How Luxury Brands Should Be Optimizing For SEO on TikTok
TikTok, the beloved app for starting globally adopted trends and memes and offering extraordinarily niche content that caters to just about everybody’s interests, has quickly become one of the most prevalent social media apps of today.
The famous FYP (For You Page) brings curated yet often surprising content to everybody’s feed without users having to look for it. Because the quality and quantity of content on TikTok have continued to rise exponentially over the years, the people behind the app quickly realized just how important the power of search was to their users.
In the same way that consumers use search engines like Google and YouTube to find the answers to their questions, learn, and discover products, services, and experiences, they do the same on TikTok. TikTok search is most popular among younger generations, with a staggering 64% of Gen-Z consumers and 49% of millennials using TikTok as their search tool. With both of these generations set to represent 70% of luxury spending by 2025, it’s no wonder that brands are battling for their attention on the social app.
Can You Optimize for SEO on TikTok?
Yes! Just like you can optimize your web content for SEO on Google and other search engines, you can optimize your TikTok content for better discoverability on the platform.
This means applying a specific TikTok SEO strategy. Find out what your target audience is searching for on TikTok, create content just for them, and ensure that you include specific keywords that they’re likely using in their TikTok searches so that your content shows up on the results page.
Why Should You Optimize TikTok for Organic Search?
Because TikTok is a search engine and wants to provide the best possible user experience, it has algorithms that match searches with the most relevant and useful content.
Knowing this, marketers can optimize their content for the algorithms to improve their chances of being picked up by the algorithms. So, for example, rather than just posting a video with no text, caption, or hashtags and hoping that it “finds the right side of TikTok” as TikTokers like to say, you can help the search algorithms out by flagging your content as being about a certain genre, industry, or topic.
But, in the same way that you wouldn’t create web content specifically for search engines or Google, you don’t want to create TikTok content just for TikTok. Instead, create content that is aimed at the consumer, to be as entertaining, educational, inspirational — or whatever it is that you’re trying to achieve — as possible. Then, you optimize it for TikTok SEO. Doing this can help your content organically reach the right audience.
Plus, TikTok recently introduced the TikTok Search Ads feature that allows brands to serve paid ads in TikTok search results. This gives brands the ability to extend the reach of their ads even further — if they fit in with the rest of your audience’s search results.
TikTok SEO Best Practices
Want your content to reach the right audience? Here’s how.
KNOW YOUR AUDIENCE
If you want to find them, you need to know them. That means you need to immerse yourself in their world on TikTok, paying attention to the users and influencers they’re following and the wider trends they see on their FYP. Being in their world helps you speak their language. This is especially important on TikTok, where people are known to coin their own words, terms, and phrases.
Once you’re familiar with your niche on TikTok, you can understand what content your brand should be producing and begin participating in trends.
A good example is how Chanel store assistants are seen supporting (and even dancing along with) TikTok influencer Kristy Sarah as she skates, dances, and cartwheels across their store to try out the latest Chanel skates. The video has since had 2.1 million likes with commentators praising Chanel for their top-tier customer service.
UTILIZE TRENDS
Trends come and go quickly on TikTok, so trying to stay on top of them is important. Once you see a trend that could apply to your luxury brand, you’ll want to create and publish your content quickly to capitalize on the moment.
Trends can apply to trending sounds, songs, filters, styles, challenges, etc. Aside from staying active on your FYP to see what comes up, TikTok has a useful feature called the Creative Center, which allows you to browse what’s trending in specific countries. It can show you which TikTok Creators are getting traction at that time and even offers the AI-driven TikTok Creative Assistant to help you generate content ideas.
INCLUDE KEYWORDS
Including keywords is a must. It’s the easiest way for the TikTok search algorithms to understand what your content is about and then be able to suggest it in search results. For the best results, these keywords should be present in your video titles, hashtags, on-screen captions, and spoken audio.
Of course, the keywords should also be relevant to the content in your video. Don’t try to “hack” or “trick” the algorithm — it might do more harm than good to your organic reach.
You could even create your content around the keywords you’d like to target. TikTok even offers its own handy Keyword Insights tool, allowing you to carry out your keyword research.
CREATE ENGAGING CONTENT
The most important thing for performing well on TikTok is the quality of your content. We’re not saying it has to be produced on a cinematic level — far from it. But it does need to grab (and keep) the scrollers’ attention. Better yet, if you can get viewers to directly engage with the video by liking, commenting, saving, or sharing, it’s likely to reach a much larger audience.
2-WAY ENGAGEMENT
Once you post your TikTok content, it’s a bad idea to forget about it. Engaging with your viewers in the comment section builds on top of the content. In fact, many users say their favorite thing about TikTok is the comment section. TikTok’s algorithms will reward you for this level of engagement. Plus, seeing that your brand is active in the comments encourages other viewers to comment and join in the conversation.
Measuring Impact
To make sure that your TikTok SEO strategy is on track, you’ll want to implement some tracking measures. Here are a few metrics to watch.
IDENTIFY KEY KPIs
This applies to your overall content strategy, as well as each individual piece of TikTok content. You’ll want to determine your goals for your TikTok page and work out the specific actions you want users to take on each piece of content, whether that’s liking, commenting, sharing, clicking links, making a purchase, etc.
AUDIENCE ANALYSIS
You can find more information about your TikTok audience by clicking “more insights” at the bottom of your video or carousel and then clicking “viewers” at the top right of the screen. Here, you’ll learn about new vs. returning followers, followers vs. non-followers, gender, age, regions, and more.
Navigating to the performance tab on the left of this screen will reveal more info on how your viewers engage with your content, including total play time, average watch time, new followers, a trended view of video views, top words used in comments, and engagement metrics.
KEYWORD PERFORMANCE ON TIKTOK
While there aren’t keyword tools that can let you analyze keyword rankings on TikTok, you can search the target keywords and determine your content placement. However, just like Google, these search results can be skewed based on past user activity, so take these results with a pinch of salt.
TIKTOK ANALYTICS THROUGH BUSINESS SUITE
The TikTok Business Suite displays your brand's overall performance. Here, brands can view performance metrics, measure engagement with their page, and analyze audience demographic data. These insights and learnings can be applied to future content strategy planning for continued growth and performance.
Make the Most of Your Organic Video Content on TikTok
As one of the fastest-growing search engines among key consumer demographics of luxury brands, TikTok SEO needs to be part of your marketing strategy. Enlist the help of the luxury marketing specialists at Block & Tam to keep up with the ever-evolving algorithms, trends, and audiences of TikTok.
