Is the meta Keyword tag a factor in Baidu in China?

Posted by By Dan Taylor 1 Min Read

The meta keyword tag is still important in Baidu, China’s leading search engine. Unlike Google, which no longer considers meta keywords for ranking purposes, Baidu continues to use them as one of the factors in its ranking algorithm.

However, their influence is relatively minor compared to other ranking factors such as content quality, backlinks, and user experience.

Here are some key points about the use of meta keywords for Baidu SEO:

  1. Relevance: Ensure the keywords are relevant to the content of the page. Irrelevant keywords can harm your ranking.
  2. Moderation: Avoid keyword stuffing. Use a moderate number of well-chosen keywords.
  3. Content Quality: Focus on providing high-quality, valuable content that is relevant to the user’s search query.
  4. Other SEO Factors: Pay attention to other critical SEO factors such as site speed, mobile-friendliness, and backlinks, as these significantly impact Baidu rankings.

While the meta keyword tag can give a slight edge, it’s essential to integrate it as part of a broader, holistic SEO strategy for Baidu.

Dan Taylor
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Dan Taylor is the founder and editor of International Search Insights (ISI), the publication behind ReadIsi, and a Partner and Head of Innovation (Search & AI) at SALT.agency. He has worked in search for more than a decade, in-house and agency-side, and is regarded as one of the West’s leading voices on search engines beyond Google, including Yandex, Baidu, Naver and Cốc Cốc. On ReadIsi, Dan covers the engines and AI answer platforms that English-language coverage tends to miss: Baidu and ERNIE, Yandex and Alice AI, Naver, Cốc Cốc, Shenma, Sogou, WeChat and Weibo search, plus DeepSeek and Alibaba’s Qwen. He also keeps dated records of documented changes, such as the Yandex, Baidu and Naver algorithm update histories and the DeepSeek, ERNIE and Qwen model update histories. His approach is to take learnings from global search engines and apply logic with a high evidence threshold. A claim needs a source, patterns seen in one market are treated as a hypothesis until they are checked in another, and where the evidence is thin he says so. For brands, that means advice built on what can be shown, with measurement that separates being cited from being chosen. Dan is credited with coining the term “edge SEO” and won the inaugural TechSEO Boost research competition in 2018 for his work on CDN and edge changes for SEO. In 2026 he was credited with coining “Infinite Tail” to describe how keyword research is changing with AI search. He is the author of AI Search Marketing For The Travel Sector, writes for Search Engine Journal, Search Engine Land and Travel Marketing Guy, and has advised technology, SaaS, travel and enterprise ecommerce brands, including Cloudflare, GitLab and Airbnb. He has given multiple talks and panels at the International Search Summit in Barcelona, and has also spoken at Optimization Moscow, brightonSEO, Google Search Central Live Deep Dive Asia in Bangkok, Athens SEO and the Asia SEO Virtual Summit 2026, where his talk looked at how Baidu, Naver, DeepSeek, Tencent, Cốc Cốc and Yandex built their own AI answers.
Founder & Editor