If you try to solve Baidu targeting with a Google mindset, you will waste time. Baidu doesn’t interpret hreflang as a meaningful signal, so the usual international SEO playbook simply doesn’t apply. Instead of “fixing” hreflang, the real shift is structural and strategic. You need to build clear, local signals through domain choice, hosting, content, and ecosystem integration.
In other words, China is not just another locale in your setup, it behaves like a separate search environment with its own rules, tools, and expectations. To understand how to actually navigate that, we asked 7 practitioners to share how they approach international targeting for Baidu in the real world, and what consistently works when hreflang doesn’t.
Use Separate Domains; Baidu Ignores Hreflang
Baidu not honoring hreflang is a known problem and the workaround is simpler than most people think. Separate domains. A .cn domain for China, a .co.kr for South Korea. Not subfolders, not subdomains. Separate properties. Baidu treats subdirectories as the same site and often ignores language signals. We learned this the hard way when our Chinese content was getting indexed but showing the English meta descriptions. The cost of maintaining separate domains is higher. You need local hosting, local registrars, and sometimes local business entities. But trying to make one domain work across markets that use fundamentally different search infrastructure is more expensive in wasted effort.
Sahil Agrawal, Founder, Head of Marketing, Qubit Capital
Host Near China; Build Local Authority
There isn’t an easy solution for this unfortunately. Baidu has invested a lot to try to keep this from happening, so the best way around it is to try and host the site as close to mainland China as you can, if that is a possibility. Regional hosting, native dialect, etc. will go a long way, and you’ll also need to build citation/backlink/EEAT authority from related Chinese sites as well. While the search engine is different, the lengths they take to ensure proper practice is similar, and they’ll go quite far to ensure you’re playing by the Baidu rulebook.
Scott Sutter, Founder and CEO, Easty Marketing Group
Build a Separate Foundation for Baidu
Hreflang is a Google construct — Baidu doesn’t recognize it, so trying to “work around” it is the wrong frame entirely. The right move is to stop thinking of Baidu as a Google equivalent and build a completely separate technical foundation for Chinese search.
Baidu ranks pages based on signals that have nothing to do with hreflang. Hosting matters enormously — pages hosted on servers inside mainland China load faster and get crawled more reliably than pages sitting on foreign infrastructure. A .cn ccTLD or a cn. subdomain sends a hard geographic signal that Baidu trusts. Pair that with an ICP license (required for commercial websites hosted in China) and you’ve already done more for Baidu rankings than any hreflang tag ever could.
Content has to be in Simplified Chinese — not translated, actually localized. Baidu’s algorithm weights on-page text heavily, and machine-translated content reads as thin. Beyond that, Baidu has its own XML sitemap protocol and its own webmaster platform, Baidu Ziyuan (Bai Du Zi Yuan Ping Tai ). Submitting your sitemap there directly tells Baidu which pages exist and how they’re structured, similar to how Google Search Console works, but with different prioritization rules.
The mistake most SEOs make is treating international SEO as a single discipline where one technical setup covers all engines. In our work with clients targeting Chinese audiences, the brands that perform well on Baidu run what amounts to a parallel SEO program — separate hosting, separate content workflow, separate analytics through Baidu Tongji, and active submission through Baidu’s own tools. Think of it less as a workaround and more as building a second house on a different plot of land with different zoning rules.
Dennis Quast, Digital Branding & Marketing Strategist, Tailored Tactiqs
Hard-Code Targets and Register in Baidu
Once you start optimizing for Baidu, it’s time to completely forget about hreflang signals as there is no way for Baidu to register the signals provided by the other search engines. You will have to heavily rely on your URL structure and on the direct configuration provided in Baidu’s Webmaster Tools. Unfortunately, many teams spend several months trying to build complex tag hierarchies to optimize their content on Baidu and the reality is that they are wasting their time.
The most effective way around this is to hard-code your international targeting into your URL structure – via the use of subdirectories or dedicated subdomains – and then to register those paths within the Baidu platform. This is an infrastructure-first solution. If you do not provide Baidu with detailed information on where the content is to be served to users, Baidu will not use any of its crawl budget on that content. You are not tricking Baidu’s algorithm; you are simply using the language that Baidu understands.
Finding loopholes to enhance technical SEO when working with various global search engines is rare, and instead, it is wise to align your technical SEO practices with the local search engine’s requirements in order to achieve optimum results. Adhering to the architectural requirements of the local search leader will yield far greater results than trying to fit the global standards into another market where it will not work.
Amit Agrawal, Founder & COO, Developers.dev
Localize in Simplified Chinese on .cn
If the objective is to target Chinese users and rank on Baidu, then I would not recommend the use of hreflang because Baidu does not consider hreflang to be a strong signal for targeting the international market like Google. For the purpose of international SEO, more emphasis would be given to structural and localization signals.
So, I would recommend creating a Chinese version of the website with fully localized content in Simplified Chinese, and the best practice would be to host the Chinese content on a .cn domain or Chinese subdomain because Baidu considers the structure of the domain and server location to be important factors for determining the relevance of the website for the target country or region.
Moreover, the website would be accessible in China, for example, through local hosting or CDN with an ICP license, which would be important factors for Baidu.
Lorenzo Mariani, SEO Specialist, Mediaboom
Create an Independent Chinese SEO Presence
You can think of hreflang for Baidu as not having the same level of importance as it does for Google; thus, if you’re working on your China SEO efforts then you shouldn’t rely on hreflang. Instead, you’ll want to create an independent Chinese touchpoint that includes dedicated URLs, Simplified Chinese content, robust localization, self-referencing canonicals, and a website experience that is fast and user-friendly to users in China.
In effect, you’ll want to continue to use hreflang for Google but also establish more substantial signals for Baidu by constructing your site, localizing performance within China, using Baidu Webmaster Tools, submitting XML sitemaps to Baidu, and developing authority signals of relevance to China by way of local backlinks. The principal point is that you should view China as a unique SEO market, rather than just another language version of your site translated into Chinese.
Nick Mikhalenkov, SEO Manager, Nine Peaks Media
Treat China SEO as a Standalone Project
Since Baidu doesn’t understand hreflang the same way Google does, your strategy needs to shift to focus on stronger regional signals. One way is to separate Chinese-language pages or a China-focused domain or subdomain, along with good hosting and fast load times for people in mainland China. Additionally, focus on fully localized content, not just translations. Backlinks from “real” Chinese websites also help. To be honest, you have to treat “Chinese” SEO as a standalone SEO project, not just another language or country in your overall SEO/website mix.
Heinz Klemann, Senior Marketing Consultant, BeastBI GmbH
