TikTok: The Newest Search Engine

TikTok is the platform that gave us bones or no bones. It has given a voice to a love of corn (it has the juice) and all the other gifts we've needed over the past few years. Now, TikTok is the newest big search engine on the block.

How can you improve SEO on TikTok? We have some tips to optimize your content on the fastest-growing social media platform.

What does this mean?

More and more people, especially younger generations are turning to social media to make searches for what to do, where to eat, where to go and how to do things.

Instead of Googling it, more people are making their searches and finding their answers on TikTok.

Does this mean you should forgo Google? Absolutely not. Google still gets 36,000 searches every second and is integrated with YouTube (another search engine giant).

It's not going anywhere.

This is about being everywhere that people are looking (the top places, anyway. We aren't recommending Tumblr, yet....).

What You Can Do to Improve SEO on TikTok

You've probably heard about this from a few places, but what do you do for TikTok search engine optimization?

We have a few recommendations for how to improve your SEO on TikTok.

Keywords on TikTok for SEO

There are three places on TikTok where you have the opportunity to use keywords that people are searching for. So make good use of them!

1. In-Video or On-Screen Text - Whether it's a title to kick off your video, a list written out to have text for what you're saying or other keywords sprinkled in, on-screen text is a great place to use keywords.

2. Your caption needs keywords - Have you noticed that captions are longer? No one really reads them tbh, but they are keyword rich to tell TikTok what the video is about. It's all about categorizing.

3. Hashtags for SEO - Speaking of categorizing, hashtags are KEY for defining your videos. Create a list of industry and brand-related hashtags, thinking of how people search, your location and anything else relevant to your video. If it's not in your video, don't hashtag it.

Be There and Be Positive (on TikTok)

Joy is making her high school proud with this one (iykyk). Be on TikTok and be positive on TikTok (unless it's totally in your brand voice to not be).

Maybe this should have been number one. It is number one in our hearts. You have to be on the platform. You have to create content, publish content, try new things. You have to find a strategy that works for your brand.

If you're not showing up in any capacity, SEO doesn't matter. You don't need to go viral. You don't need to jump on every trend. Be yourself and you will find your people.

And you'll need this to move into our last recommendation to improve your SEO on TikTok.

Encourage User-Generated Content

We've been talking about UGC, user-generated content over and over and over again.

While you need to have a website and information that you provide, we can't underestimate the value in user-generated content.

This is the direction social media is going. It's no longer as focused on celebrities and what they think and endorse. in 2022 everyone is a creator.

Potential customers don't care to see that you call yourself, "the best ______ in Lanark County." But if they can search TikTok and find videos of other people, other creators, talking about your business and saying it's the best, that's the kind of endorsement they need.

Here are a few ways you can do this:

1. Be unique, be a brand that creators want to talk (and TikTok) about

2. Ask questions. Be social and encourage interaction and responses from your community.

3. Answer questions from comments in a video. Even the negative comments, turn them into a positive.

If you can't drum up user-generated content, or don't have any yet, keep up videos of yourself.

No one can know the quality of what your business offers before they've tried it. Therefore they can't decide to visit based on knowledge of the product or service.

However, they can get to know you, your style, your humour, your 'vibe' (as the kids are saying these days).

If they feel they know you and feel that they have a connection with you, they will become more likely to spend their money with you as someone they trust and admire.

Follow these tips and you'll become easier to find on TikTok. Your content will become the videos that people are searching for.