With 600 million users, search marketing remains one of the most robust strategies to reach digital consumers in China. It’s the second largest online marketing segment in China valued at AU$17.5 billion – a figure that is expected to double by 2019. And with a 20% year on year growth rate, mobile search is fast becoming a key revenue stream for both international and local brands.
Yet while the scope of the opportunity is undeniable, the issue for Western brands arises when it comes to developing and implementing effective search marketing strategies for China. For we can’t rely on Google for Chinese SEO.
What’s more, China’s most popular social media app WeChat also recently launched a search functionality and social search optimisation (SSO) will become increasingly important for reaching Chinese consumers.
Understanding the Chinese search marketing industry
China is the only country in the world with four major search engines, all of which have over 100 million active users every month.
Founded in 2000 and with 60% market share, Baidu remains the largest and most important Chinese search engine, with 70% of its revenue coming from mobile. However, other players have found ways to gain some market share.
In 2013, Tencent’s Soso merged with Sogou to form what is now the second most popular Chinese search engine with roughly 525 million active users per month. Sogou owes much of its market share to the fact that it owns the most popular Chinese input system, allowing to type Chinese characters based on Pin Yin. The input system brings up suggested search results from Sogou as users are typing, removing the need to move to another app for more information.
Launched in 2012, 360 Search has also become a popular alternative to Baidu thanks to both 360 and 360 Browser (respectively the most popular PC antivirus suite software and web browser in China). 360 Search has been fully integrated to the browsing experience allowing the search engine to gain a lot of market share over the last 5 years.
Shenma is the rising star among the Chinese search engines and belongs to the Alibaba Group. It’s the second largest search engine on mobile. Its popularity is owed to the fact that it is fully integrated with UC Web (also owned by Alibaba) which is the largest mobile browser with 40% penetration.
However, these four Chinese search marketing giants only represent one aspect of reaching Chinese consumers through search. Each vertical (social, mobile app, ecommerce, travel, news, video, etc.) has its own platform with its own search engine.
How to reach Chinese consumers through search marketing
We distinguish between five different ways for reaching Chinese consumers through search marketing.
1. SEO China
Organic search remains the best traffic source for attracting engaged new visitors to your Chinese website. It’s also the cheapest way to get relevant new visitors at a high volume.
Baidu is still leading the way in terms of the search algorithm. This means that optimising for Baidu should continue to guide your overall China SEO strategy. Given that most search requests in this market are made from a mobile phone, you should adopt a mobile first approach to search engine optimisation for China.
While Baidu has recently started recognising responsive websites as mobile optimised (you previously had to have a separate mobile site), this approach is only recommended for branding sites. Big websites with an ecommerce component and a lot of content should still opt for a standalone mobile site in China.
A focus on content should come second in your Chinese SEO plan. Baidu recently started ranking based on the quality of the website content. It needs to be localised, interactive and consider the Chinese user experience. This can often be an issue with international brands that don’t optimise their website for China. If you really want to rank well, you need to tick all those boxes.
2. SEM China: Paid search
Paid search on average only makes up about 30% of traffic on Chinese websites, but this traffic source also tends to drive the most qualified traffic. It has the highest visit duration and most pages viewed per session. It also tends to deliver a good return on investment.
Yet, paid search in China is no longer cheap. Brand Zone – an ad format that doesn’t have an equivalent in Western search marketing – is expensive, but delivers good ROI for brand searches. General keyword and affiliate ads should also be part of the paid search marketing mix, as well as the new ad formats that are regularly being added by China’s four major search engines (almost every quarter).
For best results, we recommend for brands to split their paid search budget across all four search engines, not just Baidu. Trying new ad formats as they are released can also deliver good results. They tend to be cheaper than more traditional search ads and have a better conversion rate.
3. Online reputation management or optimising for review searches
One of the first things Chinese digital consumer do before purchasing anything (product, service, trip…) is search online for information about it and read user reviews to validate how good your brand really is.
After they’ve read a few positive reviews, ratings or recommendations, they will go to another website to make the purchase. In turn, a bad review or product comparison that rates your competitor more favourably may easily deter a consumer from making a purchase.
That’s why online reputation management (ORM) is becoming more and more important for international brands looking to reach Chinese consumers through search.
There are two ways to protect a brand through ORM:
Defence: focusing on brand searches. The idea here is to make sure that whenever people search for your brand, they’ll find positive comments about it at the top of the search results. This approach will also make you aware of any negative views that may exist about your brand, giving you the chance to work towards resolving the issue.
Attack: focusing on non-brand searches. Here, the idea is to proactively optimise all your web assets (website, social presence…) for specific review search terms such as “which Australian milk product is the best”. This approach attracts people who are looking for knowledge, not your brand and treats ORM as a content publication channel.
4. Application search optimisation (or ASO)
App store search optimisation is the cheapest and most effective way to push the download of an app. There are 2 ways to do ASO:
Like traditional on-page SEO, you can focus on the product description in the app stores (icons, title, keywords, etc.)
You can also focus on the engagement data (number of downloads, number of activation, user retention rates, reviews and ratings…).
5. WeChat SEO: Social Search Optimisation (or SSO)
Last, but not least, WeChat recently introduced its new WeChat Search, allowing users to find content from various accounts run by individuals, businesses and organisations. Unlike the other search engines, WeChat Search pulls content only from within WeChat rather than from the web.
WeChat search works differently from regular search engines. Tencent, WeChat’s parent company, did not answer questions about how it devises its results rankings, but if you make a search on “Australian Travel” for instance, you will have the following results:
Showing content from:
The most popular public official account
Public accounts your friends are following
WeChat apps followed by your friends
Keyword related articles on public account
Keyword related WeChat apps
Keyword related HTML5 micro sites
Everything else (Tencent Images, Sogou Maps, Baike, etc.)
A good way to optimise your content for SSO will then include:
Focusing on rich and updated content (like traditional SEO)
Leveraging social influencers (KOLs) to push your content to their respective followers
Facilitating content sharing amongst your followers
Increasing your follower base
In summary, search engine traffic is still the most potent one in China and is only outperformed by direct traffic. However, the sector is constantly evolving and we believe that the Chinese search industry is about to enter a new age. An age when search becomes inseparably intertwined with social. This will mean completely different algorithms that we will need to optimise for in the future.