Xiaohongshu Marketing: Content Seeding through Xiaohongshu Search Engine Optimization (SEO) for brands and businesses
What is “content seeding” in Xiaohongshu?
It refers to when you haven’t actively sought out anything specific, but during the process of browsing notes, you are impressed by a certain aspect of a particular brand. You remember this brand and may even become a user of their products directly.
So, content seeding is easy to understand. It requires us to impress different potential consumer groups through various influencers, unique selling points, and different interest scenarios on content platforms. The goal is to make more potential consumers remember your brand. Therefore, the efficiency of content seeding is directly linked to sales and brand awareness. All brands understand the importance of content seeding and the need to do it consistently.
However, is content seeding just a one-time effort? What happens when consumers are influenced by content seeding for other products within the same category? What actions do they take after being influenced by content seeding?
Search is the beginning of content seeding.
Xiaohongshu has gradually replaced Baidu and become an indispensable part of the consumer decision-making process. Regardless of how brands attract users’ attention, users will search on Xiaohongshu for brand keywords, competitor keywords, core keywords, major category keywords, and keywords related to specific user scenarios. These are all aspects that brands must pay attention to.
Moreover, due to the exposure and clicks generated from search results, the internal ranking that appears after a search has a significant impact on consumer purchasing decisions.
Xiaohongshu's platform search content ranking logic:
After users perform a search, the platform will use a combination of text, images, and videos to mix content seeding advertisements with native search content. While it is personalized for each user, a portion of the content remains relatively consistent. The remaining variable content is based on the user’s recent preferences or determined by the platform, including content seeding advertisements from other brands. In other words, regardless of category keywords, scenario keywords, or even your brand keywords, the search results may include content seeding advertisements from competing brands. Therefore, Xiaohongshu is a platform that is particularly prone to “diverting traffic.”
Keyword search optimization becomes especially important.
1. Brand and product keywords:
Unlike searching brand keywords on platforms like Taobao, when users search for “brand/product keywords” on Xiaohongshu, it is highly likely that they are not familiar with the brand. They hope to find and learn about the brand’s core selling points, user reviews, and overall strengths on Xiaohongshu.
In Xiaohongshu’s paid advertising, the conversion rate for brand keyword searches is 20 times higher than that for category keyword searches. It is crucial to capture this core group of new potential customers.
Therefore, please consider Xiaohongshu as the first step in optimizing brand keywords. Regardless of how users become interested in a brand through other channels, as long as they are unfamiliar with the brand, they are likely to search for it on Xiaohongshu.
Grasp this precise target audience and convey the brand’s desired information in the most easily digestible way, such as through popular notes about the brand, constantly educating and communicating.
In addition to popular notes about the brand, pay close attention to the sentiment associated with content related to brand keywords. In simple terms, determine whether the sentiment is leaning more towards positive or negative for the brand.
If the brand has already accumulated positive sentiment on Xiaohongshu, subsequent marketing efforts may focus more on conversion.
However, if the sentiment is negative, it can undoubtedly become a disaster for the brand.
On this platform, which has the most significant impact on user purchasing decisions, even a slight negative influence can potentially affect sales across all channels.
Conduct comprehensive self-examination using different IP accounts for brand keyword searches, tracking and handling all negative content, negotiating when possible, deleting inappropriate posts, and reporting malicious content to prevent the spread of any negative sentiment.
2. Industry/Category Keywords
To effectively conduct marketing, brands need to understand user needs on each channel.
When users search for “industry/category keywords” on Xiaohongshu, 90% of them already have a vague demand. They hope to find and learn about what’s currently popular, recommended, and interesting within that category/demand on Xiaohongshu. The goal is to cater to their information needs. Translated into marketing strategies, it means capturing target customers through “highly-rated notes” instead of forcefully promoting rough product selling points.
(Pro tip: When you see that the top 1, 2, or 3 search results for your core keyword are not highly-rated notes, congratulations, you’ve found an open and promising opportunity. Make sure to seize it decisively.)
3. Competitor Keywords
Based on different product lines, selling points, and benefits, select appropriate competitor settings. For example, if brand W competes with brand S in meal replacement shakes, when purchasing the “S” brand keyword, choose highly-rated notes about meal replacement shakes. If the competition is with brand F in probiotics, when purchasing the “F” brand keyword, select highly-rated notes about probiotics.
Search is the Beginning of Precise Content seeding
Searching for content is the primary behavior path for Xiaohongshu users. Alongside content seeding, keyword optimization should also be emphasized.
Traffic from search is more targeted. It’s important to continuously find ways to have your notes recommended to the right target users and improve note rankings to increase visibility in search results.
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