Chinese Backlinks for Mainland China, Taiwan and Hong Kong

Mainland China, Taiwan and Hong Kong share a written language and little else that matters for search. They use different scripts, different everyday vocabulary, different outlets and, in the mainland's case, a different search engine.

A link plan that treats these as one market helps none of them properly. A mainland buyer and a Taipei buyer use different characters and different words, and often a different search engine. Each needs pages written for them and links from sites they read.

Google, many Western news sites, most major social networks and a long list of foreign services are blocked in mainland China. That reality shapes Chinese link building in ways a translation agency rarely mentions.

• Blocked outlets help Baidu very little. A link on a site that cannot be reached from inside the mainland may help you on Google, but Baidu's crawler and mainland readers may never see it.
• Blocked resources break your own pages. A page that loads Google Fonts, Google Maps, embedded YouTube video or a Google captcha may stall or fail inside the mainland, and a slow page is a weak page on Baidu.
• Hosting matters. Sites hosted in mainland China need an ICP filing with the authorities, and they usually load faster for mainland visitors and Baidu. Foreign-hosted sites can rank, but they start at a disadvantage.

So a mainland plan starts with whether your site works in China at all, and only then turns to links from mainland outlets Baidu can crawl.

It usually goes like this: a strong English site adds Chinese pages, usually one Simplified version for everyone, hosted abroad. Every link pointing at the domain is English. No Chinese site, in any region, mentions the Chinese pages. Baidu sees a slow foreign page with no mainland citations. Google sees a translation that no Taiwanese or Hong Kong publisher has noticed. The Chinese results go to competitors whose pages Chinese sites actually cite.

Backlinks still matter no matter the date. Content, speed and structure count, and in the mainland hosting counts too, but links are still a major indicator that a website should even be looked at, by Baidu, by Google and by the AI search tools in every Chinese market that summarise a few trusted sources. They are not the only factor, but without some really good backlinks a Chinese page will never pop up in search, will not rank and will be drowned out by the competition.

On Google, regional targeting comes from hreflang: zh-CN, zh-TW and zh-HK, or script codes such as zh-Hans and zh-Hant. Baidu pays less attention to hreflang, which is one reason many businesses give their mainland site its own domain, often a .cn, while Taiwan and Hong Kong pages sit on a .com, a .tw or a .hk.

We decide the region, script and engine for each page, check that the site works where it needs to, map who ranks and who links to them, agree topics and commission native writers for the right outlets. Working with us directly, as a leading provider of Backlink Building Services, opens up a large network of authors and outlets. We build the profile to hold up under Google updates and hostile competitor tactics, and of Baidu's updates as well.

Chinese readers abroad, in Singapore, Malaysia, North America, Australia and the United Kingdom, get their own outlets where they matter to your sales. For nearby markets, see our Japanese backlinks page, our Korean link building and our links for Malay-language sites, which covers a country with a large Chinese-reading community. The full language and niche service, the budget-first strategy page and the Backlink Building Services index explain the rest. When you are ready, contact us with your Chinese markets.