How do you rank on Baidu from outside China?

Baidu held 49.00% of search in China in October 2026, according to StatCounter, with Bing at 21.69%.²²

That makes it the first engine to work on, not the only one. See which Chinese search engines to target.

Most guides list tips. This one gives you an order, and sticks to what Baidu has written. Old rules keep their dates, because many are several years old.

For the wider picture, start with how Baidu SEO differs from Google.

What can you do from outside China?

Almost all of the work. The steps below need no Chinese company, with one real uncertainty: the Baidu account. Here’s what each step depends on.

Step	Chinese entity needed?	Mainland phone needed?
1. Reachable from mainland China	Only for mainland hosting	No
2. Simplified Chinese pages	No	No
3. One page per search need	No	No
4. Clean HTML and titles	No	No
5. Mobile pages	No	No
6. Account, verification, submission	Unclear, ask a local adviser	Likely, see step 6
7. Links and brand	No	No
8. Measurement	No	Likely for Baidu’s account tools, not for server logs

An ICP isn’t one of these steps. Chinafy states it isn’t required to rank on Baidu.²³ It matters if you host on the mainland. Read can you rank on Baidu without an ICP?

What is Baidu looking for?

A page that meets the need behind the search. Baidu says it sorts results that way, calls content quality the most important of its four dimensions, and doesn’t admit pages that break its rules, low-quality pages or pages that cost too much to access.¹

Baidu doesn’t publish a full list of factors. Our page on Baidu ranking factors covers what’s known. For a plan, one thing matters: nothing technical makes up for a page nobody needs.

Step 1: Make your site reachable from mainland China

Start here, because every later step depends on it. If visitors and crawlers can’t load your pages reliably, the rest of the work is wasted.

Baidu’s position is old but clear.

In October 2017, it warned that Chinese-language sites on foreign servers would have display problems in search.³ It also advised against foreign servers for Chinese sites, without giving a reason.⁴

That isn’t a ban, and we found no published data measuring the effect. Chinafy and SEO Sherpa both say sites hosted abroad can rank if they’re fast and accessible.²⁶²⁷

See does Baidu index foreign websites?

Do these checks in order:

1. Test from China. Use the method in is my website accessible in China?
2. Pick your hosting. Mainland hosting needs an ICP. Without one, Linguise names Hong Kong or South Korea.³⁸ Compare the options in Hong Kong or mainland hosting?
3. Remove what fails. Check the Google services your pages load.
4. Let Baiduspider in. Check robots.txt, your firewall and any bot protection.

Step 2: Publish pages in Simplified Chinese

Your Chinese-speaking buyers search in Chinese, so your pages must exist in Chinese. We found no official Baidu text on how it treats English sites. See does Baidu index websites in English?

Give each Chinese page its own URL, with its text in the page. Our guide on subfolder, subdomain or separate site helps you choose the setup, and how to translate your website covers the writing.

Don’t publish raw machine output and hope.

Baidu’s quality guide asks for clear logic, consistent topics and real expertise.³² A translation that reads badly fails that test, whatever tool produced it.

Step 3: Build one page for each real search need

Baidu sorts by need met, so plan pages around needs.¹

Start with the Chinese terms your buyers use, not a translation of your English keywords. Our guide to Baidu SEO tools and keyword research covers the sources.

Baidu’s 2020 quality guide describes content quality through four traits:³²

Trait	Chinese term	What Baidu describes
Origin	出身	A credible producer with a focused subject
Looks	颜值	Fast loading and clean layout
Substance	内涵	Rich, consistent, expert information
Reputation	口碑	Readers like it and share it

Stay on your subject. Hurricane 3.0, described by Baidu in 2020, targets scraped content and content outside a site’s field, and limits display for off-topic publishing.⁶

The same section targets site networks: many low-quality, similar sites built for search traffic.⁶ So don’t spin up several China sites.

Step 4: Put your text in HTML and fix your titles

Serve your main text and links in the HTML. Baidu’s guide, updated in 2019, says to use text rather than JavaScript for important content and links, and to keep Ajax to interaction.⁵

Its 2017 mobile white paper adds a size warning.

Page source should usually stay under 128k, because a 164k page with embedded images was cut off during crawling and its main content wasn’t indexed.⁹

Baidu announced a rendering crawler in 2017, tested on some quality sites, so the JavaScript question isn’t simple.⁴⁰ See does Baidu read JavaScript? The safe move is the same either way.

Next, go through these elements, since Baidu has addressed each one:

Element	What Baidu wrote	Date
Title	Used to judge page content 2	2017
Title, B2B pages	Under Xiyu 2.0: no fake 官网 (“official site”), stacked similar keywords, odd symbols, or inserted offers 6	2020
H tags	Used to judge page content 2	2017
Meta description	Not a ranking factor, may be used as the snippet 5	2019
Canonical	Supported, not guaranteed, one per page 34	2013
HTTPS	Preferred when sites have equal weight 33	2015
Image links	alt and title can convey meaning 2	2017

Treat the older entries as Baidu’s last known word, not as current proof. We found no later text confirming the HTTPS preference.

Free check

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Step 5: Build a real mobile page

Baidu’s rule is direct: a mobile search result must land on a mobile page, not a desktop page.³⁷ If you don’t plan a separate mobile site, Baidu tells you to make the desktop site responsive.³⁷

Baidu’s published targets are specific, so check them one by one:

• Speed: first-screen content should load within 1 second.⁸
• Main content: it must fill at least 50% of the first screen.³⁷
• Pop-ups: no floating, pop-up or full-screen ads anywhere on the page.⁸
• Top ads: at most 10% of one screen, at the top.⁸
• Articles: no ads between the title and the end of the text.⁸

Those numbers date from 2020, though a 2023 Baidu note still flags main content under 50% of the first screen.⁴² Reaching 1 second from a server outside the mainland may not be realistic, so use it as a direction.

Our guides to Baidu mobile SEO and speeding up your site in China go further.

Step 6: Open an account, verify your site, and submit

Do this if you can do it properly, and don’t treat it as a gate. A 2023 Baidu notice says removing a site’s verification affects the platform’s tools, not natural discovery, display or ranking.¹⁰

Our reading is that the account helps, but isn’t what ranks you. Baidu has not said this in those words.

The phone number is the hard part, and Baidu’s help pages contradict each other.

One says accounts accept mainland numbers only.¹² Another allows overseas numbers through four product lines, and excludes EU numbers.¹³

A mainland number is the route Baidu describes without reservation. Baidu accounts and the phone number problem covers it.

Baidu routes that authentication through the Baidu App.¹⁰ We haven’t confirmed that it accepts a foreign passport, so ask a local adviser who should hold the account.

With an account, the sequence is short:

1. Verify the site. Use the file or HTML tag method. CNAME has been suspended since January 2023.¹⁴
2. Submit by API, or by sitemap if your account offers it. Baidu calls API push the fastest method.¹⁵ Sitemap access is in doubt in 2026, as our submission guide explains.
3. Stay within the limits. In the 2020 manual, that means fewer than 50,000 “sitemap links” per site, a term it doesn’t define, 10 MB per file, 2,000 URLs per API request.¹⁵
4. Skip sitemap index files. Baidu no longer supports them.¹⁵

Daily quotas depend on site quality.¹⁵ Submitting also has a clear ceiling: Baidu says the tool speeds up crawling, can’t settle whether content is indexed, and doesn’t guarantee it.¹⁶

We haven’t confirmed these tools in a verified account with no ICP. Baidu’s log capped such sites at one sitemap file per day in May 2021, so they had access then.⁴³ Nothing shows that still holds.

The full walkthrough is in how to set up Baidu Webmaster Tools and how to submit your site to Baidu. If you’re weighing paid visibility too, see Baidu SEO or Baidu Ads.

Step 7: Earn relevant links and a real brand

Baidu’s 2017 article calls links the most important entry point for discovery, while saying brand counts for far more than links in Baidu’s eyes.²

For a foreign site with no account, links may be the only discovery route you control. One site owner’s account points that way.

Baidu’s 2019 guidance says links between sites on the same subject are more favorable, and asks for nofollow on advertising links.²⁰ We found no Baidu statement that a link must come from a Chinese site.

Agencies such as SEO Sherpa and Marketing to China push Chinese sources.²⁷²⁸ That advice is sensible, because your readers are there, but it’s agency opinion. See backlinks for Baidu.

✓Aim for

• Media in your sector
• Professional associations
• Chinese partners
• Genuinely earned articles

✕Avoid

• Bought links
• Brokers
• Site networks
• Mass promotional publishing

Then look at Baidu’s own results. A Ryte study published in 2022 found Baidu products in the top 3, 10 and 30 across five sectors.³¹

Baike and Tieba are not shortcuts.

A company entry goes through Baike’s enterprise channel, and your own website doesn’t count as a reference for commercial facts.³⁰ Read Baidu Baike, Tieba and Baidu’s own results.

Step 8: Measure, and stay clean

Measure indexing first, then rankings. Baidu says site: numbers are estimates, and its index volume tool is the reference, refreshed daily at best and weekly at worst.¹⁷

Don’t plan around a date. Baidu said in 2021 that indexing runs on a cycle, gave no duration, and reserved next-day indexing for a tiny share of timely, high-quality content.¹⁹

See how long Baidu takes to index and rank a site.

Our guides on checking indexed pages and tracking your rankings cover the tools. If nothing appears, work through why your site isn’t showing on Baidu.

For traffic, SEO Sherpa calls Baidu Tongji the Chinese counterpart to Google Analytics.²⁷ Tongji’s guide has you add its code to every page, and the part we read says nothing about sites hosted abroad, so test it.⁴⁴

Keep the site free of what Baidu punishes. Its named algorithms, all described in 2021 or earlier, target:

• Links: buying and selling them, and link brokers (Luluo, 2013).²¹
• Content: scraping, off-topic publishing and site networks (Hurricane 3.0).⁶
• Manipulation: cheating links and fake clicks (Jinglei 2.0),⁷ and faked user behavior (Jinglei 3.0, 2021).⁴¹
• Hijacking: redirects and the back button (Fenghuo 3.0).⁷

Our Baidu SEO guide sets out what each one costs you.

Baidu’s newest list of page problems we found, from August 2023, covers everyday faults as well as cheating:⁴²

• Quality: garbled or stitched text, content that doesn’t match its title, empty pages, dead links, broken functions.
• Experience: ads inside the text, floating ads, sideways scrolling, main content under 50% of the first screen, slow loading.

The newest entries on Baidu’s notices page, read on November 1, 2026, are mostly tool notices, and none names a new algorithm.³⁶ That doesn’t mean the old ones stopped running.

Where do the guides disagree?

They disagree on several basics, and few say so. Here’s each claim next to what Baidu has written.

Question	What guides say	What Baidu has written
Is an ICP the first step?	Daxue says yes.24 Chinafy says it isn’t required.23	We found no text making it a factor
Do foreign-hosted sites rank?	Dragon Metrics in 2017: they have difficulty.25 Chinafy: yes.26	Warned of display problems in 2017 3
What keyword density?	SEO Sherpa gives about 1%, and 1% to 2% elsewhere.27	Bans stacked keywords in titles, and we found no density figure 6
Do you need a .cn domain?	Linguise says it helps rankings.38 Chinafy calls it an optional further step.26	Suffix has no effect on web search, in 2014 39

On domains, read do you need a .cn domain?

The bottom line

Baidu asks for one main thing: a page that meets the need behind the search. From outside China, that means reachable pages, real Simplified Chinese content and readable HTML.

Do those first. The account, the submission and the links build on them, and none of it comes with a guarantee or a date.

How Index in China can help

We translate your site into Simplified Chinese with a human reviewer, work on getting it indexed on Chinese search engines and send a monthly report on Chinese traffic.

We don’t promise rankings or traffic, and we’ll tell you if your case needs a local adviser. See what we do.

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