SEO for TikTok

The Scope of TikTok

In 2021, Google’s many-year-reign as the most visited website on the planet ended; it fell to second place. Despite myriad competitors ranging from Bing to DuckDuckGo or even Ecosia, Google was not displaced by a search engine. It wasn’t fractioned off from government action and didn’t lose viewers to scandal, privacy concerns, or the pandemic.

It lost to a video app.

It’s safe to say TikTok is the most successful online platform in the world right now. It’s available in over 150 countries, has over one billion monthly active users, and has been downloaded over 200 million times in the United States alone. Brands ranging from footwear to Chipotle chase views, clout, and products from TikTok more or less successfully than others. Creators are paid to promote hashtags as mobile video becomes the most sought after medium in the world, filling a void left by the death (murder) of Vine.

40% of Gen Z users prefer TikTok and Instagram for search over Google. As Gen Z becomes an increasing part of the buying market, this number is going to rise and become more and more prominent as a coveted core demographic. Similarly, 92% of customers trust word-of-mouth over any other form of advertising. Despite this, and the declining trust of traditional paid advertising, billions are still spent every year on messages that go nowhere and reach no one.

TikTok, up until now, has been thought of mostly as a dumb app for high schoolers who dance and drink cranberry juice on skateboards; it’s denigrated as a poor pastime for hyper online youth who will be anything ranging from the death of society to the broad evidence that we’re declining as a species. For brands, it’s thought of only as a way to make humiliating videos that poorly cater to the youth market in the most out-of-touch ways possible.

Baloney.

Seriously, it’s baloney. I’m in my thirties and I’ve already seen this cycle play out countless times. Older generations said it about every internet thing ever; Wikipedia can’t be trusted, anyone can edit it; Google is unreliable and returns spam links and is susceptible to keyword stuffing and blackhat SEO; YouTube is poor quality crap. Kids are wasting their time online, they’re becoming dumber, yada yada yada. This old saw needs to be put to bed.

TikTok is no more or less dumb than any other app and platform ever invented. I remember Facebook being thought of as a flash in the pan way back in 2006-2010; how’d those predictions work out? The classic “it has no viable business model” has been shown countless times to simply be hasty. Maybe, just maybe, business models adapt to the online landscape and are proven profitable in ways we don’t always see in advance; maybe business structures emerge naturally over time, the way platform economics frequently predicts. Amazon wasn’t profitable for many years, and now it’s, well, Amazon.

TikTok didn’t just emerge as a fad yesterday—it’s now been the most successful platform in the world for several years. Other legacy social media platforms have been chasing TikTok’s success for nearly as long, with limited success and raising questions about their viability as challengers to the next big thing. Instagram, formerly the coolest app for younger people, has even been proclaimed (prematurely, in my opinion) dead due to an overreliance on its own weaker TikTok rival, Reels. It was only a matter of time before TikTok came for Google.

And it finally happened.

Young people now use TikTok for searching more than Google. It should also be noted that TikTok videos show up in Google SERPs now, too. I don’t think this is necessarily a bad thing. More importantly, whether or not I think it’s a bad or good thing is completely immaterial. What matters is that as an emergent strategy, this is what real people are really using to find information online. Yelling at a cloud about it doesn’t change the facts on the ground. And rather than try to turn back the clock or ignore how the world changes, I find it much more constructive to substantively add to a platform to try and improve it for the core uses it now handles.

With that in mind, here are some search engine optimization (SEO) and content tips for brands using TikTok.

SEO for TikTok

I’m going to assume for this article that you, dear reader, at least know some of the fundamentals of search engine optimization (SEO). I’ll try to break it down as much as I can for each thing anyway.

Keep in mind that SEO is a constantly evolving thing: gone are the days when simply matching an H1 header to a set of keywords sprinkled through a 500-word blog was enough to make it rank against competitors online. Google long ago got wise to tactics like keyword stuffing and thin, duplicate content being salted on a website to increase its web traffic (for what it’s worth, Google doesn’t penalize or de-index a site for such things, it simply doesn’t help your ranking at all and is ignored by crawlers).

SEO and ranking signals are determined by many things, including:

·????????Keywords, key phrases, possibly inferred semantic links (think MUM), and NLP-influenced word choices

·????????Page design factors and core web vitals

·????????Ease of site navigation

·????????A cleaner, less bulky site, with less 404 errors and 301 codes, and pruned JavaScript

·????????A focus on more in-depth content rather than just reposting (especially for product reviews)

·????????Tags, descriptions, ADA compliance and accessibility

·????????EAT (expertise, authority, trustworthiness) in content

·????????Backlinks, especially valuable ones from reputable ranked domains

·????????Intent analysis

·????????A few other things

As you can see, it’s a much more mixed bag of tactics and strategies than it used to be. Google’s algorithm updates are becoming tougher and tougher to game. Of course, while a lot of this is to help people find more relevant information, a good chunk of it is to also push people toward paying for ads and sponsored search results to cut through the myriad competitors doing the same. If you want to rank there, you might (read: will) have to pay.

TikTok is a little different. To be honest, we don’t exactly know all the ranking factors that play a part in making specific TikTok videos show up algorithmically in the coveted For You section; we know hashtags and a powerful recommendation engine make it more specific to each user, we know keywords and descriptions make them easier to rank; and we know trendjacking is successful for getting attention on a video, though the way some brands do it you’d think it was the only thing that works.

A big part of how younger people use TikTok is to find out things like recipes, lifehacks, techniques, strategies—all things older generations used conventional search engines for. A very popular segment of TikTok is the I Learned it On TikTok hub, where people share and educate based on personal experiences. For every dumb trend that sprouts on TikTok, remember that there are dozens of useful, helpful videos about lawn care, home maintenance, taxes, foods, exercise, and anything else you can imagine that truly do benefit people. And in a conversational video format, it comes across as a personal endorsement and helps spread word-of-mouth. As TikTok says: don’t make ads, make TikToks.

Let’s start with the keywords: much like Google, keywords still play a part in online ranking for TikTok videos. Descriptions, on-video text, words said in videos, and hashtags are some prime ways to put more keywords into videos for TikTok. Like with Google and YouTube (owned by Google anyway), simply stuffing any keyword that’s trending into a video won’t cut it anymore, and for a brand it’s downright embarrassing: you won’t win brand loyalty or build the positive word-of-mouth that 92% of customers prefer by doing an online bait and switch with content.

Make sure to write with an economy of words—use concision. Use optimized, tailored words to say a lot in less words. Title videos with active verbs, use descriptions that are enticing, and use emotional hooks to build engagement and anticipation and fill out the video with something interesting. Link keywords and key phrases with other semantically-rich concepts, or thematically-related materials. Being a semantic web junkie, I think any time you can easily link words and concepts to content is a great idea for findability.

When choosing keywords, I recommend tailoring it like a blog. Use Semrush, Moz, any number of SEO programs if you’re an agency doing this on your own to find ranking keywords and phrases. Use Chrome extensions for SEO and readability analysis if you’re looking for cheaper versions of keywords and rankings. Use Google Search Engine Console, Google Analytics, Shopping, and Google Trends as a suite of options to find what people are searching for and break down their search intent (Semrush also has an excellent feature for this). For example, Google Analytics has many features that allow you to measure user intent. Use the data gleaned here to define a brand and content strategy for TikTok that’s aligned with how people search for your products.

Define your strategy; if you want longer-term educational videos to be your brand’s TikTok calling card, then focus on long-tail keywords with an eye towards niche audiences, and keep aware of the video retention curve. For example, many videos, especially educational ones on Facebook or YouTube, have a video retention curve that looks something like this:

The Y axis is for viewers, the X axis is time on the video. As the video plays, if it’s too long (or not relevant enough), people tend to leave before the end. While this is normal and fairly expected for most online videos, the steeper the retention curve, the more opportunity to keep people watching. So let’s break this down and analyze it for TikTok. Let’s say you make one YouTube video a week, lasts about 6 minutes, and covers a few topics or a few facets of a larger topic. But your retention curve looks like the one above, and only your core audience follows to the end; you’re not keeping top-of-funnel or new audiences at all to your selling or brand proposition. You might lack a strong hook and are losing potential customers and citizens in your brand community in the messy middle.

Try this: segment that single six-minute video in three two-minute videos for TikTok. All the topics or facets of topics you cover are done in three videos over the same course of a week, uploaded with tailored keywords and descriptions and hashtags for each one. Note: don’t just hack one long video into three—make three separate videos that perfectly encapsulates each part of what you’re talking about. When users search TikTok, much like a Google search, they want quick, fun, and especially to the point. Everyone’s search intent is to find what they’re looking for and to keep going until they do.

This should flatten that retention curve a little and keep more people on the video until the end, where hopefully they stick around to see what other quick, fun, and easily digestible content you have for them.

·????????In terms of the content itself, don’t pitch or sell, strive to educate.

·????????Don’t ram in catchphrases or dumb links that people won’t follow; make links meaningful and use them sparingly.

·????????Have fun, edit well, use people who are camera-ready. Be clever, if possible.

·????????Use the grammar of the film and editing language to your advantage; let video type and structure flow naturally from your brand and personality vibes.

·????????Make sure the content of the video aligns with the terms used in descriptions, hashtags, and other texts. Please provide captions, and if possible, have those captions (i.e. what you say) align decently with other linked online content on your site or presence, say a blog or another video or a product portal. If attempting to trendjack, please try to make the video original, interesting, and have something to actually say about the trend. This one is less of a guideline and more of a personal plea.

Segment users by their search intent; this one is tougher, and possibly more granular, but as searching becomes such a ubiquitous activity everywhere, understanding the psychology and the how and why of a search can help define what content to publish. Use a free site like Answer the Public to find what people search for related to a keyword, along with Google and Semrush, if you have the means. Plug these into your TikTok videos.

Align video descriptions with meta descriptions for webpages. Use a site like Screaming Frog to perform a site audit.

Screaming Frog can show existing descriptions, keywords, and indexable URL elements that can be added to TikTok videos for page-video alignment. Analyze which pages of yours are ranking and being visited the most and make TikTok videos that share themes, styles, and maybe even more added content to an existing piece. Make sure to link to your videos and highlight them on other social media channels as often as possible.

Many brands starting out in TikTok are unsure of what to post for their content; similarly, splitting videos into smaller ones can seem like more content and more trouble to produce. One idea, especially for the purposes of information retrieval, is to first invest in a site-specific taxonomy and metadata catalogue, especially if you’re in retail. Create an optimized retail taxonomic hierarchy for your site, and then use associated tags, metadata, keywords, and descriptions in your TikTok videos, along with links to the products and as many qualifying and helpful bits as you can add. However, if working in high-end retail, make your TikToks very carefully. Nothing is worse than a brand misalignment here, especially when pitching expensive things to cash-strapped customers (an area many fashion brands struggle to walk the line on).

Artistically, make sure TikTok videos speak to the vibe of your online presence. Nothing is worse than seeing a reputable brand anxiously try to rebrand itself for one specific platform and come off looking silly. It’s a solid idea to use influencers in a shared market to help pitch or sell products, but if too scripted or done wrong, it ends up hurting the cause and damaging credibility. You can’t be scared to be vulnerable as a brand; you can’t afford to look like being honest is detrimental. And most importantly: for the love of God, make sure to leave unintended copy out of posts. This one isn’t just for TikTok, it’s for every platform on earth that has or ever will be invented. READ WHAT YOU POST.

Of course, these are just a few things that can be done. As any online marketer will tell you, TikTok is a big area. Like any platform, it requires its own strategy, its own ideas, and its own content optimized to its environment to really thrive. There’s a huge caveat to everything I’ve written here: it can all go out the window. Seriously. All this optimization, keywords, planning, you name it, can mean less than the bits its printed with if you have the perfect content at the perfect time that had no planning and came out spontaneously. This is the Holy Grail of online marketing: it went viral.

There simply is no way to ensure virality. In fact, going genuinely viral is an exceedingly rare thing compared to the massive amounts of content posted online every day. The majority of it dies and is never seen again; most content creators will never go viral. While your TikToks may never go viral, they can certainly provide important content and context for your customers and build your brand. They can foment good word-of-mouth and help a brand break through to more customers. Given how low-cost many TikTok videos are, this is a no-brainer.

Remember that people are beginning to use TikTok the way people use(d) Google: they want to satisfy a need and use a platform for its information retrieval possibilities. People want to laugh, learn, cry, relate, share with friends, and do all the human things on the platform that has made social networks the industry of the 21st century.

There will be more written on this topic in the near future, from me and, frankly, from everyone. SEO for TikTok and content strategy isn’t going away, and it isn’t staying leashed to legacy platforms. It’s evolving to meet the needs of evolving audiences, and to stay relevant and hit core demographics, we need to evolve, too.?