A Guide to Baidu PPC Advertising in China

No matter the size of your business, Baidu PPC can help increase your website traffic through the Baidu search engine. Baidu is China's number one search engine with 80% of the market share, so a vast majority of your potential customers will find your brand through it.

What is Baidu PPC

Baidu PPC is a search engine marketing tool where you can create ads and bid on groups of keywords to get your ad shown when a potential customer is searching for a service or product you offer. Baidu PPC ads appear at the top, and side of Baidu search result pages, and winning bids gives you a clear advantage over your competition in terms of visibility. PPC has the advantage of only needing to pay on the number of actual clicks, based on the bid pricing, making it fairly cost effective compared to other advertising methods.

Ad Links versus Organic Results

Unlike Google search results, Baidu PPC ads are less segregated and less obvious about being ads, only having small below the ad text to distinguish it from an organic result. This gives an advantage to you when you are advertising your brand.

Character Limits in Baidu PPC Ads

Compared to Google, Baidu PPC ads have twice the length of the character limit, which means you get 50 characters for the title and 80 characters for each of the two lines of ad text below that. It’s very important that you put as much detail into your first line, while the second line may be clipped if the ad doesn’t have high relevancy.

Keyword Selection

Just like in SEO, keyword selection is very important for Baidu PPC so that you are targeting the correct customers. Your campaign is going to include 20-30 keyword sets. The more specific the terms, the lower traffic there will be; however, the cheaper per click it’ll be. Always make sure to have a daily limit set for expenditure, so your budget will last the length of your campaign.

PPC Monitoring & Reporting

Make sure to track the results of your Baidu PPC campaign, so you can see which keywords are getting the best results, and determine if strategic adjustments are needed.

Dealing with Click Fraud in China

Click fraud is a real problem, where competitors click on your ads to use up your Baidu PPC funds and can be countered by limiting daily available budgets. Baidu has increased their click fraud detection recently with dedicated teams to help protect advertisers.

Combine “Special Offers” and Natural SEO for Best Results

Special offers are great ways to get customers to click your ad, make sure you are clear on how special or limited the offer is within the first line of your ad, it will help generate traffic, and combined with natural SEO will increase your visibility in search results.

Properly Adapted Translations for Mandarin Chinese

With Baidu PPC ads you need to properly translated into Mandarin Chinese, and also adapt it specifically to the Chinese market for it to be most effective.

Limited Set of Negative Keywords

With Baidu PPC you are limited to only 100 negative keywords (and an additional 100 per adgroup), so use them wisely to better target your customers, it’s best to use the hundred shortest negatives on the campaign level, covering as many terms and combinations as possible.

Contact Westwin today to have experts help set up a Baidu PPC account and get your advertising campaign started.