TikTok SEO Guide: Understanding How the Algorithm Works

What is TikTok SEO?

SEO on TikTok is the social network’s functionality integrating a keyword search engine. Each user can, therefore, perform a search from the interface to obtain an answer.
SEO on TikTok can also be translated into all the optimizations that can help a video to position itself better in the TikTok search engine.

Why work on your SEO strategy on TikTok?

There are plenty of reasons to start getting involved in TikTok SEO as early as possible, as an SEO Agency ., it is necessary to be interested in new search marketing channels, especially when the one we are going to deal with today has an audience that is impossible to neglect.

TikTok has 1.58 billion monthly users on its app, a staggering figure that continues to grow, with over 64% of Generation Z indicating they prefer TikTok to Google for searching, and 49% for the generation called “millennials.”

In other words, most under 25/30 year-olds prefer TikTok to Google as a search engine, and the future is them; this is a good reason to start thinking about your SEO strategy on TikTok now.

I would add as a bonus that improving your presence on social networks like TikTok is an element of insurance in the eyes of Google with the increasingly strong promotion of EEAT. Recent updates have shown us that the most identified brands are taking an increasingly important place on the SERPS.

What are the SEO factors on TikTok?

The SEO factors on TikTok are multiple, and the social network communicates very little about them. Nevertheless, some elements are verifiable with the analysis of the performance of the platform’s videos, and here are those that are reliable:

User interaction

This is about the behavior of TikTok users with the content submitted to them, the recording of a video, the like, the comment, the watch time, the rewatch rate and the interactions with the sharing buttons, all these are elements taken into account by TikTok to determine if a content generates interest in the user.

Information provided by the videos

In the recoverable information, we can find a multitude of things, such as:

• Video description
• The hashtags used
• The sound used
• Written transcription of the audio

Device and account settings

Less of a priority than the 2 criteria presented previously, the different parameters of the devices and accounts are also taken into account. Namely the location, the type of smartphone used, the interests of the TikTok account, etc.

What factors does TikTok not consider?

TikTok does not take into account your number of subscribers as a scoring element to choose whether or not to promote your content, in fact this makes this social network the one for which growth is the fastest and accessible to everyone.

Also, having had content that performed well in the past is not something that the algorithm takes into account. You will get traction from subscribers acquired through past performance, who are already “won over” by your content, but content is still king regardless of your past stats.

How does the algorithm work on TikTok?

Deciphering how TikTok’s algorithm works is complex, because as previously stated, TikTok communicates very little on the subject, nevertheless here are some elements that have been deciphered:

At the time of publication, an algorithm will analyze your content to classify it in the category that corresponds to it.

Next, a NLP (text-based search intent understanding) algorithm will transcribe the video’s audio to understand its content and meaning. This step will allow it to identify your video’s subject and which segment to broadcast it.

Once this step is completed, TikTok broadcasts your content to a small audience interested in a type of content similar to what the algorithm will have determined for yours.

After broadcasting to this audience, TikTok initiates a scoring system to evaluate the popularity of your video.

The point-scoring system

As explained, after analyzing your video, TikTok will broadcast it to a small segment of users who have shown interest in content similar to yours and it will evaluate it based on a scoring with these criteria:

• Video Rewatch Rate: 10 points
• Video completion rate: 8 points
• Shares: 6 points
• Comments: 4 points
• Likes: 2 points

After setting the score, the video will be classified as a “pass” or a “fail”.

Suppose the established score is judged as good. In that case, the video is broadcast to a wider audience, and from here the cycle repeats itself until reaching a glass ceiling and reaching a score judged as bad, which will gradually slow down its diffusion.

Here’s how to optimize your SEO on TikTok in 8 steps

To manipulate this algorithm and develop a community on TikTok, there are a number of basic guidelines to follow to popularize your content.

Identify and understand your audience

It is imperative to know who you want to address. Create a typical persona of your target, and learn it by heart. What type of content does your persona expect? Are they sensitive to trends? What is their average age? Their gender? What are their interests? What type of humor is they sensitive to? What is their level of maturity? Etc. etc.

You need to know as much as possible about them so that you can create content that may interest them. To learn more about your TikTok audience, you can use TikTok ads’ audience insight tool to help you.

Choose the most relevant keywords

Similar to a traditional SEO strategy, it is crucial to define the keywords that your audience uses and link them to your brand to maximize your chances of appearing at the top of the results. To do this, simply go to the TikTok search bar and enter the key terms already identified to bring up all those associated with this search. Finally, it is important to analyze the proposed results and select those most relevant to your brand’s content and most likely to reach your target.

Unfortunately, TikTok has not developed advertising on its search engine, so it does not provide information on the search volume by keywords. The only information available that can be treated as such is the number of views per hashtag, but TikTok Ads only provides them for English hashtags and in reduced quantity.

Our comparative study on the subject has nevertheless demonstrated that there is a correlation between the search volume of keywords on Google and the average number of views per popular video on a theme.

Integrate your keywords into your content

Once your target keywords have been identified, placing them in different strategic places in your video is important. In the description, hashtags, thumbnails, and even orally. Indeed, the NLP algorithm will transcribe your audio and extract the text, if in its extraction it extracts your target keywords, this will only increase your legitimacy to position yourself on this keyword.

Use consistent hashtags

Hashtags are also a key part of TikTok SEO. Using longer, more specific keywords will help your brand attract more qualified users, who may be more likely to leave comments and improve your video’s performance.
High-volume keywords can also increase your video’s visibility but may generate fewer conversions. You can also create a custom hashtag using your brand name.

Again here you can navigate TikTok’s search engine to find relevant and popular hashtags to incorporate into your video.

Publish regularly

As with most social networks, regularity is one of the main keys. Make an editorial schedule with a list of content to publish; you can couple this schedule with a chestnut tree to compensate for the lack of inspiration or even more with hot news by doing newsjacking. Even if your content does not all perform it does not matter, as mentioned earlier in the article, TikTok does not take into account your number of subscribers as a key factor to highlight your video. Each content can perform independently of the others.

Mesh your videos together

On TikTok, many creators make content in several parts, each one interwoven with a cliffhanger (hook that makes you want to see the rest) at the end of the video. This kind of strategy works very well and allows your account to multiply its number of views and even generate subscriptions by publishing the different parts over several days spread out over time.

Using Hooks at the beginning of the video

You probably know this, but the crux of the matter for creators is to capture viewers’ attention. And with all the plethora of short content available today on different platforms, attention span has greatly diminished.

In fact, it is imperative to have a good hook at the beginning of your video. A hook lasts between 1 and 3 seconds teases the content of your video and makes you want to watch it in its entirety.

Here are some hooks that have already proven themselves:

• You won’t believe…
• I have been working on this project for… years.
• I shouldn’t share this tip with you but…
• This video will be deleted in 24 hours
• You make this mistake every day and…

Track your performance

As with any marketing strategy, it is necessary to track its performance. TikTok provides several very interesting insights such as:

• Total playback time of a video
• Average viewing time
• Video Traffic Sources
• Search terms that led to the video
• The number of followers gained per video
• The gender of viewers
• The age of the viewers
• The location of viewers
• Recurring keywords in comments
• …

Analyzing this data will allow you to define which content works and which doesn’t to understand your audience so you can then create content that appeals to them.

Comparative study of Google search vs TikTok search

Our comparative micro-study of SEO on Google and SEO on TikTok has brought up several interesting data. To carry out this study, we considered around twenty criteria such as search intent , content/page typology, site/account typology, suggestion, title/video title, number of views/comments/recordings, publication date, authority score, etc.

So here are some elements of comparison:

In addition to the elements of this comparison, our analysis highlights other key and non-key indicators to appear in the first results of its query on TikTok:

• The theme/consistency of the account with the target keyword is a recurring element
• The number of subscribers does not affect the ability to position oneself
• (Very) recent content is not highlighted much
• Independent content creator accounts are the most highlighted
• TikTok’s “suggests” don’t have the same semantic coherence as Google’s

It is good to remember that the big difference between TikTok search and Google search comes from the fact that TikTok has a dynamic personalized search that fluctuates according to the user’s consumption habits. In fact, if you perform several searches around the same subject in a short period and you interact several times with the content of the same account, the social network will modify your search results. Therefore, there are almost as many SERPs as users on the platform.

However, looking at the different SERPs, most of the time some videos are common to users in the top 3 (but not always in the same order).

In conclusion, TikTok search is today far from being able to be compared to Google (we expected it anyway), it remains today a rather black box where it is complicated to understand all the mechanisms, but it is certain that by following the advice in this article you will put all the chances on your side to be correctly referenced there.

There really is an audience that does the majority of its research via this channel, if we currently lack precise data, improving your visibility on TikTok (and more generally on social networks) seems to me to be essential when you want to develop a solid and lasting brand, and a major reinforcement to establish your authority in the eyes of Google.