TikTok has revolutionised social media, offering users a platform to share brief videos, often featuring creative lip-syncing, comedy skits, or educational content. As the app continues to grow, with over 1 billion monthly active users, it’s becoming more and more like a search engine. This way, it is increasingly important for marketers to understand and optimise their TikTok SEO. This article will explore TikTok SEO, why it matters, and how you can rank and optimise your videos.
What is TikTok SEO?
TikTok SEO, or TikTok search engine optimisation, is the process of optimising content so that it’s easily found by TikTok users when using the search feature on the platform.
At its core, TikTok SEO is the same as any other type of SEO, meaning it is all about ensuring your content is optimised for search engines so that the right people can find it. To do this, you need to understand how the search algorithms on TikTok work.
Why Does TikTok SEO Matter?
TikTok is one of the top social media platforms, and for many, especially the younger generations, it has become a go-to platform for searching for things online. According to Google, 40% of Gen Z primarily use TikTok and Instagram for search rather than Google.
Thus, investing in TikTok SEO is vital because it can help you reach a larger audience. Optimising your content for TikTok’s search results can drive more traffic to your page, increase engagement, and grow your following.
For marketers, this is especially important as it can help you get your brand in front of more potential customers. You can ensure that the right people see your videos by targeting the right keywords and creating content that resonates with your target audience.
Furthermore, optimising your content for TikTok SEO can also help you stand out from the competition. There is a lot of content on the platform, and optimising your content for TikTok SEO can help set you apart and ensure your content is seen.
TikTok SEO Ranking Factors
Several factors can affect the ranking of your content on TikTok. The most critical include:
> Relevance of keywords
Keywords are essential to any SEO strategy, and TikTok is no exception. By using relevant keywords, you can make sure your content is more likely to appear in search results.
> Quality of content
The quality of your content is key to ranking higher in search results. Creating content that is engaging and relevant to your target audience will help ensure your content is seen.
> Engagement
Engagement is also a significant factor in ranking on TikTok. The more likes, comments, and shares your content gets, the better it will rank in search results.
> User interactions and settings
TikTok analyses user interactions, such as likes, comments, and videos added to favourites, among other things, and uses this data to determine which videos to show each user according to their past activity. Moreover, TikTok also considers language preferences and country settings, so your content will most likely be delivered to people from your country, for example.
TikTok SEO Strategy Step by Step
When it comes to optimising your content for TikTok SEO, there are several steps you can take to ensure your content is seen and ranked.
1. Understand your audience’s needs and search intent.
The first step is to create relevant content for your audience. For this, it is necessary to know well who your target audience is, what type of content they like, and their needs. With this in mind, you can create high-quality content that is engaging and relevant to your target audience.
2. Keyword Research.
Next, you should research to identify the right keywords to include in your content. This will help ensure the right people see your content.
For keyword research, you can use tools such as Google Keyword Planner or KWFinder; remember that these tools gather data from Google, not from TikTok.
Another way to find keywords is to write your brand’s or content’s topic into TikTok’s search bar and see what people are searching for related to that topic:
3. Incorporate the keywords into your content.
Now that you have the keywords defined, you should add them to your content, including the titles, descriptions, captions of your videos, the on-video text, and even the audio!
You should also have hashtags that include your keywords or variations of your keywords, as this will help people find your posts more easily.
4. Monitor & Measure Your TikTok SEO Performance.
Finally, monitoring and measuring your performance is essential once you optimise your TikTok SEO content. By doing so, you can identify what is working and what needs to be improved.
You can use analytics tools such as the TikTok Insights dashboard. This will help you track your content’s performance and identify improvement areas.
To Sum Up…
TikTok SEO should be an essential part of your TikTok strategy. By understanding and utilising the right tactics, you can ensure your videos appear at the top of search results, gain more views, and generate more engagement.