Baidu vs Google: 8 Key SEO Differences You Must Know

July 18, 2025

When it comes to search engine optimization, most global marketers are well-versed in Google’s algorithm and best practices. But if you’re targeting the Chinese market, Baidu—the country’s leading search engine—requires a different approach altogether.

In this article, we break down 8 critical differences between Baidu and Google SEO to help you build a localized strategy that actually works.

1. Algorithm Structure: Keywords Still Matter on Baidu

While Google has moved away from meta keyword tags and flat structures, Baidu still uses them as ranking signals. Flat website architecture, accurate meta tags, and keyword density remain important for Baidu rankings. Brands entering China should revisit some “old-school” SEO tactics to align with local requirements.

2. ICP License: A Must for Serious Rankings

An ICP (Internet Content Provider) license is a major trust and compliance signal for Baidu. It’s issued by the Chinese government and is required for hosting a website in Mainland China. Without it, your visibility will be limited—even if your content is well-optimized. Most foreign brands work through a local partner to obtain this license or opt for a .cn domain hosted via a Chinese CDN.

3. Ad Platform Limitations: More Friction Than Google

Launching Baidu ads comes with more barriers than Google Ads. You’ll need to provide additional documentation, undergo account verification, and adapt to fewer ad format options. Campaign approval also tends to take longer. If you plan to invest in SEM, budget extra time for setup and approvals.

4. Different Payment Models: Upfront vs. Post-Billing

Unlike Google, which allows post-campaign billing and flexible budgets, Baidu operates on a prepaid model. Brands must pay an initial deposit and verification fee to activate their ad account. There’s also a minimum threshold for ad spend. If you’re entering the market for the first time, plan for this upfront investment.

5. Chinese Content is King

Baidu strongly favors Simplified Chinese content. Sites written in other languages—even Traditional Chinese—will rank lower. In addition to language, local hosting or Chinese CDN support improves page speed and indexing. Simply put: the more localized your content and infrastructure, the better your results.

6. Social SEO: Zhihu, Douban & Tieba Matter

Unlike Google, Baidu’s ecosystem incorporates results from Chinese forums and social platforms. Activity and keyword-rich discussions on Zhihu, Douban, and Baidu Tieba directly influence rankings. This means a hybrid content strategy—blending on-site SEO and off-site social content—is critical for success.

7. Mobile Optimization: Non-Negotiable

With over 65% of users accessing Baidu via mobile, speed and responsiveness are essential. Baidu prefers fast-loading AMP-like mobile pages and rewards sites that are optimized for China’s top mobile devices and browsers. Don’t expect your desktop-optimized Western site to perform well in this environment.

8. Local Backlinks Carry More Weight

Backlinks still play a big role in Baidu SEO—but with a twist. Baidu gives higher weight to inbound links from Chinese domains and strongly favors exact-match anchor text. Building a local backlink network via media outreach, directory submissions, and Chinese forums can significantly boost your search visibility.

Final Thoughts

A high-performing SEO strategy in China isn’t a simple translation of your Google playbook. It requires localization, compliance, and a firm grasp of Baidu’s ranking factors. By understanding and adapting to these key differences, your brand can gain meaningful visibility and connect with Chinese consumers in a truly relevant way.

Need Help Navigating Baidu SEO? Our team specializes in building effective search and content strategies for the China market. Get in touch to explore how we can support your next campaign.

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How To Setup A Toutiao Business Account

January 8, 2021

Launched in 2012, Toutiao is a news aggregation app by Bytedance. It has an average of 120 million daily users who spend an average of 73 minutes a day on the app, even surpassing WeChat.

 

It’s sophisticated targeting AI offers personalized content, making it a great platform for advertising where the ads can appear in the users’ feed. Content creators get a certain percentage of Toutiao’s ad revenue along with rewards for hitting certain targets. Over 200,000 articles and videos are published on a daily basis on the app.

 

It’s a very lucrative market for brands to tap into. But first, you have to setup your official Toutiao Business Account to do so.

 

A STEP-BY-STEP PROCESS TO CREATE A TOUTIAO OFFICIAL ACCOUNT

Unlike WeChat, this app is focused on content creators and there are no functions in the app that can get your readers’ attention apart from the content. The content is ultra-targeted, allowing you to reach an audience that actually cares for your content. There are a massive amount of publishers and clickbait on the platform, but you can still work on publishing great content to set yourself apart.

 

Let’s check step-by-step on how to create a publisher account by yourself:

 

  1. On the top-left, click on 头条产品 (Toutiao Product). Select 头条号 from the drop-down menu and click on it.
  2. Then click on 注册 (Register).
  3. Enter and confirm your Chinese phone number. To register with an email address click on 邮件注册.
  4. Next, you’ll have to fill in your personal information – account type, account name, etc.
  5. Write a short intro. It needs to be 10 to 30 characters. Emoji and special punctuation are not allowed. 
  6. Add contact information or your website link.
  7. Upload a profile picture and keep in mind that QR codes are not allowed
  8. After completing your profile, you will get the option to upload more documents about your business. Mandatory documents are a Business license in .jpg or .png format.
  9. The app requires you to download, fill in, and reupload a business information form. Click on ”download the file” and fill in: company name, website, account name, ID for person-in-charge of managing account, date, signature, and seal. You then need to upload the document.
  10. On the same page, fill in the URL (optional), location, and email ID to receive notifications. Click on agree 请同意. You will receive another verification ID in order to complete the registration.
  11. Once you are done on the desktop, finish your ID verification via the mobile app. In order to download the app, look for 今日头条.
  12. Enter the same phone number that was previously used for the desktop. Wait for the verification code or log in with your phone and password.
  13. Once in the app, click on 我的 (mine). Upload a picture of your ID card and confirm through face recognition. You’ll be shown 4 digits that you’ll have to read in Chinese mandarin in a 3 to 6-second video.
  14. In the next 5 minutes, you will get a notification if your application is successful or not. Once your account is validated you can start publishing.

 

After getting set up, you can start publishing amazing content immediately. Also, you will need someone to manage your Toutiao account the same way someone manages your Wechat account.

Digital marketing is very dynamic. It’s not always easy to keep up with the changes, but if you are looking into new opportunities for your digital marketing strategy in China, then Toutiao will definitely set you for success.

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Toutiao Marketing Basics

November 13, 2020

Toutiao is an information and news aggregator where users can search for interesting and news-worthy content and subscribe to their favorite channels. It can also analyze and suggest a user’s interests based on their past enquiries, similar to what Google does.

 

Toutiao had 260 million monthly active users and 120 million daily active users in June 2019, with over 70% of its users aged at 19-35. Users posted 450 million posts on Toutiao with 9 billion likes for content creation.

 

The difference between Toutiao and other platforms is its huge traffic. Their AI assesses individual preferences based on interests and hobbies and accurately targets relevant content to its users, tailoring a user’s feed to include topics related to their likes.

 

The stats, tech and traffic on the platform makes Toutiao one of the best platforms to market on.

MARKETING ON TOUTIAO

1. Advertising

Based on big data and AI, Toutiao ads can accurately reach target customers. Toutiao can also support multiple advertising formats and purposes.

 

 

  • Open Screen Ads

 

Offers premium exposure and placement with a full-screen ad, providing a strong visual impact. It can also display advertising materials or landing pages in designated time slots.

 

  • Information Flow Ads

 

The most common ad format on Toutiao, information flow ads are native ads that appear interspersed in the user’s information stream on their feed. They can be text, image, GIF or video format. Also available in multiple sales models, such as CPM, CPT, GD and CPC. 

 

  • Detail Page Ads

 

Ads displayed on the article or video details page that appears when people finish the content. They also support multiple formats.

 

For more information on Toutiao’s advertising potential, check out this blog on Toutiao Advertising.

2. Content Marketing

  • Toutiao creators and KOLs

Brands can collaborate with Toutiao creators to attract target consumers through trustworthy content. Cooperating with creators who create content that is recognized as relevant and high quality by the users and the platform is good for brand awareness and exposure.

  • A Toutiao Brand Account

Brands can set up and manage their own Toutiao brand account and use it to publish high-quality content and engage with users directly.

 

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Toutiao Advertising for Businesses in China

September 10, 2020

If you’re a new business in the Chinese media market, or if you know how the advertising industry works in China, Toutiao may or may not have been one of your top choices for platforms to advertise your business on. Toutiao is a popular destination for finding and curating content, offering a new and fresh way for your business to showcase itself with the help of its unique way of displaying ads.

 

What is Toutiao?

Toutiao is a news-reading app that runs on AI. The news aggregator organizes daily news from various media sources and gives recommendations on the homepage. Some can even say it’s the “most serious app” in China.

 

Toutiao Advertising

With over 120 million daily users, Toutiao has a somewhat complex algorithm that offers content tailored to its users based on their interest. On a daily basis, over 200,000 articles and videos are published and these appear directly in the feed of the user. Toutiao content is quite diverse as it is news-based and comes from private publishers, official media, and blogs.

Also, part of the advertising revenue is given to the content creators. What makes the platform even better for advertising is that all featured articles and videos are also selected based on the user location. It’s also important to know that users don’t need to follow your account in order to see your content, which is excellent for brand exposure.

 

Toutiao Advertising Formats

There are 3 different types of ad formats that Toutiao offers, and supports both picture and video display. Ads can be targeted to specific ages, gender, interests, keywords, regions, weather, time, occupations, phone carriers, phone operating systems, phone brands, and types of internet connection. Such a diverge targeting mechanism opens up a lot of opportunities for creative and effective advertising.

 

Full cover open ads: They cover the entire screen and include options of a wide large screen banner or a maximum of 3 smaller images.

Feeds ads: These come with several advertising styles including ads with text and an image, 3 smaller images, full-width image, image with call extension and app downloads.

Streaming feed ads: These types of ads blend as video format into the Toutiao feed for seamless user experience.

 

Charges for Toutiao Advertising?

Along with CPM (Cost per mille) and CPC (Cost per click), Toutiao provides 4 new ways for advertisers to bid on the platform including oCPM, oCPC, CPA and CPV.

oCPM/oCPC: oCPM (Optimized Cost per Mille) and oCPC (Optimized Cost per Click) run on the same ad methodology. They are quite similar to CPC, but also include an estimated conversion ratio which is based on audience behavior.

CPA (Cost per Acquisition): In this case, advertisers only pay when there is definite conversion.

CPV (Cost per View): This method only supports video ads. Here, advertisers pay for the number of views when the video ad plays for 10 seconds.

 

Benefits of Toutiao Advertising

 

  1. Toutiao ads allow brands to target groups that have certain apps on their phones. This is great for brands that want niche customers, but this is currently only available for Android phones.
  2. Geo-targeting options can bring more sales due to the fact that people living in the same areas usually have similar consumer habits. This can be good for a lot of offline retailers.
  3. Toutiao’s DMP allows brands to upload the audience traits of their existing followers, which brands could then use to find a similar ‘lookalike’ target audience.

 

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