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 nearly 40% of younger folks search on TikTok or Instagram as a substitute of Google Maps/Search when searching for a spot for lunch. (TechCrunch)
To be taught extra about TikTok website positioning, I hopped on a name with Charlotte Ang, the co-founder of Visitors Bees, a digital advertising company based mostly in Singapore that additionally owns PickleGO, a pickleball gear retailer that she grew primarily by way of 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 if you happen to might efficiently educate 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 a very powerful week the place you prepare, work out 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 to your movies. However that individual shouldn’t be simply bristled by on-line feedback and must be blissful to be on digital camera. When you have the price range, you’ll be able to bypass this by hiring abilities.
- Constant: To succeed on TikTok, you want to publish at the very least as soon as a day. However count on there to be no ends in the early days.
- Strategic: It’s not nearly posting randomly and grabbing onto each single pattern. There’s a way 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 accustomed to 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 sort of humor on TikTok. And other people don’t desire a faux actuality—they wish to peek on the behind-the-scenes and see one thing genuine.
So, Charlotte re-trained her instincts and discovered tips on how to communicate the platform’s language by her interns, different creators, and observing traits. She stopped attempting to “make advertisements” and began making TikToks.
Begin account farming
Use your account and begin trying to find and scrolling by movies in your area of interest. You must 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 energetic on the platform.
Goal long-tail key phrases
Since there are solely 4 weeks to rank, you don’t wish to compete with 1000’s of movies attempting to rank for broad phrases like “pickleball”. You’d wish to go for a key phrase like “2 bounce rule pickleball”, one which fewer persons are creating content material round and a better likelihood 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 getting 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 Mother or father Matters tab:
This provides 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 solutions:
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 goal to land on the For You Web page (FYP)
- 20% of your content material must be searched-based
The FYP is a customized advice feed that exhibits 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 when you’ve got zero followers, your video can go viral if the algorithm pushes it onto the fitting FYPs. That’s why creators typically speak about “making content material for the FYP”.
It means creating movies that are:
- Hooky and fascinating within the first 2–3 seconds
- Quick-paced and visually attention-grabbing
- Typically tied to traits, sounds, or relatable moments
In the event you’re a model, content material concepts additionally embody model updates, behind-the-scenes, tales in regards to the founder, and extra. For instance, a well-liked format right now is seeing the workers behind the model.
However goes viral helpful?
Whereas Charlotte can’t affirm if going viral helps with rankings, going viral helps with viewers progress. Viral movies typically result in a spike in followers, providing 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 exhibits it to a small group (some followers + random customers).
- If it performs properly (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 frequently engages, they assist kickstart this loop.
To go viral, attempt remixing a video or audio that’s presently making the rounds. For instance, FIFA remixed the audio from Zhen Zhen, a viral Singaporean TikToker.
Discuss essentially the most random of worlds colliding.
Charlotte estimates that the golden interval for traction is the primary two to a few weeks of a viral video.
How are you aware which movies are trending? Take note of what retains displaying up. Use TikTok’s instruments and your personal FYP to identify them early, after which put your personal spin on it quick.
For instance, look out for movies with the identical format, sound, or enhancing type again and again. In the event you see the identical thought or sound 3+ occasions in a session, it’s most likely trending!
As for search-based movies, they’re usually longer, extra text-heavy movies, and geared for schooling.
When your account grows and will get extra traction, you’ll be able to 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 might be spent on filming and enhancing. For instance, Charlotte’s group 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.
Ensure you embody a hook within the first three seconds of all of your movies. Consider your hook because the ‘headline’—it must be catchy and seize consideration.
For instance, one in all PickleGO’s movies has this hook: “Find out how to hit a tweener so that you could be 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 group 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 not too long ago made a function the place you’ll be able to add a thumbnail (similar to YouTube.)
What about video enhancing? Listed below are the methods Charlotte’s group carried out:
- Make sure that one thing is occurring each three seconds, be it a lower, zoom, or sounds results
- Minimize 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 screen to focus on necessary piece of knowledge 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 group makes use of CapCut. For longer movies, Adobe Premiere Professional.
You’re making ready every part in week one. By week two, you ought to be publishing. At the least one video a day.
Identical to common website positioning, ensure you’re optimizing the on-feed website positioning of your movies. Ideas from Charlotte:
- Captions: At all times activate captions and edit them (inside the app) in order that they’re correct.
- Video descriptions: Embody 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, you need to see some outcomes.
An important metric is your retention price. Are folks staying to look at or are they abandoning your movies? The drop-off price usually 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, your analytics, and determining what’s working and what’s not.
To know whether or not your search based mostly movies are doing properly, go to Search analytics below Creator Search Insights. That is just like our good outdated Google Search Console.
Beneath “Search analytics”, search for “Search views” below “Your impressed posts”.
Listed below are your prime seen movies introduced in from search. Get inspirations on what sort of movies will do properly by “Search phrases”.
You’d additionally wish to proceed account farming—it’s social media, in spite of everything. Carry on liking, commenting, and fascinating 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 revealed and it’s not rating, a tactic Charlotte suggests testing is altering the captions or hashtags on these movies.
Remaining ideas
You’ll be able to accomplish loads in 4 weeks. However like conventional website positioning, rating is a long-term recreation.
In the end, TikTok is all about consistency. So, carry on posting. Trip some traits and have enjoyable. Train folks tips on how to do issues in your area of interest. And proceed tweaking your movies to get the perfect outcomes out of the platform.
