Baidu is the most popular search engine in China. If you would like to promote your sites in China, or you would like to know more about SEO in China, you have to know the differences in SEO between Baidu and Google. Difference in Index As SEOers know, Google crawls and indexes the articles and sites quickly , whether the content is good or bad, original or reproductive. But for Baidu, the speed is much slower. It takes one month for even high quality sites to be indexed after the front-page is submitted. However, rare cases happen that it only takes one day for the articles or sites to be indexed by Baidu. Why one is fast and the other one is slow? In fact, there are subtle differences in formulas for both engines. Difference in Rank As mentioned above, one difference between Baidu and Google is index. Once your sites are indexed by Baidu, the ranking will be essentially changed. Since the new sites are audited by Baidu strictly, your sites rank will be enhanced directly if you make on-page optimization in advance. But Google, by contrast, the new sites will experience Sandbox period. During this period, the sites will get no ranks while the index is normal. Thus, the ranking difference is the most striking difference between the two engines. If you would like to do Baidu SEO, you’d better learn how to choose kernel keyword and conduct a comprehensive on-page optimization, then submit application according to the spider crawling preference. Difference in Cheating Punishment In this section, Google is much more gentle than Baidu. If you carry out black-hat SEO, the sites will be de-indexed overnight in Baidu no matter how high the rank they used to be. But if your sites are de-indexed by hacker, you can make a complaint to Baidu Complaint Center. In regard to Google, if your cheating is detected, Google will send email first. You still have time to compensate. In general, there is no much difference in the SEO principal for both engines. The only difference is the details and and tech. So don’t get too tangled to devote particular care to Baidu or Google. If you run your sites carefully, your sites will enjoy high rank in both engines.
Thanks for telling and teaching about Baidu search engine which is for China... I didn't aim to optimize my site for Chine as I deal with English language site... but if it is easy to optimize for Baidu search engine then I would optimize a site to test as well.
Great. Hope this will be of help. But it may not be easy to promote in Chinese website as well. Since the competition is less fierce in baidu than google, but still challenging.