Which pages should you translate first for China?

Translating a whole site is rarely the right first move. It costs the most, and it delays the moment you find out whether anyone in China wants what you sell.

So you need a short list. Every guide we read offers one, and most of them agree. What the general guides leave out is how little of that advice carries over to China.

This guide is part of our work on translating and localizing a website for China.

One warning first: we found no study that measures which pages to translate first. What follows is a method, and we mark what backs each step.

Do you need to translate your whole site?

No. Nothing we read from Google or Baidu asks for a complete translation, and most guides we compared favor starting with key pages.³⁴⁵⁷ Sitetran is more neutral: it says the choice depends on your audience, content and resources.⁶

LinguaLinx calls translating everything at once “rarely” cost-effective.⁴

Keep in mind who’s writing. Those guides come from companies that sell translation, and none of them cites a test comparing a partial launch with a full one.

Mass translation can work against you too. Google’s scaled content abuse policy targets many pages generated mainly to manipulate rankings. Its examples include scraped content reworked through automated translation, when users gain little value.¹²

We found no Baidu rule naming translation.¹⁴ An older notice on machine-modified content comes close, as our machine translation guide explains.

Why your analytics won’t pick the pages

The standard method fails for China, because it needs data you don’t have.

Seatext starts with GA4 and Search Console, to see which countries already send visitors,⁷ and Linguise looks for pages that already draw visitors from several countries.³

That works when you already reach the market. Mainland China breaks it in three ways:

• Search data is missing. GreatFire showed 10 failures in 10 tests of http://www.google.com over its last 90 days, the latest on October 24, 2026.¹ A mainland buyer can’t count on reaching you through Google, so Search Console says little about them.
• Visit data is partial. Matomo, which sells a competing tool, says Google Analytics misses at least 50% of visitors and pageviews from China.² It gives no source, so treat that as a vendor claim.
• “Chinese” traffic may not be mainland traffic. In Hong Kong, Google held 89.59% of search in StatCounter’s October 2026 data.¹⁸ Visitors there may need different Chinese altogether.

Use these signals instead, in this order:

1. Past inquiries. List what Chinese speakers have already asked you, by email, at trade shows or through sales.
2. Your sales team’s questions. Note which pages they send to a prospect, and what they explain again and again.
3. What Chinese competitors publish. Nanjing Marketing Group suggests checking what they offer that you lack.⁸
4. Chinese keyword research. Check whether your service has a search demand at all, using Baidu tools and keyword research.

If you have none of the first two, start with the batch below and let the first inquiries correct it.

Which pages go in the first batch?

Pick the pages a buyer needs in order to understand you, believe you and reach you. The table shows what backs each one, because the support isn’t equal.

Page	Its job	What backs it
Homepage	Say what you do and for whom	Named in five guides 34568
Main services or products	Answer the query that brought them	Named in five guides 34568
Proof of past work	Show you’ve done this before	NN/g test in China, 2017, 8 participants; Linguise, LinguaLinx 349
About	Say who you are and where you operate	Nanjing Marketing Group, Linguise 38
Contact	Turn interest into a conversation	Named in five guides 34568
FAQ	Answer what stops the inquiry	Linguise, LinguaLinx, Nanjing Marketing Group 348
Privacy notice	Explain what the form collects	Linguise, LinguaLinx, plus our reading 34

The proof row is the one most lists skip or place low. NN/g’s B2B participants wanted photos, case studies or testimonials from past or current customers, and client logos signaled experience.⁹

NN/g adds that listing previous customers’ contact details is common in China, and participants said they’d call them to check the claims.⁹ Get those customers’ agreement before you publish anything about them.

The about row matters more for you than for a local firm. NN/g found that a foreign brand with no local presence “has to work much harder” to show it understands the market.⁹

The contact row needs more than translated labels. Five of the 8 NN/g participants used online chat, and they preferred it to the phone because it left a record.⁹

Nanjing Marketing Group, writing in 2018, recommends instant contact options and treating email as secondary.⁸

The privacy row is thin in the guides. Linguise mentions a privacy policy as a trust page, and LinguaLinx puts essential legal info in its first phase,³⁴ but neither speaks to China. Where China’s privacy law applies, it requires clear language before personal data is processed, and it names no language.¹⁷

A Chinese notice is the sensible way to be understood, not a stated legal requirement.

See whether China’s privacy law applies to your website and confirm your case with a local adviser.

1. 1Decide script, name and who replies
2. 2Homepage and main offer
3. 3Proof, about, contact and privacy
4. 4FAQ from real questions
5. 5Articles for real queries

Do you need pricing and checkout pages?

Only if a Chinese buyer can actually buy that way. Translated, Linguise and LinguaLinx all put pricing and checkout near the top,³⁴⁵ but those lists lean toward online sales.

Sitetran’s and Nanjing Marketing Group’s lists don’t name a pricing page, though Nanjing Marketing Group does list payment steps.⁶⁸

If you sell by quote, you may have no checkout, and your contact page does that job.

If you do sell online, translate checkout only once a Chinese buyer can pay. A translated checkout that ends in a payment method they can’t use is a dead end.

Our guide to Alipay and WeChat Pay covers that step.

What can wait?

Anything a buyer doesn’t need before contacting you. Sitetran ranks blog posts below core pages, and Translated pushes older posts and knowledge base articles to a second phase.⁵⁶

Content	Decision	Why
Company news and press	Wait	Rarely answers a buyer’s question
Careers	Skip, unless you hire there	Wrong reader
Older blog posts	Wait	Translated’s second phase 5
Services China can’t buy	Skip	Creates inquiries you’d turn down
Pages for other regions	Skip	No use to a Chinese reader
Full product catalog	Start with the essentials	Nanjing Marketing Group’s advice for large catalogs 8

Articles are where the sources split. Sitetran puts them last,⁶ LinguaLinx brings best-performing posts into its second phase, and Linguise counts blog content among its seven pages.³⁴

Both have a point. Baidu says it sorts results by how well they meet the user’s need,¹⁶ so a homepage won’t catch every question. Bring forward an article only when it answers a real Chinese query.

Which pages need rewriting, not translating?

The pages built for your home market. NN/g puts it plainly: “Merely translating into the appropriate language is not enough.”⁹

One participant spotted “60% off” as Western style, because, NN/g notes, Chinese promotions usually show the share of the full price you pay.⁹ A correct translation would have kept that signal.

Nanjing Marketing Group asks which pages are relevant to Chinese readers, and which customer questions your site doesn’t answer.⁸

LinguaLinx adds that direct translations of English keywords often won’t match local search behavior.⁴

In practice, three kinds of page rarely survive a straight translation:

• Homepage copy that assumes readers already know your brand
• Service pages written around your home country’s rules or standards
• FAQs that answer questions Chinese buyers don’t ask

Free check

Is your website visible on Baidu?

Enter your website. We check Baidu, access from China and how your site is set up, then email you the report.

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How big should the first batch be?

Count your own words, because the published numbers don’t agree and none comes with evidence.

Source	First stage	Evidence given
Linguise	7 high-impact pages 3	None
Seatext	Top 10 to 20 pages get human translation 7	None
Translated	10,000 to 20,000 words 5	None
Seatext	20 to 40% of full-site cost 7	None

Treat them as rough. A small service firm could fall well below 10,000 words and still cover the whole batch.

Baidu doesn’t give you a target either. Its 2023 list of low-quality pages names empty or very short pages, and content that doesn’t match the title.¹⁵ It sets no minimum length.

For budget, see what a China-ready website costs.

How to keep a partial site from looking broken

Give the Chinese section its own complete path. Seatext warns that visitors “may hit ‘dead ends’ on secondary pages,”⁷ and the fix is mostly structure.

• One language per page. Google warns against translating only the boilerplate, and advises a single language for content and navigation.¹⁰
• Chinese menus link to Chinese pages. If one link must lead to English, label it as English.
• Stay shallow. Baidu’s 2014 guide says important content should be reachable from the homepage or a shallow level.¹³
• Use text links. The same guide says every page needs at least one text link, and navigation shouldn’t rely on complex JavaScript.¹³
• Link languages both ways. Google says hreflang tags are ignored if two pages don’t both point to each other.¹¹

Hreflang is for Google here. Baidu doesn’t document it in the pages we read.¹³ Third-party guides differ: Ahrefs says Baidu ignores it, while Chinafy says it doesn’t “fully embrace” it and still lists the tags in its checklist.¹⁹²⁰

A small batch also affects structure. Baidu’s 2014 guide advises a directory until a section has enough content to stand alone.¹³ The trade-offs are in subfolder, subdomain or separate site.

What to settle before you send anything

Five decisions change the text itself, so make them first. Each one is cheaper now than after translation.

1. Choose the script. Simplified Chinese is the default for the mainland, where the standard characters are the national script.²⁵ See simplified or traditional Chinese.
2. Choose your Chinese name. It appears on every page, and a mark in Latin letters doesn’t automatically protect a Chinese version.²⁴ See how to choose a Chinese brand name.
3. Decide who replies. A contact page in Chinese invites messages in Chinese. See answering Chinese inquiries.
4. Check the form works from China. A translated form that can’t submit loses the lead. See why forms fail in China.
5. Check your claims. Chinese advertising law restricts absolute terms such as “the best,” with exceptions under 2023 guidelines.²³ Ask a local adviser whether that reaches your site. See banned advertising words.

While you’re there, check what the first pages load, using our list of Google services that fail in China.

What to add next

Let evidence pick the next batch, not a calendar.

• First, see what got indexed. Submitting a page only hands it to Baidu, which says it doesn’t guarantee indexing.²¹ Our guide to checking indexed pages shows how to look.
• Then read the inquiries. Every question you answer twice by hand is a candidate for the FAQ or a new page.
• Then fill the gaps. Add services people ask about, then articles that match real Chinese queries.

Baidu says only that indexing takes a certain period, with no number of days,²² so don’t judge the batch by a fixed date. How long Baidu takes explains what we can and can’t say.

The design of those pages is a separate job, covered in website design for Chinese users. Trust goes beyond translation too, as earning the trust of Chinese buyers explains.

The bottom line

Translate what a buyer needs to understand you, believe you and reach you, and leave the rest.

Don’t trust your analytics to choose for you, because they see the mainland only in part. Use your real inquiries, and make sure someone can answer when the first message arrives.

How Index in China can help

We localize your site into Simplified Chinese, with a person reviewing every page, submit it to Chinese search engines and send a monthly report on Chinese traffic.

We commit to a set number of indexed pages and to reporting. We don’t guarantee traffic.

You can see what we do or book a 30-minute call.

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