Today is the world of technology, and the internet is the most revolutionized technology for it has united the whole world virtually. Everything is present on the internet, and so does the businesses and marketing has been transformed into digital marketing. However, when it comes to search engine marketing in China, it is completely different from the rest of the world because Google is almost banned in China including its marketing and business tools and apps. Chinese government wanted to monitor every internet activity and hence created its own tools including the search engine and social media platform.

SEM to improve website ranking

• First and the most important thing for any foreign business in China is to get the registration and the verification done by the government.

• After business is registered, the website needs to be hosted by a local server in China. It cannot be hosted by a shared server.

• The business develops the website in the local language to reach a maximum number of online users. Local language gives a complete understanding of the product or service of the business to everyone;
students, housewives, and working professionals.

• The homepage of the website is of the utmost importance. Though people in China do not mind forwarding to the business website, but they also expect everything from its home page. They leave as easily as they landed on the page if it does not have enough information.

• A business must regularly engage in online campaigns that are actively participated and responded by the users and thus can be used for brand positioning.

• The content on the website must be updated. The good news is that unlike Google Chinese search engines do not penalize copy-pasting.

• The content must have the tags that play an important role in prioritizing the businesses in the search results. These are the ‘The Title tag’, ‘The description Tag’ and ‘The Keyword Tag’. The better the number of tags more are the possibility of appearing in the top of the search results.

Three important players of SEM in China

As mentioned earlier, Baidu, 360 and Sogou are the three dominating players in Chinese search engine marketing, discussed below are some characteristics of each of them on how they help business to improve their ranking:

Baidu

Chinese audience has put Baidu in no one position for many years, and they are still counting. It holds more than 80% of total online users in China which means having a business presence on Baidu does most of the work for any brand awareness. People even believe that if a business is not on Baidu, then it is not even in China. Therefore, the cost of Baidu advertising is worth every penny.

360

Also referred to as Haosou, it is the second most search engine in China. The company also holds the maximum market share with its antivirus or security software such as 360 Safeguard and 360 Mobile Safe. Therefore, it is easy for any business to use the existing software users to promote their own brand and business.

Sogou

This is referred to as the rising star of the Chinese search engine marketing and works in different ways than the other search engines in its ability to; display shortcut search result pages to the users even without them opening the search engine, and to display search results based on the combination of both character inputs and search keywords.

SEM is different in China

• People in China have a different lookout for online ads as compared to their counterparts across the world and prefer the business that advertises itself.

• There are three players in China that dominate the market; Baidu, 360, and Sogou with maximum users present on Baidu.

• While most of the users online block the links and the ads pop-ups on their search engine page, the Chinese audience prefers opening the ad and visiting the business website or page on social media.

• Every business needs to have a verified account on one of the social media platforms of China.

• Though people understand English, but websites and apps in mandarin are always preferred and responded well by the Chinese audience.

• Any obscene or politically biased content may blacklist the business and also become liable to penalty and punishment.