Is it still worth to do search engine marketing in China?

Red Digital view: Although the market share of China’s Search Engine Baidu declines, and many social platforms like WeChat, Douyin share the traffic, we still think it’s worth to do Search Engine Marketing in China because the nature of Social Media traffic is surfing, while Search Engine traffic’s nature is actively searching. The question is how to do it in a cost-effective way?

1. Instead of buying keyword of a general product (e.g. “Vitamin C”), buy a lot of keyword combinations that can directly answer users’ need/demand/questions (e.g. “Vitamin C for children”, “functions of Vitamin C”, “price of Vitamin C”, "what's VC medicine product is good" etc)

2. Keywords are time-sensitive, words that with a lot of traffic a week ago may not be for now. Look at the search data to figure out what is being searched most recently

3. Since Baidu give priority to its own products, so put your content on Baidu Knows (百度知道), Baidu Tieba (百度贴吧), Baijiahao (百家号), etc. Baidu also gives priority to big sites like Zhihu (知乎), thus also make sure your content is on these sites