How to do WeChat SEO? WeChat SEO Practical Guide

As a "search engine" with 800 million monthly active users, WeChat Search provides a new traffic entry point for content creators and businesses. This article will share a practical guide to WeChat SEO, including tips on how to use hot topics, optimize titles, ensure content quality, use information asymmetry, and grasp the timing of publishing, to help creators and businesses better attract traffic, meet user needs, and realize commercial value in the WeChat ecosystem.

If your understanding of SEO (search engine optimization) is still limited to "Baidu SEO", you will definitely not be able to keep up with the pace of the times.

In the PC era, search engines such as Baidu, 360 Search, Google, and Bing are the main entry points for users to access the Internet. Through SEO, webmasters can obtain a large amount of traffic for free.

But in the era of mobile Internet, each app has become an information island. Developers no longer want to be constrained by search engines, which eventually forced search engines to build their own content systems. However, this also greatly reduced the content library of search engines. Coupled with user habits, this in turn prompted each app to become a small "search engine."

WeChat upgraded WeChat Search to “WeChat Search” in December 2019. By the end of 2022, the number of monthly active users of WeChat Search reached 800 million.

Baidu's Q4 2024 financial report shows that in December 2024, the monthly active users of Baidu APP were 679 million.

If we only look at the number of monthly active users, WeChat Search has already surpassed Baidu App, but Baidu also has a web version search. Considering the search quality factor, Baidu is not weaker than WeChat Search.

For SEOers, it is not meaningful to do Baidu SEO now. On the one hand, Baidu's ranking rules have changed a long time ago, and on the other hand, the benefits brought by SEO are too low. The well-known SEO webmasters in China in the early days, such as Lu Songsong, Fu Wei, ZAC, etc., have now transformed or done other businesses. Some SEO webmasters have also done Google SEO.

The SEO group has declined, but it does not mean that the concepts or operating methods of SEO itself are invalid.

Yu Jun, a well-known domestic product manager, once mentioned a concept, that is, "users are not natural persons, but a collection of needs."

In other words, as long as there are people using it, user demand will always exist. As long as you don't limit the platform to Baidu, you can actually borrow the concept of SEO by including platforms such as WeChat Search, Xiaohongshu, and Douyin.

To a certain extent, SEO has the metaphor of "deceiving the algorithm". If this metaphor is applied to platforms such as WeChat Search, Xiaohongshu, and Douyin, it is also applicable.

So, how to do WeChat SEO?

This article will share some practical guidelines for WeChat SEO.

1. Why does WeChat “need” SEO?

When Baidu SEO was popular, webmasters used all means to attract traffic, even to the point of "obsession". For example, in order to get rankings, they cobbled together pseudo-original articles and repeated titles to deceive traffic. Even now, this kind of trick can still be seen on the Internet. If SEOers still use this method on WeChat Soso, Xiaohongshu, Douyin and other platforms, it will definitely not work.

First, the difference in platforms.

During the "Baidu SEO" period, webmasters could obtain traffic through channels such as websites, special pages, channels, and detail pages. The main content carriers of WeChat Search are video accounts, WeChat public accounts, and Q&A.

When they were making websites, webmasters had a lot of room to maneuver, but now they are limited to video accounts, WeChat public accounts, and asking questions, and there are also restrictions on posting on WeChat public accounts.

One is that the content carrier can be controlled at any time, and the other is that the content carrier is loaded on the platform, with posting restrictions and management requirements.

Secondly, the content quality is higher. In the PC era, the requirements for content quality were not high, so SEOers also exploited various loopholes to get traffic in their hands, but if you use the same content to post on WeChat public accounts, there will definitely be no traffic.

In the past, the content push form of WeChat public accounts was a subscription system, which was based on the number of fans. It was difficult for SEOers to gain many fans with their poor-quality pseudo-original accounts, and without fans there would be no traffic.

In recent years, WeChat public accounts have started to take the personalized recommendation route, breaking the limit on the number of fans and allowing more content to be displayed.

Relatively speaking, the quality of articles in WeChat public accounts is higher than the content quality of traffic sites created by SEOers. This is one of the reasons why some SEOs have not caught up with the wave of WeChat public accounts. In the past, they were good at writing programs to build websites, pseudo-originality, etc., while WeChat public accounts pay more attention to article quality and the content itself, which directly keeps them out.

However, if you think WeChat doesn’t “need” SEO, you are wrong.

For the platform, all content is essentially "treated equally". The focus is on user needs. Whether the content you provide can meet user needs. If it can, the system will push it to more people; if not, the system will not recommend it. It's that simple.

In the "Baidu SEO" era, many webmasters put the cart before the horse, they all focused on traffic and ignored the content itself. But in the WeChat era, content quality has a higher priority.

According to Guo Jing's observations of the Internet circle, the activity level of WeChat public account creators has declined compared to its peak period, which means that the platform is actually very short of "good content". As long as your content can meet user needs, WeChat needs it.

2. How to do it?

The disadvantage of content creators is that they put content first, rather than user needs. The core of SEO is actually user needs. WeChat public account authors and video account authors hope to attract fans through content, while SEO is the content generated after "user needs", and the focus of SEO is "long-tail word traffic".

The overall content style of WeChat official accounts currently tends to be media-oriented, and there is relatively little SEO-oriented content that meets user needs. For example, "How to use the red envelope function of the WeChat PC version?", "How to enable the gift sending function in WeChat stores?" The gaps in this type of content are actually opportunities for SEOers.

Here I give an example of a WeChat SEO article.

On New Year's Eve, many WeChat friends' nicknames turned golden. So, here comes a demand: if other users also want to change their WeChat nicknames to this fashionable golden color, what should they do?

So, I published an article titled "Keep it: Specific methods to turn your WeChat Moments nickname golden."

According to the backend data of the WeChat official account, this article has been read 78,386 times, with a completion rate of 70% and shared 552 times.

If you look at it from the perspective of a media practitioner, what is the value of this kind of content? Who doesn’t know how to turn WeChat Moments into gold? The misunderstanding here is:

First, information asymmetry always exists. As a product with over 1.3 billion monthly active users, even if only a few million or tens of millions of people are unaware of a certain piece of information, the traffic it gathers will not be low.

Second, users are lazy. When information asymmetry exists, users will naturally look for these seemingly simple answers, and if your content happens to meet these needs of users, there will be a lot of traffic.

The second example is: "How to make money using the "gift giving" function of WeChat store."

At that time, the gift-sending function of WeChat stores was very popular on the entire Internet, but WeChat did not launch a relevant practical guide. Everyone only knew that the gift-sending function of WeChat was very popular. So, how should B-side merchants use it, and who can make money through it?

As a platform, WeChat itself is relatively Buddhist, but B-side merchants who want to make money are not Buddhist. In today's Internet, you can only make money if you drill fast enough.

This article clearly hits the needs of B-side merchants.

The third example is "Collect: The Latest Operation Methods and Strategies of WeChat Official Accounts in 2025". This article is an example of a truly good SEO. Even now, there is still long-tail traffic coming to this article.

This article was published on January 1, 2025. The number of readers peaked in the first three days, but even half a month later, the daily number of readers remained at around four to five hundred people. The subsequent traffic was obviously not recommended traffic, but traffic from WeChat searches.

The background of this article is that the year 2025 has just arrived, and at the same time, many new WeChat public account creators have entered, and they want to learn new WeChat public account operation skills.

Judging from the data in the above three articles, WeChat SEO can completely use the same set of gameplay as Baidu SEO. The specific operation methods are:

First, follow the right hot spots. The advantage of news hot spots is that the traffic and influence are large enough, and as long as you can "take the ride" smoothly, it is equivalent to saving a lot of effort.

Second, the title. In the personalized recommendation algorithm, the title accounts for half of the function. A good title means that it has the advantage of being clicked. As a user, of course, I hate "title parties", but as a content practitioner, I hope to see data and traffic, so a good title is of course very important.

The title here is different from the usual media titles, and it focuses more on long-tail word traffic.

For example, "What's so good about the Nezha movie?", "Who do you like best in the Nezha movie?", "How to build your own DeepSeek platform for free?", "How much does the same leather jacket as Lei Jun cost? Where can I buy the same leather jacket as Lei Jun?".

Third, the content should be "appropriate". A good title is important, but it's useless if your content is not good. Ai is very popular now, and many people want to use it for laziness, but I think it's better to be sincere. On the one hand, it is a summary of yourself, and on the other hand, it is also responsible for the readers. What readers want is to actually help them solve their problems, not some empty content.

The reason why many SEOers went astray during the "Baidu SEO" period was that they only considered traffic and not content. If you want to do a good job in WeChat SEO, the content must not be bad.

Fourth, take advantage of information asymmetry. Content practitioners should be wary of the "elite trap", just like a short video author who taught people how to take a train or a plane. These seemingly easy-to-understand behaviors can actually help users. In a huge base, even the smallest needs combined together can form a very large group.

Behind long-tail words such as “how to play”, “how to do”, and “how to use” are the actual needs of users.

Fifth, the timing of publishing. The timing of publishing an article is also very important. When the hot topic is just beginning to heat up but has not yet become completely popular, it is very likely that there will be no traffic if you publish it. A few days ago, the WeChat PC beta version was updated, and I published a manuscript titled "How to receive WeChat red envelopes on the WeChat PC?", but the actual traffic was very poor. After two or three days, the number of manuscripts about "WeChat PC supports receiving red envelopes" gradually increased, and I realized that it might be related to the wrong timing of publishing the manuscript.

In terms of the timing of release, another feeling is the article "Why is food delivery suddenly popular? JD.com and Douyin are both involved in food delivery to compete with Meituan and Ele.me". In fact, the traffic of the article was not high after it was released. But about three or four days after the hot topic related to "JD.com food delivery" became popular, the traffic of this article was suddenly pushed up again.

Of course, one thing that WeChat SEO must pay attention to is that you can’t just focus on the title, the content quality must keep up, because the user’s subsequent likes, recommendations, shares, comments and other data will also affect the system recommendation.

3. How do businesses do WeChat SEO?

The second part of this article mainly introduces how WeChat public account content practitioners do WeChat SEO. However, for businesses that want to make money, the above methods are not completely applicable. So, if businesses also want to do WeChat SEO, what should they do?

First, determine the main content carrier. The carriers of WeChat content are video accounts, WeChat official accounts, and Q&A. So, whether the merchant should choose short videos, or official accounts and Q&A that are mainly based on pictures and texts, this should be operated based on its own advantages.

Secondly, take advantage of regionality and industry characteristics. For example:

• For the catering industry, you can operate some topics, such as "What delicious food is there in Suzhou", "The ten most worthwhile hot pot restaurants in Shanghai", and "The ten must-try snacks when visiting Suzhou".
• Machinery industry, “Top Ten Machine Tool Brands”, “Guangdong CNC Machine Tools”.
• Legal industry, "Reliable law firms in Shanghai", "Where are the good law firms in Beijing".

If you really don’t know how to expand long-tail keywords, just enter the most important keywords in search engines such as Baidu, 360 Search, Sogou, etc., and you will see various long-tail word prompts.

Finally, the quality of the content. The title is only part of SEO, and the quality of the content must also be up to standard. Only good enough content can bring both traffic and customers. If you are lazy about the content, you will only waste the topic.

SEOers are normally placed in the operation department, but when it comes to WeChat SEO, it is closely related to content, which causes many people/companies to be unable to adapt. But from another perspective, the lack of SEO is precisely an opportunity for businesses on WeChat because their competitiveness is relatively small.

The point that SEO is closely related to operations is that there is no universal formula and it is always in a state of change. This is also a point that merchants need to pay attention to when doing WeChat SEO, that is, they need to adjust content strategies through operations. What content is effective and what is ineffective requires relying on their own experience to accumulate and change and improve step by step.

As for WeChat, it actually welcomes users to create content on the platform. It itself "lacks" high-quality content. As long as your creations meet user needs, they are good content.

By the way, if your content is good enough, it is very likely to become a content source for Ai in the future.