within the same Baidu advertising account where user can simply split the budget between the two channels.

One of the biggest hustles associated with Baidu PPC is opening the advertising account. Unless your company has Chinese business registration, applying for Baidu account involves quite a bit of paperwork and a long verification process. Baidu would typically request translated version of your foreign business license and may require additional proof of incorporation. Companies in financial and medical fields would most certainly be scrutinized more carefully and multiple requests for additional licenses are quite common.

Verification of a website (which must be in Chinese) often leads to more requests to change certain sections (most commonly “about us” part). All this is aimed at making sure that the advertiser is not misrepresenting its business nature and is a legitimate company which will not become involved in promoting anything illegal.

This process is in sharp contrast with Google’s where anyone with a Gmail and a credit card can open an account and start running campaigns almost immediately.

The situation is not that much different with the other Chinese search engines such as Qihoo and Sogou. They also require business registration and licenses from foreign applicants and must follow similar verification process. Once approved, running PPC campaign with those engines is quite similar to Baidu. On the positive side, for businesses that are not in very competitive niches, CPC on Qihoo and Sogou can be substantially lower compared to Baidu. Therefore, it is a good idea to try those engines as well in parallel, although not instead of, Baidu.

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If you are familiar with Google AdWords, Baidu PPC conversion types are quite similar. Unlike Google AdWords, the conversions must be first set up within Baidu TongJi, the equivalent of Google Analytics. Then, they can be tracked in both Baidu TuiGuang (Baidu’s “AdWords”) and Baidu TongJi.

First, here is how search engines define a conversion: each instance of visitors completing a desired activity on your website, such as registration or download, is recorded as a conversion.

Here are the examples of conversion targets:

• Obtaining users’ info: registering online, creating an account etc.;
• Contact objectives: requesting consultation, sending a message, calling a phone number, etc.;
• Interactive goals: video playback event, placing item into a shopping cart, sharing content etc.;
• Revenue target: tracking online orders, payments etc.

4 types of Baidu PPC conversion that you can set up for your campaign:

Page conversions

This type of Baidu PPC conversion is triggered whenever a visitor reaches a specific URL. Each such visit will be registered as one conversion. This is the most common type of conversion used by most advertisers.

For example, a “thank you” page can be set as an URL that triggers conversion. So, whenever a visitor buys a product, signs up for a newsletter, downloads a file etc. – the next page they reach will be that “thank you” page. As soon as this event happens, Baidu knows that this is a conversion and update the report.

Setting it up is straightforward: all you need is the destination URL that triggers the conversion and define recording method (visits, page views, URL variable). You can also assign a conversion value and track conversion revenue performance.

In more advanced settings, you can also setup a path – the sequence of pages which you want your visitor to go to first before reaching the final conversion URL, in other words, a type of a sales funnel.

Even conversion

It is a bit more advanced way to set up Baidu PPC conversions than a simple. The event conversion is triggered whenever a visitor performs specified actions, such as registration, purchase, download, play, and so on.

It can be set using a preview method: user chooses the element on the page and set the conversion event page. If the page where the event is located is not unique, you can use variable part of the URL as a wildcard..

Another method is manually adding event conversion using event element ID.

This type of Baidu PPC conversions also allow you to set conversion value and track revenue.

Duration conversion

This conversion is triggered whenever visitors stayed on the site for longer than the specified time or stayed on a specific page for a specific time duration. This type of conversion can help you to understand whether users have actually read content on the page rather than skipped it.

The setup is quite simple: you set the conversion goal as the total time duration of a visits in hours, minutes or seconds.

There is also an option to set monetary value for this type of conversion.

Page visits conversion

This conversion is defined as the total number of pages opened by a visitor in one session.

You can simply define the number of pages that must be exceeded in one session and that would be recorded as the conversion. Baidu recommends to set this number to minimum 3 pages.

This type of conversion can also be tracked as the revenue once it has been assigned value in the setting but it is optional.

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The post China SEM: Getting to Know Baidu PPC Conversion Types appeared first on Sampi.co.

21-year-old student Wei Zexi, who was diagnosed with rare form of cancer in 2014, had died on 12 April following a controversial and ultimately unsuccessful treatment that he found online through Baidu search. Before his death, Wei publicly criticized Baidu for selling search listings for medical information to the highest bidder misleading him and his family of the treatment’s effectiveness. 

Early this week, Cyberspace Administration of China has published a statement saying that Baidu’s search results appeared to have “had an impact” on student Wei’s choice of treatment calling on the company to overhaul its practices.

Baidu responded by saying that it would “implement all the changes demanded by investigators, and deeply reflect on its shortcomings”. It has already removed all paid advertisement for “cancer treatment” (“癌症治疗”) and related searches showing only news and organic results.

Here are the 5 ways Baidu scandal is going to affect marketers in China

#1: It is likely that the new account approval process will be taking longer and may require more supporting documents. All medical ads will certainly come under more scrutiny and the effect may spill over to the related fields such as health food and supplements, medications and general health care providers. Ads from medical institutions not approved by the government would probably be rejected outright.

#2: Regulators already demand more visual distinction for Baidu paid ads vs. organic results. Currently, it is often hard to tell the difference as ads are indicated only by a word “advertisement” (推广) at the bottom. Baidu is likely to follow Google in the way paid results are shown. This is how it currently looks on Baidu vs. Google:

#3: Critics point out that Baidu mostly ranks ads based on a particular advertiser spending level rather than ads quality and credibility. Although, Baidu quality score includes several factors, spending is probably the biggest one. Following the scandal, now Baidu promises to rank ads based on credibility, although who and how is going to determine that is much less clear.

#4: Another demand from the regulators is related to how much paid ads vs. organic results should occupy the first results page. Often times and for popular terms, Baidu first page is almost entirely populated by the paid results. This resulted in marketers seeing better ROI from Baidu PPC campaigns vs. investing in SEO. Now, Baidu is urged to limit paid search results to only about 30% of the page real estate with the rest going to organic results. This will probably make investment in Baidu SEO a more productive strategy than it used to be.

#5: Cost of Baidu pay-per-click is already higher than Google across almost all the industries and is now likely to increase further. Medical ads provided 20-30% of Baidu search revenues and the company will probably try to make up for the shortfall – their shares already fell by 5% this week following this  recent Baidu scandal. Also, bids are bound to increase as more advertisers will  now be competing for less available space on each search page (see above).

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Baidu ads PPC: setup the ad campaign

Here is the main quick management panel of your Baidu ads PPC account:

The first important parameter of the campaign is the geography. Here you can set the locations where your Baidu ads should be displayed. Go to the second tab from the left (highlighted) to get to that menu:

Next, click on the highlighted link in the second row:

This will bring up the list of available Chinese locales. Choosing the left radio button will display your ads in every location. If you need a more granular approach (which we always recommend), check the right radio button that shows provinces and major cities to choose from:

Next important parameter is the budget setup. It can be accessed from the same menu here:

The budget can be set daily or weekly. It’s important to make sure not to leave it on the default settings of “unlimited budget”:

Another good practice is to setup A/B split tests in order to figure out which combination of headline and ad copy produces higher click-through rate (CTR). Here is where it is done in Baidu ads:

Finally, clicking the gear icon will bring you to more settings where you can activate Baidu ads display network. It works similar to Google ads display network that enables your ads to be displayed on participating sites. This concept is known as re-marketing and it enables bringing relevant ads in front if users who have shown their interest in similar offers in the past.

Here is what you should check in order to enable this powerful capability with your Baidu ads:

Stay tuned for more upcoming tutorials on Baidu ads PPC account and setup.

The post Baidu Ads with PPC – Tutorial, Part II: Baidu Ad Campaign Setup first appeared on Sampi.co.

The post Baidu Ads with PPC – Tutorial, Part II: Baidu Ad Campaign Setup appeared first on Sampi.co.

Although, it has some formidable local competitors like QiHu and Sogou, Baidu still holds the largest markets share in search engines. Baidu also dominates the increasingly important mobile search market.

Although advertising on Baidu is similar to Google in concept, there are some major differences. Here is the first part of our Baidu PPC account tutorial.

Once you have your Baidu account application processed, approved and verified, you will be granted access to the back-end. This will enable you to start setting up campaigns, design ads, research keywords and use other Baidu tools that are available.

The process of opening Baidu account will be covered in another post, here we will focus on how Baidu PPC works from the back-end.

Baidu PPC main account settings

Here is how Baidu PPC account would look like upon login:

It is, so called, Baidu quick management panel which gives  a quick overview of the ongoing campaigns, the account details and the balance. It also gives s quick access to Baidu PPC tools. Now, we are going to review one of those tools – Baidu keyword planner.

Keyword research is the foundation of any PPC campaign and Baidu provides a keyword research tool which is similar in concept to Google adwords planner.

It can be accessed from the tools menu of the quick management panel:

While searching for keywords, the tool would make some relevant suggestions as you type:

Just like with Google adwords planner, Baidu PPC keyword tool displays various data on the selected keywords and allows sorting them out by criteria:

Clicking on the plus sign in the right column will add the keyword to user’s list:

For each of the keywords in the list, Baidu PPC keyword tool would separately display the number of daily searches on desktop and mobile. It also shows the recommended bid and competitiveness ranking:

Once the initial list is generated, next step is to review it by various performance criteria. Click on the right button at the bottom of the list:

This will open up the a detailed view of the Baidu PPC keywords data and projected campaign performance and cost:

Baidu keyword review panel also provides a convenient way to see each keyword’s performance on either desktop or mobile separately:

From this point, it is easy make adjustments to various parameters and see how they would affect the performance in terms of impressions, click-through rate (CTR) and projected cost.

For example, here is how to change the bid across all of the keywords to see the effect:

This menu allows adjusting keyword matching criteria from broad, narrow and exact match:

For example, setting up keyword matching method to “broad” would immediately increase number of impressions and consequently the CTR. The graph will be recalculated to reflect the new PPC campaign cost projection:

Stay tuned to the next part of Baidu PPC tutorial where we will show how to setup a campaign based on specific keyword set.

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The post Baidu PPC – Tutorial, Part I: Keyword Planner appeared first on Sampi.co.

Although the digital landscape in China continues changing, it is safe to assume that the main elements, such as current dominant platforms and leading services, will remain more or less the same for the next 2-3 years. In any case, the following infographic by Sampi Marketing, reflects the present state as of mid 2015.

Primary online platforms, such as Baidu for  SEO and SEM, Youku for video, WeChat for mobile and Sina Weibo for social media, are still the main elements in digital marketing in China. Additional platforms as well as other various ways of reaching people online are also covered in this infographic which is presented in a form of sequential process.

Depending on the nature of your business and marketing objectives in China, not all of the elements may be applicable or equally effective. So, the readers should take the information as an ideal and most complete set of tools to choose from:

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The post Infographic: Integrated Marketing Plan for Chinese Market appeared first on Sampi.co.

On the other hand, due to a number reasons, the familiar digital marketing tools, which are mainly run by Google in the Western markets, are not available in China. Google search engine market share in China has fallen below 1% this year and all the Google services, such as Google docs, Google maps, Google analytics etc., have also become blocked from access. This fact alone is making life quite difficult not only for marketers but for regular citizens and businesses.

Luckily, there is a an alternative and it is Baidu, the largest Chinese search engine with about 60% market share. In many respects, Baidu is totally identical to Google in terms of advertising options and marketing tools it offers, although almost all of those tools are entirely in Chinese. Here I’m going to review the main marketing options on Baidu from a familiar “Google perspective”. There are 4 basic types of advertising on Baidu:

1. Pay Per Click (PPC) or sponsored ads;
2. Baidu Brand Zone;
3. Baidu Union or display network;
4. Baidu Mobile;

Baidu PPC

Sponsored ads are purchased on keyword bidding basis,  just like with Google Adwords. Due to government requirements, opening Baidu Adwords account is a bit more complex than on Google where anyone can do it for free. Baidu requires a business license and, in case of a foreign company, a deposit that can be used towards the bids. Baidu also appoints regional agents in China, so depending on a company registered location, a specific authorized agent for that region must be used to setup PPC account. Fees may differ depending on an agent and a location: from zero to several thousand RMB. The account setup takes about one week (if all the documents are in order and are properly translated by an authorized Baidu translator).

From that point you can manage your account through the back-end admin panel which is similar to Google Adwords but with less options, a lot messier and entirely in Chinese.

Sponsored ads would typically appear at the top and at the bottom of the page as well as on the right, while organic search results are shown in the middle. However, it is sometimes hard to tell which are what, especially if viewed on a mobile device. According to China Internet Watch, Baidu PPC prices are higher than Google’s across almost all sectors. Here is the comparison of CPC between Baidu and Google (compiled by CIW):

Baidu Brand Zone

Baidu Brand Zone is a special place on the top of search results that features a specific brand that was searched for. It is a sort of a mini web page that can show basic information about the company or its brand, often with videos and latest offers. Here is an example for Adidas:

Typically, setting up a brand zone is recommended for brands who are already known in China and are looking to reinforce their presence. Having a Brand Zone will also make sure that people who are searching for that brand will have a better chance to be directed to a legitimate official site that represents it.

Baidu Union or Display Network

Taking advantage of Baidu Display Network allows your ad to be displayed across other Baidu online properties that range from various search products to music players or desktop applications. Similar to Google, Baidu uses complex algorithms to determine where and how your ad is shown, based on the profile of your target audience such as location, demographics or browsing history.

Of course, in order to be displayed, your ad should outbid the competitors for the same keyword and key phrase and have higher relevancy ranking. These are the current Baidu online properties that are part of Baidu Union:

The ads can be displayed in variety of ways: as static banners, text links, rich media, videos as well as floating ads – a very popular type of ads across Chinese internet.

Floating ads are typically shown on the sides of a page and always stay in the view, even when the page the scrolled down. While floating ads are rarely seen on Western sites, in China they are extremely popular and are considered to be highly effective.

Another part of Baidu display network, which is also called Wangmeng, consists of over 600,000 partner sites that cover all types of sectors and areas of interest. The way it works is quite similar to Google AdSense which has over 2 million participating sites, although majority are non-Chinese one. This makes Wangmeng network to be preferable to Google AdSense for the purposes of advertising in China.

Baidu Mobile

Thanks to wider popularity and availability of cheaper Android handsets and introduction of 4G mobile infrastructure, Baidu ads on mobile is a rapidly growing business. In fact, during the 1st quarter of 2014, Baidu had 160 million daily active users from mobile search, up from 130 million users two quarters ago.

Mobile ads are displayed in a similar way as on a desktop with sponsored ads on the top followed by organic results. However, because of the smaller screen of a phone, sponsored ads are shown only at the top.

In addition, if there is a listed phone number shown in the search results, clicking it would automatically dial that number.

Mobile ads have a great potential to target users at a specific location and can take advantage of geo-fencing and push notifications.

Most recently, Baidu announced a $10m investment in a Finnish mapping company whose technology uses the Earth’s magnetic field to map the insides of buildings precisely. Incorporating such technology with its apps could potentially allow Baidu to push ads to users in shopping malls who just happen to be near a specific store.

Considering that Baidu already knows from the browsing and search history about what such user could be looking for, combining such data with the recently released BaiduEye, a version of a Google Glass, the possibilities are endless…

The post Advertising on Baidu: Most Comprehensive Overview first appeared on Sampi.co.

The post Advertising on Baidu: Most Comprehensive Overview appeared first on Sampi.co.

First of all,  Baidu.com is by far the most poular search engine in China with somewhere between 60 to 80% of the search engine market. With Google at only around 3% and Yahoo with Bing at ~0.5% each of the entire market, Baidu is clearly a place to be for a business seeking to reach Chinese audience.

One crucial prerequisite is required to start PPC campaign on Baidu is having your site written in Simplified Chinese. It also has to be optimized for the Chinese keywords that you are going to use for your campaign.

Second prerequisite is having your Chinese business properly registered as you will have to provide your business license in order to open Baidu PPC account. If the name on a business license is that of a foreigner, he/she will also be required to provide a passport. All the documents, including your passport, have to be translated to Chinese by a professional translation company. You will also be required to sign and seal the contract with Baidu.

Chinese websites tend to be very link-heavy, so, ideally,  navigation buttons and links should be able to take your visitor to every corner of your site directly from the landing page.

If it wasn’t enough, the deposit payment has to be arranged through a local Baidu representative by cash. As of now, they don’t accept credit cards and any form of online payments. Why they make it so complex? Probably, such procedure is required in order to comply with the government regulations that are designed to impose a certain degree of control over information available through search engines in China.

Given the complexity of opening an account, I would advise to hire a local expert to get you set up. There are number of companies and freelancers who provide this type of service.

Next, your website must be optimized for your target visitors and be informative enough for them to stay on your page long enough. Chinese websites tend to be very link-heavy, so, ideally,  navigation buttons and links should be able to take your visitor to every corner of your site directly from the landing page.

If you intend to sell products directly from your site, it helps to have a live chat option that is common on Chinese e-commerce site. Chinese consumers like to communicate in real time with sales representatives, so having such capability on your site is a good investment.

Now a bit about how your name will be shown in the results. In the past, all the paid search results were displayed first before the organic ones. In the recent years, Baidu started to follow Google’s model with PPC results on the top and on the bottom as well as in the right column with organic ones in between.

Below is the example of Baidu search results. The PPC results are those in the red frames, at the top, bottom and right. Organic (or free) results are shown in the green frame:

The results in the right column are based on the annual subscription at fixed price, the top 3 spot being the most expensive, followed by the next 3 spots and so on. The search  results in each of the 3 spot slot are shown in different order every time the results are reloaded.

In conclusion, while Baidu PPC campaign is similar to Google, the process of opening an account and setting it up is much more complicated. This is besides the fact that you need a local business registration and having your site available in Chinese and optimized to Chinese language keywords. I would strongly advise to hire a local help to get your Baidu PPT campaign setup properly and going smothly.

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