Update on 2012-03-14: if you are interested in Chinese keyword research, we have a new post on the topic that covers more Chinese keyword research tools: The Comprehensive List of Chinese Keyword Research Tools.
To Chinese SEOs, when doing a keyword research, Baidu Index is definitely your weapon of mass destruction.
Although there are quite a number of famous keyword tools out there, such as Google Adwords Keyword Tool, Wordtracker, etc, it seems they don’t read and speak Chinese (well). So today I am going to share with you some basics about Baidu Index and how to use it for Chinese keyword research.
1. User Interest Trend and Media Interest Trend (I took the keyword “android” as example.)
Baidu Index - Interest Trend
The interest trend is the most important part, which reveals the public and media interest trend for a certain keyword. In our case, the keyword I chose is “Android”. We can see the public interest trend number is amazing high for “Android”. One thing – the number doesn’t mean the real daily search volume, although it is larger than 100, which Google Insight takes as default. According to our latest test, the real search volume is 1.6 times larger than the public interest number.
2. Trend Growth and In the News
Baidu Index Trend Growth and In the News
This part of the result page indicates the interest growth over time and news related to the keyword.
- Related Keywords
Baidu Index - Keyword Suggestion
This part shows the related searches of the target keywords, using a yellow bar to indicate the relevancy of each suggestion. This part is also of high value to Chinese SEOs because it can work as a perfect keyword suggestion tool.
4. Rising Searches
Baidu Index - Rising Searches
Rising keywords, another good keyword suggestion source.
- Map and Region
Baidu Index - Map and Region
Baidu Index - Cities and Provinces
Revealing the regional popularity of certain keywords, valuable to location based services. You also need to pay attention to this part if you are targeting a “location + product/service” phrase.
6. User Information – Gender, Age, Industry and Education
Baidu Index - Gender and Age
Baidu Index - Industry and Education
We can see Baidu Index offers a picture with very detailed information about a certain keyword, which is of great value for keyword research. Besides what is mentioned above, there are still plenty of gold mines for us to dig within the result, such as using the general interest trend for a product or service for market prediction.
Related posts:
- The Comprehensive List of Chinese Keyword Research Tools
- Canonical doesn’t work for Baidu, Try rel=”index”
- Keyword or Brand That is the Question for a Domain
- Top 9 Chinese Video Sites
- Chinese Proper Noun Lexicon: Baidu has it, Google not
- Are .CN Domains Better for Baidu or Chinese SEO?
- Baidu Launches Heat Map Analysis on January 10th, 2011