For Gen Zs, TikTok isn’t only a social feed.
It’s a search engine:
- Almost 1 in 10 Gen Zers usually tend to depend on TikTok than Google as a search engine. (Adobe)
- 62% of the 18 to 24 demographic search on TikTok, with Google coming in at third place (Forbes)
- One in all Google’s executives admitted that just about 40% of younger folks search on TikTok or Instagram as an alternative of Google Maps/Search when on the lookout for a spot for lunch. (TechCrunch)
To study extra about TikTok search engine marketing, I hopped on a name with Charlotte Ang, the co-founder of Visitors Bees, a digital advertising and marketing company based mostly in Singapore that additionally owns PickleGO, a pickleball tools retailer that she grew primarily through TikTok.
She was additionally a speaker at Ahrefs Evolve:
Throughout our interview, I made a decision to problem her. I requested:
Think about that you just’ll win $1M for those who may efficiently train somebody from scratch to rank excessive for his or her goal key phrases in TikTok in simply 4 weeks. What would the week-by-week plan be?
That is her four-week plan.
The primary week is the busiest week. It’s an important week the place you prepare, determine what to publish, and file your content material.
Get a devoted individual to run the channel
In keeping with Charlotte, that individual wants these qualities:
- Thick pores and skin: Charlotte has examined faceless movies however they didn’t work out. So, you’ll want a face on your movies. However that individual shouldn’t be simply bristled by on-line feedback and ought to be completely satisfied to be on digital camera. When you have the price range, you possibly can bypass this by hiring skills.
- Constant: To succeed on TikTok, it’s essential publish no less than as soon as a day. However anticipate there to be no leads to the early days.
- Strategic: It’s not nearly posting randomly and grabbing onto each single development. There’s a technique to the insanity. The individual ought to know what to focus on, what content material to create, and what to prioritize.
- Is aware of video enhancing: They need to be conversant in the type of short-form video enhancing. Fast cuts, velocity speaking, and extra.
Probably the most ideally suited individual is a Gen Z themselves. Is smart: they had been born into TikTok and moulded by it.
However as Charlotte found, you don’t have to be one. You simply must know their language and habits.
Within the early days, Charlotte approached TikTok like a millennial: polished, structured, and cautious. However TikTok isn’t YouTube or Instagram. So, her movies flopped.
There’s a particular kind of humor on TikTok. And other people don’t need a pretend actuality—they wish to peek on the behind-the-scenes and see one thing genuine.
So, Charlotte re-trained her instincts and discovered how one can converse the platform’s language via her interns, different creators, and observing developments. She stopped making an attempt to “make advertisements” and began making TikToks.
Begin account farming
Use your account and begin trying to find and scrolling via movies in your area of interest. It is best to like and touch upon these movies.
The purpose right here is to ‘tune’ the algorithm to align together with your area of interest and let TikTok know you’re lively on the platform.
Goal long-tail key phrases
Since there are solely 4 weeks to rank, you don’t wish to compete with hundreds of movies making an attempt to rank for broad phrases like “pickleball”. You’d wish to go for a key phrase like “2 bounce rule pickleball”, one which fewer individuals are creating content material round and the next probability your video will present up when somebody searches for it.
How do you discover these long-tail key phrases?
Charlotte begins her key phrase analysis course of by coming into her area of interest (“pickeball”) into Ahrefs’ Key phrases Explorer. She then navigates to the Matching phrases report and clicks on the Clusters by Guardian Matters tab:
This offers her a route on the overarching matters to create content material for.
She then enters these matters into TikTok’s search bar and see what matters pops up within the autocomplete:
She additionally scrolls and checks the Others looked for ideas:
Plan 80% FYP, 20% search-based content material
In case your account is new and with out authority, your content material is unlikely to rank for the key phrases you wish to goal. So, the technique right here is to do an 80/20:
- 80% of your content material ought to intention to land on the For You Web page (FYP)
- 20% of your content material ought to be searched-based
The FYP is a customized suggestion feed that reveals customers movies based mostly on what TikTok’s algorithm thinks you’ll take pleasure in, whether or not it’s to a follower or non-follower. The FYP issues as a result of it’s the place discovery occurs.
Even you probably have zero followers, your video can go viral if the algorithm pushes it onto the precise FYPs. That’s why creators usually speak about “making content material for the FYP”.
It means creating movies that are:
- Hooky and interesting within the first 2–3 seconds
- Quick-paced and visually attention-grabbing
- Typically tied to developments, sounds, or relatable moments
In case you’re a model, content material concepts additionally embrace model updates, behind-the-scenes, tales in regards to the founder, and extra. For instance, a preferred format immediately is seeing the workers behind the model.
However goes viral helpful?
Whereas Charlotte can’t verify if going viral helps with rankings, going viral helps with viewers progress. Viral movies usually result in a spike in followers, supplying you with a much bigger base to talk to in future.
Right here is how the flywheel works on TikTok:
- You publish a video.
- TikTok reveals it to a small group (some followers + random customers).
- If it performs effectively (excessive watch time, excessive engagement), it will get proven to a bigger group (non followers).
- The cycle repeats, and that’s how virality builds.
- In case your viewers is loyal and commonly engages, they assist kickstart this loop.
To go viral, strive remixing a video or audio that’s at the moment making the rounds. For instance, FIFA remixed the audio from Zhen Zhen, a viral Singaporean TikToker.
Speak about essentially the most random of worlds colliding.
Charlotte estimates that the golden interval for traction is the primary two to 3 weeks of a viral video.
How have you learnt which movies are trending? Take note of what retains displaying up. Use TikTok’s instruments and your individual FYP to identify them early, after which put your individual spin on it quick.
For instance, look out for movies with the identical format, sound, or enhancing type again and again. In case you see the identical concept or sound 3+ occasions in a session, it’s in all probability trending!
As for search-based movies, they’re sometimes longer, extra text-heavy movies, and geared for training.
When your account grows and will get extra traction, you possibly can modify the ratio and begin doing extra search-based content material, e.g., 30-40%.
Movie and edit your content material
Most of your time shall be spent on filming and enhancing. For instance, Charlotte’s staff takes round two hours to movie and as much as 10 hours to edit for 4 to 5 movies. So, you’d wish to get began as quickly as potential.
Be sure to embrace a hook within the first three seconds of all of your movies. Consider your hook because the ‘headline’—it ought to be catchy and seize consideration.
For instance, one in every of PickleGO’s movies has this hook: “Learn how to hit a tweener so that you generally is a winner.” Easy rhyme, but it surely works.
She additionally says that your hook must have a face. So, no faceless, AI robotic voices.
How does Charlotte and her staff give you hooks? To nobody’s shock, they use ChatGPT.
Each TikTok video has a thumbnail: their job is to catch your consideration and get you to watch.
These needed to be particularly constructed into the video initially, however TikTok lately made a function the place you possibly can add a thumbnail (identical to YouTube.)
What about video enhancing? Listed below are the strategies Charlotte’s staff applied:
- Make sure that one thing is going on each three seconds, be it a minimize, zoom, or sounds results
- Lower out any pauses and filler phrases (“um”, “uh”)
- Make the most of extra zooms and transitions
- Add sound results the place potential (whether or not it’s a ding, a whoosh, a splash. ANYTHING!)
- Make use of textual content on display to spotlight necessary piece of data in your video
- Add captions to your movies (as a result of some folks watch with out audio)
If you wish to know instruments, Charlotte’s staff makes use of CapCut. For longer movies, Adobe Premiere Professional.
You’re getting ready all the pieces in week one. By week two, you need to be publishing. Not less than one video a day.
Identical to common search engine marketing, ensure you’re optimizing the on-feed search engine marketing of your movies. Suggestions from Charlotte:
- Captions: At all times activate captions and edit them (throughout the app) so that they’re correct.
- Video descriptions: Embrace three associated key phrases you wish to rank for and summarise the video (most 500 characters)
- Hashtags: Have a mean of three to seven hashtags and keep away from key phrase spamming.
As your movies begin to get engagement, reply to the feedback utilizing your goal key phrases:
By the top of week two, it’s best to see some outcomes.
Crucial metric is your retention price. Are folks staying to observe or are they abandoning your movies? The drop-off price sometimes begins at 5 seconds, which is why your hook is so necessary.
Retention price of a video with a hook
Retention price of a video with a hook
Retention price of a video with no hook
Retention price of a video with no hook
Proceed posting, taking a look at your analytics, and determining what’s working and what’s not.
To know whether or not your search based mostly movies are doing effectively, go to Search analytics beneath Creator Search Insights. That is just like our good outdated Google Search Console.
Below “Search analytics”, search for “Search views” beneath “Your impressed posts”.
Listed below are your prime considered movies introduced in from search. Get inspirations on what kind of movies will do effectively by taking a look at “Search phrases”.
You’d additionally wish to proceed account farming—it’s social media, in spite of everything. Carry on liking, commenting, and interesting with different movies in your area of interest.
you’re growing authority when your For You web page is generally about your area of interest, in addition to the suggestions you see on Creator Search Insights.
For the search-based movies you’ve printed and it’s not rating, a tactic Charlotte suggests testing is altering the captions or hashtags on these movies.
Last ideas
You possibly can accomplish rather a lot in 4 weeks. However like conventional search engine marketing, rating is a long-term sport.
In the end, TikTok is all about consistency. So, carry on posting. Journey some developments and have enjoyable. Educate folks how one can do issues in your area of interest. And proceed tweaking your movies to get the most effective outcomes out of the platform.
