TikTok SEO - Increase your visibility with Search-Optimised content

In recent years, TikTok has emerged as a dominant platform for short-form video content, attracting millions of users worldwide. But it didn’t stop there.

A recent survey by Adobe revealed that 41% of consumers across multiple generations now use TikTok as a search engine. TikTok has become the go-to platform for searching information, whether it’s about beauty, lifestyle, food, or home improvement. Even Google has taken notice and started featuring TikTok videos in its search engine results pages (SERPs) for relevant keywords.

This shift offers a unique opportunity to tap into SEO for TikTok right from its inception. The earlier you start optimising, the better positioned you'll be to reach the right audience.

While the key to success on TikTok remains creating authentic, high-quality content, SEO optimisation is playing an increasingly crucial role in helping you reach your target users by making your content searchable.

But how exactly can SEO be utilised in TikTok?

What is TikTok SEO?

TikTok SEO refers to the strategies used to optimise video content on TikTok, enabling it to rank higher in the platform’s search results and appear in the For You page (FYP) of your target users.

Just like search engines like Google, YouTube and Pinterest, TikTok has its own algorithm that determines which videos get more visibility. TikTok SEO focuses on making your content understandable by the algorithm through the use of keywords, hashtags and sounds. Once the algorithm understands what your content is about, it will push it to the relevant audience ensuring an increase in visibility, reach and engagement.

How Does TikTok's Algorithm Work?

You can think of the TikTok algorithm as a formula that controls where, to whom, and how widely your videos are shared throughout the platform.

While the precise parameters behind the TikTok algorithm remains a secret, there are a few known elements that are prioritised:

• Engagement rate: This refers to all the actions users can perform to interact with a video and includes likes, comments, shares and saves.
• Watch time: How long users spend on a specific post. Do they watch only a few seconds? Or till the end? Or even multiple times?
• Content information: This refers to all the meta-data attached to a video. You can think of this as the information the algorithm looks at in order to understand and categorise your video. This includes, but is not limited to:
  • Title, description and hashtags
  • Captions
  • Script
  • Audio and sounds
  • On-screen text (but also off-screen!) The most the algorithm can understand about your video, the easier for it to be placed in front of the right audience (both on their FYP and search results).
• Device settings: Factors like location, and language preference can also play a role, albeit a minor one.

While device settings is a metric that you cannot control, you can influence the other three by posting optimised, high-quality content. If you think about it these metrics are all connected:

• If your content is discovered by and shown to a highly-interested audience, the engagement rate and watch time will be higher
• Higher engagement rate and watch time signal that your content is relevant, valuable and worth showing to more users

Thus, ensuring that your content is discoverable your target audience is the key. And to make sure this happens, you need to make the algorithm understand what your video really is about.

This is where SEO comes into play.

Why is SEO Important for TikTok?

With millions of videos uploaded daily, standing out on TikTok and reaching your target audience can be challenging. SEO for TikTok is critical because it helps the algorithm understand your content, which is key for it to get discovered by the right audience.

If TikTok fully understands what your video is about it will push it to users who are interested in it. Interested users tend to engage more with the content they watch, which in turn signals to the algorithm to keep pushing your content to more users.

Therefore, effective TikTok SEO allows videos to:

• Rank higher in search results for relevant keywords
• Appear more frequently on the FYP of interested users
• Reach a larger, more targeted audience

By understanding how TikTok SEO works, you can significantly improve organic engagement and increase the visibility of your content. With proper SEO your content will be easily discoverable not only within the TikTok platform, but also from a simple Google search.

How to Do SEO for TikTok

In order to learn how to optimise your TikTok videos for SEO, you first need to understand where and how users can find content. TikTok’s discovery comprises of two elements: active search and passive discovery.

• Active search involves a user intentionally searching for content related to a keyword or topic using the TikTok search bar. The videos that rank on top in the search results are those that the algorithm deems more relevant for the keyword the user searched for
• Passive discovery refers to the videos that the TikTok algorithm pushes on a user FYP. In this scenario, users aren’t actively looking for a topic but the videos that are shown to them align with their interests

If TikTok doesn’t know what your content is about you will never be featured in the search results nor will your videos be pushed to your target audience’s fyp. Instead, your videos will be pushed to a general audience that has likely little interest in the topics you are covering with your content - resulting in low engagement and low reach. Therefore, ensuring that the algorithm understands what your content is about through proper SEO optimisation is critical.

Below we provide an overview of the three main elements involved in SEO optimisation namely keyword research, analytics and content optimisation. If you want to learn more about how to conduct these steps in practice, check out this in depth tutorial where we also look at an additional step: how to track your SEO progress.

Keyword Research

TikTok keywords are the specific words or phrases that users search for within the platform. Therefore, keyword research is the process of identifying what these keywords are for your target audience. In-app tools like TikTok’s Discover Page or TikTok Search Insights can help in finding popular keywords and trends. For example, you can take a look at the videos on your FYP and ask yourself:

• How is the description structured, what words and short sentences are repeated?
• What words does the creator uses in their voiceover?
• Are there any on-screen text that contains specific words?

This exercise can help you get a first understanding of what keywords are and how they are used. While the example provided does not result in a comprehensive keyword research, it serves as a good example to get you started.

Keyword Analytics

Keywords analytics refers to the process of selecting what keywords to target in your next video based on metrics such as competitiveness and popularity. Popularity (also referred to as search volume) tells you how many people are searching for a specific keyword, while competitiveness indicates how hard it is to rank for that keyword, based on factors like the number of competing videos and their engagement rates.

For your next video, you should aim for keywords with low competitiveness and high search volume, as these indicate content gaps where demand outpaces supply.

While there are no in-app tools that can give you insights into these metrics, you can get a rough idea about them by studying the videos that rank for each keyword and look at their views, likes, engagement and creator statistics. This is by no means an exhaustive analysis but it is a good place to start from. If you want to take your TikTok SEO efforts to the next level, check out the data and insights platform we are developing at ShortFormData.

Content Optimisation

Lastly, once you have a list of keywords you would like to target you need to optimise your videos for them. This means strategically including your target keywords throughout your video. Specifically, you should include keywords in your:

• Description
• Captions
• Voiceover
• Text Overlays (both on screen and off screen)
• Hashtags It’s good to mention here that hashtags deserve extra attention and a separate research process. Find out more in this article.

Top TikTok SEO Tips for 2025

As TikTok continues to evolve, so do the strategies for optimising your content. Here are the top TikTok SEO tips for 2024 to keep your content competitive and ensure it reaches the right audience:

1. Use SEO-Friendly Titles

The title of your video should contain relevant keywords. While TikTok doesn’t have a traditional title field like YouTube, the first few words in your video or the on-screen text can act as the title and provide context for the audience and TikTok’s algorithm.

2. Write Effective Descriptions

Your video description is another place to use keywords. While descriptions are typically short, ensure that they provide enough context to help users find your video when they search for related content.

3. Create Engaging Script (and make it visual!)

Because TikTok is primarily a visual platform, captions and on-screen text play a key role in SEO. Use keywords strategically in your script while keeping it natural and engaging, make sure to include captions and place important keywords as on-screen text throughout your video.

4. Use Relevant Hashtags

Select hashtags that are relevant to your video and avoid generic ones like #fyp or #viral. While trending hashtags can be helpful at times, selecting those that are specific to your niche can help you in your SEO efforts. Don’t use too many hashtags and balance them nicely - a good rule of thumb is to use 5 hashtags per video, of which only 1 or 2 are trending hashtags.

5. Remember that SEO is not everything

While SEO can be extremely helpful in ensuring the algorithms understand your videos and pushes them to the right audience, it can only do as much. If your content is low quality and does not provide value, SEO won’t work for you.

Common SEO Mistakes to Avoid on TikTok

Even with the best intentions, many creators and brands make mistakes when trying to optimise their content for TikTok SEO. Here are the most common errors to avoid:

1. Hashtag Overload

It’s tempting to use as many hashtags as possible to reach a broader audience, but hashtag stuffing can hurt your video’s performance. TikTok’s algorithm favours quality over quantity, so only use 3-5 relevant and well-researched hashtags. Overloading on irrelevant or overly broad hashtags will only confuse the algorithm.

2. Irrelevant Keywords

Using keywords that follow trends but that don’t match your content or audience can confuse the algorithm. In addition, while using relevant keyword is important, overusing them will make your content not authentic or genuine - just like hashtags. Authenticity is an integral part of TikTok and you should use target keywords strategically to avoid compromising your communication quality.

3. Ignoring Analytics

Not using TikTok’s analytics to refine your strategy is a huge mistake. TikTok Analytics provides valuable insights into which content and keywords perform best.