TikTok SEO part 2: Starting your strategy

TikTok is an awareness-raising powerhouse, perfect for promoting ESG, supercharging your recruitment and much more. Many B2Bs are looking to take advantage of TikTok’s power. They just need to know how.

In part 1 of this series, you learned why B2Bs need a TikTok strategy. In part 2, you will learn about the Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) principles that you can use to start building your TikTok SEO strategy.

Using Google SEO principles in your TikTok SEO strategy 

When you think about SEO, you probably think of Google first.

It’s tempting to think that there are a handful of easy techniques that can be used to launch your content to the top of Google’s search results. It’s more complex than that. Understanding the principles of good SEO on Google can, in many cases, help you understand how to optimise your content for TikTok as well.

E-E-A-T for TikTok

Google’s search rankings are decided by its algorithms, and they’ve never publicly revealed how these work. However, they do stress the importance of creating content that demonstrates “E-E-A-T” to improve its chances of ranking well.

But what does E-E-A-T mean? Here’s the criteria to measure your content against:

1. Experience – Do you clearly have experience with what you’re talking about?
2. Expertise – Do you have expertise in this area?
3. Authoritativeness – Are you an authority on the topic? 
4. Trustworthiness – Are you trustworthy? 

These aren’t cut and dry, and a webpage which fulfils all of these won’t just launch to the top of the results. Plus, they’re not always treated equally. In fact, trustworthiness is the most important by far.

As already mentioned, this criteria isn’t actually to do with Google’s algorithm, but is how Google judges whether its algorithm is returning good results. Because they prioritise great user experience and genuinely helpful content, these E-E-A-T criteria are also good rules of thumb when creating content for any search engine-based platform, whether it’s Pinterest, YouTube or TikTok.  

Take a look at this example: 

This podcast snippet shows a top investor being interviewed on a podcast. Even at a first glance, it’s clear this guest has experience, expertise and authority within his industry, and is being interviewed by someone who is building their own similar experience and expertise. All of this in turn makes it trustworthy from an SEO perspective, and more likely to be ranked highly.

The E-E-A-T principles are a great foundation for your SEO content, but TikTok isn’t the same as Google. That’s why one TikToker developed a similar technique to E-E-A-T, specifically for the platform. 

The “4 Es” of TikTok

In a podcast appearance, social media strategist Rachel Pedersen explained that TikTok users can optimise their content by ensuring that it falls within “the four Es”. 

1. Engagement – This is all about starting a conversation. Have you included a call to action in your video? Experiment with ways to build engagement, like asking your audience a question, prompting them to ask you a question in the comments section, or directing them to the link in your profile to help them further down the user journey.
2. Education – Creating educational videos is a great way to transform your evergreen content into educational pieces for TikTok. These can be a great way to regularly produce valuable content suitable for short-form video.
3. Entertainment – How can you entertain your audience? Have you got a relatable story you could share or a funny encounter? Think about what would resonate with your audience and is specific to your niche.
4. Emotion – Show vulnerability. People like to hear the human story on social media, it helps build better connections online and may even help to improve trust between you and your audience.

Like Google’s E-E-A-T criteria these are broad guidelines, not hard and fast rules. Try and create content that’s engaging, educational, entertaining and emotional, and you’ll find yourself spread thin. However, looking for opportunities to fulfil the four Es and you’ll have the building blocks to begin creating SEO-friendly TikTok content.

Take a look at this example, and notice how it fulfils elements of both Google’s E-E-A-T and TikTok’s 4 Es.

Keyword research on TikTok

If you’re already creating content for Google based on E-E-A-T or other SEO principles, then you’ll have a head start creating content that works well for TikTok’s algorithm. 

But how do you really optimise your content to maximise its visibility?

You can do keyword research for TikTok just like you can for Google. In TikTok’s case, these key words could be ones that are spoken aloud in videos (TikTok tracks that), words in descriptions, on-screen text, or comments. 

To research your niche you can: 

• Monitor comment sections – What topics and questions are being asked?
• Search hashtags – Pay close attention to how many views different hashtags have. You can use this to work out how saturated a topic is, or see when there’s room for opportunity.
• Monitor hashtag relevance –  Check out what other people are posting under a hashtag you’re considering. Is it relevant to your niche? If not, that’s a sign you need to keep researching and narrow down more.
• Check out what other users are searching for – When you’re in the comment section, you’ll see a recommended search term at the top which is based on what viewers of that TikTok have gone on to watch and search. Also, when you search for a term on TikTok, you’ll see “other people searched for” placed at regular intervals throughout the results, which is very similar to “other people searched for” on Google 

Case study: Finance-Tok

There’s a huge community of TikTok users who work in and post about the finance sector. They call themselves Finance-Tok.

A B2B in the finance sector is looking to make its mark on that part of the platform. With some initial research, we found that there were millions of people in this space. Some were looking for financial advice, others were looking for help with their personal finance, but there were a few different niches that stuck out. 

• Women in finance
• Jobs in finance/corporate jobs
• Gen-Z finance

From here, we can go through those niches, look at the relevant hashtags and work out where the content opportunities for clients lie. 

Let’s start with “women in finance”. Here’s some TikTok topics the right B2B could use to tap into that space:

• How many women do you employ in your business?
• What’s the gender pay gap in your business? Do you have a stat you can be proud of? Share it, especially around events like International Women’s Day
• What does progression for women in your financial B2B look like? 
• Showcase women at your B2B. Represent them. Share their voices. 

Now, we can do the same with “jobs in finance.” 

TikTok topics could include: 

• How do you get a job at your company
• What journey did your existing employees go through to get their roles?
• What does a day in the life look like for your employees?
• What opportunities for growth are there within your company 
• Are you recruiting for new roles? Share them. Why should people work for you? What makes you stand out from competition? 

Finally, let’s look at Gen-Z finance.

• Feature Gen-Z employees on tiktok – what’s their work history so far? What are their ambitions at the company? What do they want to change?
• Have you got a female Gen-Z employee you can feature to talk about new opportunities at your business? Bingo! You can tie all these niches together. 

What else do you need to know? 

A strong SEO strategy is about understanding the type of content that a search engine wants to prioritise. It isn’t about trying to trick it. 

That means that developing your TikTokSEO strategy will take time, and will remain an ongoing process. The payoff is huge, but the platform moves quickly. It’s also vital to understand that while TikTok is brilliant for helping your business raise awareness, posting on TikTok is not a converting activity.

Staying on top of TikTok trends is a full time job. As an agency, we can help advise you at every step of the way and have weekly check-ins to discuss trends, content ideas, hashtag solutions, and optimisation advice for upcoming content.

Related articles

• TikTok SEO part 1: Why B2Bs need a TikTok SEO strategy 
• Is TikTok replacing Google for search?
• Building your TikTok toolkit
• A beginner’s guide to TikTok
• Leveraging user intent on TikTok to produce a successful marketing campaign
• How to create the perfect TikTok Ad
• Learn how to maximise results with short-form video on social media

More help

Want to get in touch about building a TikTok SEO strategy for your business? Drop me an email at [email protected].