The best TikTok SEO strategy and tips (beginners start here!)
– So recently, a senior
vice president at Google let slip at a conference in Aspen, ooh, that 40% of Gen-Zs aren't
searching in Google. They're starting their searches
for restaurants or products or what have you in TikTok and Instagram. Bad news for Google. So what have they been doing about this? Well, in 2022, they started
showing TikToks and Instagram in their search results, which is excellent news for TikTok creators who want more views. So what should you do about this? Well, we teamed up with our
SEO team here at Hootsuite to create a full fledged
TikTok SEO strategy that you can start using today. (upbeat music) Hi, I'm Dimitri Popovic from
Hootsuite social media team, and this is Hootsuite Labs,
where we teach you the science of social media marketing, how it works, and how to be successful. First, what is TikTok SEO anyway? TikTok SEO means optimizing
your TikTok account and content for search and discovery. There are a few things that
you can start doing today to help your TikTok show up when people are searching on TikTok, and now also, when people
search on Google too.
The obvious benefit is more views from people who are actively
seeking your content and not just that first spike of views, but long running evergreen content that gets more popular
over time, not less. And the third benefit is that you never have to rack your brain for post ideas again, eureka. Just do a little keyword
research to find out what people are searching
for in your niche and then, boom, give the
people what they want. Having a real SEO strategy
means that you can say goodbye to slapping a few hashtags on your content before you hit post. Instead, the keywords come first. In fact, the keywords inspire
the content that you make. The more people searching
for the word or phrase, AKA search volume, the more
views you can potentially get.
Step one, do your keyword research. Researching which
keywords or topics to use in your TikTok content
is a relatively new game. Blog writers do it,
YouTube creators do it. And now it's time for
Instagram and TikTok creators to tap into this potential too. The good news is that
this is such a new tactic that the competition is like. The bad news is that TikTok, SEO is so new that there are no
dedicated third party tools to help you, yet. You can try Semrush or Google Trends to see what people are
looking for on Google, but to see what people are
searching for on TikTok? The best thing to do
is pick up your phone, head over to TikTok,
and tap the search icon. Then go ahead and enter one
of your main go-to keywords and TikTok will populate
other search phrases that people have been using.
So if I type in houseplant,
TikTok will come up with a bunch of suggestions,
which will show you what people have been
already searching for. And to get more keyword ideas, go ahead and type houseplant A, houseplant aesthetic comes
up, houseplant addiction. Type B, houseplant
benefits, houseplant bugs. Once you found a bunch of keywords that you think you can make content about, you wanna go ahead and
check what's already ranking for each keyword. If you're looking at these TikToks and they're old, not exactly
answering the question or you think you can
make something better, then that is a perfect
keyword for you to go after. On to step two. Step two, make TikToks
about the best keywords. Once you have a handful of keywords that you think you can make content for, go ahead and make it. The one key tip for this step is to say out loud in your video,
your target keyword, and also add them as text
somewhere in your video.
(laughs) I love using my own natural
house plant bug spray and you can make it at home. Wow, I had no idea, five house plant benefits
that'll change your life. My number one house plant care tip, never let them sit in water. Pro tip, batch film
your TikToks all at once and schedule them out over time. You can use a TikTok
scheduler like Hootsuite to save a bunch of time. Step three, add your keywords
to the caption and hashtags. When you're posting or
scheduling your TikToks, you wanna make sure your keyword
show up in the caption two. Yes, we mean the
transcription of your speech, but also the descriptive
text that a accompanies the video too. It's a crucial step, arguably
more crucial than hashtags, but you'll wanna add those too. Why are we so skeptical
of hashtags on TikTok? Because of this experiment we did on Instagram reels hashtags where it turned out that
they do not matter at all.
Watch here. (downbeat music) Step number four, embed your TikTok in a micro blog on your website. This is a slightly more intense step that will help your
TikTok show up on Google, not just TikTok. It can also help you if
you have an SEO strategy for your website too. The idea is to create a micro blog that targets each keyword. Embedding your TikTok in a micro blog is a short form equivalent of
embedding your YouTube video in a 3000 word blog post. And trust me, that is also a thing. It's just way, way more work. Step number five, check your rankings. You'll regularly wanna
check your analytics to see how many of your
views are coming from search as opposed to for the for
you page or your followers.
You'll also wanna put aside
time to do a spot check on the rankings and see if
you've got into the top spots for any of your target keywords. Last but certainly not
least, step number six, use your keywords in
your TikTok profile too. I almost forgot, do yourself
a favor and spend five minutes adding your most relevant target keywords to your user profile too. It'll help your whole
account show up in search.
Easy win. All right, well that's all
the time we have for today. Want some more SEO tips, more TikTok tips, more experiments? (laughs) let us know all of
your questions right below. Bye for now, friends. (laughs) (upbeat music).
