TikTok keyword research and search optimisation

While TikTok is a social media platform, many users are now using it like a search engine. People are turning to TikTok to find answers, discover places, and solve problems. That’s why you should treat TikTok similarly to how you would approach Google.

TikTok SEO involves:

• Keyword research: Finding high-traffic and low competition keywords that users are searching for, then incorporating them into your video captions, titles, and on-screen text.
• Content alignment: Tailoring your video’s content, format, and style to match what users are searching for and engaging with.
• Performance tracking: Monitoring how your videos perform in search results, then refining your content based on viewer behaviour and engagement.

By optimising for TikTok’s search features, you can increase the chances of your content being discovered by a targeted and more engaging audience.

Here is how!

How to Find Keywords for TikTok

Currently, TikTok doesn’t offer in-app tools to simplify the keyword research process and there aren't any third-party tools specifically designed for this on the market. Luckily for you, this is what we are developing at ShortFormData. Make sure to check us out!

But don’t worry - we’ve also got you covered with a DIY approach that can get you started. Here is how to research keywords for TikTok SEO in few simple steps:

1. Use the TikTok Search Bar

The first step to find relevant keywords is to start with the TikTok search bar.

• Open the app and type a root keyword or topic into the search bar
• Take note of the autocomplete suggestions that appear
• For deeper insights, try adding a letter after your root keyword and work through the alphabet to see additional suggestions

For example, these are the keywords that appear when searching for “Korean Skincare”.

2. Use TikTok Search Results

Next, you want to select a few relevant keywords and see what content TikTok associates to them. This step is very important because the videos you are going to see next are those that are ranking for these keywords, and the ones you’d like your video to replace.

• Click on one of the relevant keywords that appeared in the previous step
• Click on the first video
• Watch the video and take notes of the title, description, hashtags, on-video captions, text stickers, audio
• Repeat the process for all the top videos
• Before moving to the next step, make sure to also check the hashtags related to this keyword

For example, these are the top ranking videos for the keyword “Korean Skincare Beginner”.

3. Use TikTok Suggested Searches

While scrolling down to check out the top performing videos, you don’t want to miss out on the additional keyword suggestions TikTok provides.

• Scroll down the ranking videos and stop when you see the “Other Searched For” section
• Write down these additional keywords as these indicate what other related topics users searched for

By following these simple steps you will be able to create a pool of hundreds of keywords to optimise your next video for.

Once you have found a large pool of relevant keywords for your niche, you need to conduct some analysis to select which keywords present the best opportunity for you to rank in the search results.

TikTok Keywords Analytics

Now that you have found a lot of keywords that are relevant for your content you need to conduct some analysis to find those keywords that have high search volume and low competition.

Again TikTok does not provide an in-app way of doing this, but there are two possible work-arounds.

1. TikTok Creative Center

TikTok’s Creative Center offers a Keyword Insights tool that provides data on keyword popularity, and while the data is currently limited, it can still be worth looking at it.

• After searching for a keyword, you’ll see related terms ranked by popularity. Popularity here refers to the number of Ad Creatives that are currently using this keyword and not how many users have searched the keyword.
• Focus on keywords with high CTR (click-through rate) by sorting the table by this metric. It gives you a better sense of what’s actually driving user engagement on the platform.

Please note that this data is based on Ad Creatives that are currently running on TikTok and not on actual user search data. We don’t believe this to be particularly helpful for your keywords analytics efforts, but it is still worth to look at.

2. Manual Analysis

The second work-around is to manually analyse the top videos ranking for the relevant keywords and find signals that can be used as proxies for competitiveness and keyword popularity. For example:

• Competitiveness can be estimated based on the quality, publication date and engagement rate of the top ranking videos
• Keyword popularity can be estimated by looking at the comment section of the top ranking videos

Suppose the top search results for the keyword “Korean Skincare Beginner” are low quality videos published a few months ago, with few likes but lots of recent comments asking for more information. This could indicate a topic in high demand with low content supply (i.e. low competition, high popularity) which is exactly the content gap you should be looking to fill.

While these signals are not exhaustive and are up for interpretation, they can provide a good indication of the direction you should take with your content strategy.

Conducting proper keyword research and analysis by hand is a difficult and extremely time consuming task, but a necessary one to stay ahead of the competition and work with the TikTok algorithm. This is why at ShortFormData we are building a tool (based on real TikTok data) that can help you streamline all these daunting steps!

How to Use Keywords on TikTok

Lastly, once you have found the relevant keywords you want to target, you also need to know how to leverage them. To optimise your TikTok videos for SEO, you should incorporate the relevant keywords you’ve found four key places:

• Captions: Include your main keywords naturally in the video description. Aim for two or three relevant keywords to avoid keyword stuffing.
• Voiceovers: the algorithm can detect keywords in your voiceover, so saying them aloud in your video can improve your visibility.
• Text Overlays: Adding text overlays that reinforce your spoken words helps emphasise keywords. This not only makes your content more engaging but also increases keyword visibility for search. Pro tip: the algorithm can read everything you write on your videos, not only what is visible. Remember to hide some additional keywords in the background!
• Hashtags: While hashtags aren’t as dominant as they once were, they’re still a valuable place to include your target keywords. This signals to the TikTok algorithm what your content is about.
• Comment Section: Including keywords in the comment section when engaging with your audience will give you a small but noticeable SEO boost.

How to Track Your TikTok Search Success

To measure how well your SEO optimised content is performing, check your TikTok Analytics and looks specifically at the Traffic Sources and Search Queries sections.

• Under the "Traffic Sources" section, you can see where your views are coming from. Most users get most of their traffic from the For You feed, with a smaller percentage from Search.
• In the “Search Queries” section, you can see the actual search queries from users that led to your post.

Pay attention to how these numbers evolve over time and which videos attract the most search traffic. This will help you understand which keywords and content types resonate best with your target audience, allowing you to fine-tune your strategy.

For example, below you can see the analytics related to two different videos where only the second one was SEO optimised.

Conclusion

The concept of SEO optimisation on TikTok is still in its early stages, thus by getting involved right from the start you’ll be able to outrank the competition more easily.

Check out ShortFormData to get ahead of the game.