By Berta Ventura, on 10 April 2024
SEO on TikTok encompasses all actions aimed at optimizing your content to make it more visible to users. TikTok has its own search algorithm, so it's important to understand how it works and how to implement an SEO strategy on the platform to achieve good positioning and reach the maximum number of users possible.
Crafting Your TikTok SEO Strategy
TikTok SEO isn't much different from SEO for search engines like Google, as keywords also play a significant role.
To execute a good SEO strategy on TikTok, you should begin by understanding your audience. This involves understanding the user profiles that interact with your content, what interests them, what they're searching for, and what they expect to see on TikTok. Once you've established this, it's time to move on to keyword research, a fundamental part of any strategy aiming for good positioning. For this phase, tools like Google Ads, Ubersuggest, SEMrush, Keyword Planner, or Ahrefs can be used, among many others.
Exercise caution because these tools rely on Google data, so it's important to also use TikTok itself to understand what users are searching for within the social network. Simply open the TikTok search bar and enter the keywords you obtained during research. This will yield keyword options and that are popular on the platform.
Once you've chosen your keywords for TikTok, incorporate them into your content. Titles, descriptions, and video subtitles should all be used for this. If a video contains audio, pronouncing some of the most relevant keywords can also help with positioning, as TikTok's algorithm values this. Remember, just as with written content, keywords should be integrated naturally, without overdoing it or forcing them.
All content published on TikTok can be promoted on other social networks or even on your brand's blog or website (if you have one). This helps promote your channel and content, potentially generating more traffic and increasing both visibility and reach. In fact, if your goal is to improve positioning, creating written content related to your TikTok posts can be a great way to redirect users to the platform.
Finally, always conduct an analysis of your SEO positioning strategy to determine its effectiveness and whether the expected results are being achieved. If not, see how you can adjust and adapt your strategy. Analyzing what the competition is doing and the strategies they are following can also provide insights into ways to improve.
Factors to Consider
In addition to the SEO work, several other factors need to be considered for TikTok positioning, as this social network has its own algorithm.
One of the most important factors is user interactions with published content. TikTok highly values how the audience interacts with videos. These interactions include likes, comments, shares, saves, favorites, followers, views, etc.
Another factor TikTok considers when displaying and suggesting a video is the information added about it. Its algorithm primarily analyzes the title, description, tags, music and sounds, and effects and filters. This underscores the importance of including keywords, albeit naturally.
Lastly, account and device settings are also factors that can aid in TikTok SEO ranking. Although they are less significant than user interactions and video information, they can still be helpful. They include things like language preferences, location, and device type.
Benefits of TikTok SEO
Implementing a good SEO strategy on TikTok has numerous benefits, especially considering that social media has become one of the most important sales channels in recent years.
Through TikTok SEO, you can achieve increased visibility and reach. Your content can be optimized to appear in the top search results and on homepages as suggested or recommended, which results in higher view counts. This can lead to organic follower growth, as increased visibility and reach attract new audiences.
It's worth noting that techniques like hashtag usage, tags, and complete descriptions can improve positioning among TikTok's internal search results.
Another benefit is that using keywords in titles, descriptions, audio, and subtitles increases user interest in your content. This is mainly because it becomes more appealing and eye-catching to the audience, as well as to TikTok, which understands the video's content.
Through TikTok, you can also achieve an increase in your web traffic your other social media profiles. When the audience likes the content, they tend to seek more information or data about the brand behind it. If this is one of the main goals of your TikTok strategy, include a link to where you want traffic to be directed.
Finally, thanks to TikTok SEO, you can get more data about what content and strategies work best for your target audience. You can discern this by analyzing impressions, reach, engagement levels, and other metrics, which help determine whether changes are needed or not.
Tips to Improve Video Reach
If, despite implementing a good SEO strategy, your videos aren't getting the reach you expected, certain practices can help. Let's take a look:
- Videos must be high-quality. Even if your content is interesting, entertaining, and attractive, low-quality video or bad audio will not yield great results. Lighting, sound, and the entire editing process should be carefully managed to ensure good quality.
- Consistent posting is key. TikTok highly values accounts that regularly and consistently post content. Moreover, audiences become more engaged with profiles that consistently offer new content.
- Leveraging challenges and trends. Participating in challenges and trends or creating them is a good way to increase video visibility and reach, as well as using filters, audio, or other trending elements.
- Interact with your audience. Responding to followers' messages and communicating is important for building a committed and loyal community.
- Try out different formats and styles. Experimenting with different formats and styles can be a good idea even if the current one is performing well. You can always revert and recover what was working.
- Collaborating with other creators to reach a new audience and attract new followers. Just keep in mind that collaborations should always be done with a content creator who shares the same brand values or is at least compatible.
In conclusion, when following a coherent and consistent SEO strategy on TikTok or any other social network, you'll likely see an improvement in video and content reach. If not, it's a good idea to review your strategy and seek out areas that may need improvement.
