How to Succeed in Baidu Mobile SEO | Dragon Metrics

How to Succeed in Baidu Mobile SEO

Ian Lau
February 5, 2016

Introduction

Mobile search has been on the rise for quite some time, and nearly all major search engines take into consideration mobile-friendliness as a sizable ranking factor. If your site is not properly optimized for mobile search engines, you’re missing out on a huge opportunity for organic traffic.

With the launch of Baidu mobile rank tracking in Dragon Metrics this week, we thought it’d be a great time to provide an in-depth look at how to create mobile-friendly websites and optimize content for the best mobile user experience.

While this article is written for Baidu Mobile SEO, many concepts presented are applicable to optimizing your site for any mobile search engine. Let’s dive right in!

Chapter 6 Why Optimize Your Site For Baidu Mobile Seo?

Massive Opportunity Size

Just as the growth in mobile search has impacted Google SEO, mobile search in China is growing at an even faster rate.

According to CNNIC (Chinese), in 2015 there were a total of 620 million mobile web users in China, which is 90% of all web users in China! Among these users, 127 million access the web exclusively on mobile devices, which is 18.5% of all web users.

In their 2015 Mobile Web Trend Report (Chinese), Baidu reports that their mobile web index has grown 105% in 2013-2014, and that mobile search traffic from Baidu has reached 1 billion visits daily, with education, lifestyle, celebrity and news sites gaining more than a 100% increase in mobile search traffic.

This could mean that if you are not optimizing your sites for mobile, you may be reaching less than 10% of your potential audience, and could be missing out on a potential traffic growth of over 105% each year.

Increase Mobile Organic Ranking and Indexation

The difference in ranking and indexation for a non-mobile friendly website in Baidu mobile can be substantial. Even highly-authoritative sites can have a poor Baidu mobile ranking performance if their sites are not mobile friendly. While a mobile friendly website doesn’t guarantee mobile traffic, it will at least it get you in the game.

Baidu also adopted a very interesting tweak to their mobile results pages to give non-mobile friendly sites “special treatment”:

Avoid Baidu’s SiteApp Transcoding Like the Plague

With Baidu’s SiteApp transcoding, many non-mobile-friendly pages that appear on the Baidu mobile SERP (search engine results page) are converted into Baidu-generated mobile friendly pages. Siteapp transcoding will remove or modify on-page elements that they think are not suitable for mobile viewing, and style it appropriately for mobile devices.

Here’s an example of transcoding in action:

Non-mobile-friendly page visited directly

The same page as viewed from Baidu mobile SERP

Baidu states (Chinese) that the main reason for this is to provide a better user experience, as desktop websites are difficult to view on a mobile screen.

However, there’s nothing more dangerous to your SEO and site goals than Baidu’s SiteApp Transcoding. Here’s why:

These pages are actually still on Baidu’s domain, resulting in visitors impacting your traffic directly.
Baidu decides which parts of your site will be shown, and which ones will be hidden.
Ads on your pages won’t be shown.
Navigation on your site is hidden. Users won’t visit other pages on your site.
Users see a “Back” button overlaid on your content, taking them back to Baidu.

This is basically a conversion-killer, as they’re essentially grabbing your content and hosting it on their domain. Having a mobile friendly site is imperative to preserve high rankings, better indexation, and avoid losing your users due to transcoding. Let’s learn how to configure our sites for mobile SEO success.

Configuring A Baidu Mobile Friendly Website

Before we run into specific configurations for mobile friendly websites in Baidu, let’s take a look at the three main types of mobile web development solutions: Separate mobile site, dynamically-served HTML, and responsive design.

Mobile Site Configurations Compared


	Separate URLs	Dynamic Serving	Responsive Web Design
Complexity	Low	Moderate	High
Performance	Moderate	High	High
Maintenance Cost	Moderate to High	Low to High	Low
Device friendliness	Moderate to High	Moderate to High	High

A separate mobile site serves completely separate HTML and CSS on a separate URL (usually on the “m” subdomain, e.g. m.example.com). Dynamically-served HTML keeps a single URL for both desktop and mobile sites but delivers different HTML and CSS to each. Responsive design uses the exact same URL and HTML content for both mobile and desktop and customizes CSS for each screen size.

Choosing the Best Configuration

Responsive design is typically regarded as the best solution in modern web design; however, in China, it's debated as to how effective responsive design is for Baidu SEO compared to separate mobile sites.

Zac’s blog post on Baidu Mobile SEO (Chinese)
Discussions on a China SEO Q&A site about responsive designs for SEO (Chinese)
Why Responsive Design is a Trap – From Chinaz (Chinese)
Baidu Mobile SEO case study: Separate Site is better than Responsive site for mobile (Chinese)

We recommend responsive design for longevity, user experience, and maintenance.

Responsive Web Design

Responsive Web Design adapts to the size of the screen. Advantages include:

Compatibility: Supports various screen sizes, ensuring a good user experience across devices.
Simplicity: A single version of HTML, CSS, and server-side code simplifies back-end processes.
SEO Friendly: Avoids duplicate content issues and maintains the value of outbound links.

The main drawback is that the initial development can be costlier and time-consuming, especially with complex UI and UX elements.

If you have a responsive website, inform Baidu it's responsive by:

Adding the “applicable-device” meta tag:
<meta name="applicable-device" content="pc,mobile">
Adding a “mobile type” tag in sitemaps:
<mobile:mobile type="pc,mobile"/>

Separate URLs

Each desktop URL has a corresponding mobile-optimized version, ensuring Baidu can crawl both and recognize their relationship. This configuration requires special attention to self-redirects and HTML annotations. Key guidelines include:

Match body text across desktop and mobile.
Maintain a 1:1 relationship between desktop and mobile pages.
Use the same root domains for both desktop and mobile sites.
Avoid blocking Baidu spiders.

Dynamic Serving

Dynamic serving delivers different HTML and CSS for the same URL. Ensure Baidu’s spider can crawl your site with different user agents using the vary HTTP header.

Adjust Site Properties in Baidu Webmaster Tools

Inform Baidu which configuration your site is using through their Webmaster Tools.

On Page Optimization

Baidu suggests the following on-page factors for mobile friendliness:

Page Speed

Fast websites enhance user experience and impact rankings. Use tools like Google PageSpeed Insights or GTmetrix to monitor performance. Optimize images and minimize JavaScript includes to improve speed.

Page Structure

Ensure your page is well-structured for easy consumption. Key suggestions include:

Adjust content sizes according to screen types.
Keep main content visible without unnecessary disruptions.

Readability

Improve content readability by:

Using a 14px font size for body text.
Maintaining consistency in image width.
Providing large clickable areas.

Resource Accessibility

Ensure all resources are easily accessible and directly usable. Avoid Flash and provide clear information on product pages.

User Experience (UX) Enhancements

Stop with the Interstitials

Avoid interstitials, modals, or ads that disrupt user experiences as they can adversely affect rankings.

Other UX Elements

Use clear navigation.
Minimize forms to essential fields.
Offer well-spaced touch targets and provide alternate input methods like voice or image.

Search Appearance

Optimize your meta title and description for mobile, focusing on character limits and relevance.

Performance Monitoring

Monitor your mobile performance using tools like Google Analytics and Baidu Webmaster Tools.

Track Baidu Mobile Performance in Google Analytics

Go to the Source/Medium page in Acquisition.
Select baidu / organic to view traffic.
Use Device Category as the Secondary Dimension.
Analyze mobile vs. desktop traffic.

Additional Tips

AppLink: Use structured data for app promotion in SERPs.
Mobile SEO for Local: Add geolocation meta tags for better local search visibility.

Summary

Baidu continues to enhance its mobile search capabilities, making mobile-friendliness essential for good rankings. This guide provides insights to help optimize for better performance in Baidu.