This paper mainly discussed the highly efficient iterative identification methods for bilinear systems with autoregressive moving average noise. Firstly, the input-output representation of the bilinear systems is derived through eliminating the unknown state variables in the model. Then based on the maximum-likelihood principle, a maximum-likelihood gradient-based iterative (ML-GI) algorithm is proposed to identify the parameters of the bilinear systems with colored noises. For improving the computational efficiency, the original identification model is divided into three sub-identification models with smaller dimensions and fewer parameters, and a hierarchical maximum-likelihood gradient-based iterative (H-ML-GI) algorithm is derived by using the hierarchical identification principle. A gradient-based iterative (GI) algorithm is given for comparison. Finally, the algorithms are verified by a simulation example and a practical continuous stirred tank reactor (CSTR) example. The results show that the proposed algorithms are effective for identifying bilinear systems with colored noises and the H-ML-GI algorithm has a higher computational efficiency and a faster convergence rate than the ML-GI algorithm and the GI algorithm.