Search Engine Optimization for TikTokers
Millions of people open the TikTok app everyday (90% actually), and some of these users open the app multiple times per day. People spend an average of 52 minutes per day on TikTok. So let’s make it worth their while, right?
If you’re here, chances are you have a brilliant idea and you’re ready to tell the world about it. Let’s go for it. In this article, we’ll break down how you can apply search engine optimization best practices to your TikTok’s and get discovered.
What is search engine optimization and how does it impact TikTokers?
My favorite definition of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is actually from Wikipedia (lol). “Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the quality and quantity of website traffic to a website or a web page from search engines.”
There are two different ways to do this, with on-page optimizations and off-page optimizations.
Most definitions of SEO are exclusive to physical websites, such as the one you’re reading this blog on. However, SEO best practices can be applied to brands who treat their TikTok profile as their homepage. Which brings us to the question: How does SEO impact TikTokers? How can you leverage SEO and keywords to boost your TikTok visibility?
Let’s revisit the definition of SEO: “Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the quality and quantity of website traffic to a website or a web page from search engines.”
Both YouTube and TikTok are search engines of their own kind. To be discovered on TikTok, you’ll need to optimize your profile and design each individual video to be more discoverable by your target audience.
What is the TikTok SEO algorithm for ranking videos?
The TikTok algorithm is ever changing which makes this question complicated to answer. Depending on when you read this blog, it could already be an outdated answer. We do know there are three main factors associated with the algorithm and some criteria within each factor.
User Interactions: User interactions: Likes, follows, comments, shares
Video information: Captions, sounds, hashtags
Device and account settings: Language, country, device type
TikTok puts a large emphasis on retention. i.e., people who love your videos, engage with them and continuously return to your profile for more.
If you’re getting serious about investing your time in TikTok, then it’s time to get serious about learning your target audience. This will inform the factor and criteria listed above. If discovering a target audience is new for you, I highly recommend this article.
How to Choose Keywords For Your TikToks
Unlike webpages, TikTok’s AI doesn’t only crawl keywords within copy. It also scans video (text on video) and audio (I highly encourage closed captioning) to rank your video and show it to people the AI believes would enjoy your content.
So how do you pick the right keywords?
Understand your audience: What are they searching for? What pain points are they facing? What videos help them kick back and relax? How can you deliver on this?
Tip: Do some audience research on popular hashtags or trends of the moment. Would your audience enjoy?
Understand your competitors: Not in a cutthroat way, more in a curious way. Learn from your direct and indirect competitors. Learn from the creator with 8 followers (and all 8 followers like + comment on every video) and learn from the creator with 2MIL followers.
TikTok SEO Best Practices
Create videos of value to your audience: Strive to do one of the following with your TikTok videos: inform, educate, entertain, tell a story. It could even be a blend of all four.
Map out keywords and research them: Make a list of keywords relevant to your topic, video, brand and audience. You can research them by using TikTok’s autocomplete function within the app. Is it well searched? Take note of how intense the competition is. How can you differentiate? Try to narrow your list down to 3-5 keywords per video. This will take testing — so be patient. Plug these keywords into your caption, using hashtags and subtitles. If subtitles ruin the video, use the TikTok text function and then drag the text off the screen.
Work on building engagement: Encourage your audience to share or comment, or create videos worth saving for later. You’re striving for likes, comments and shares. This is what the TikTok algorithm responds to you. If you’re seeing low engagement, it’s time to go back to the drawing board. This is a likely sign you are not as intimate with your target audience as you may think.
Build reach with cross platform engagement: Repost your TikToks, or variations of it, to your Instagram and YouTube. Alter the captions on cross functional platforms to drive users back to TikTok where you ultimately will want to score your engagement win’s.
