#27 Is TikTok the New Search Engine? with Ray Saddiq

Stella:

The Digital PR Podcast is brought to you by CoverageBook, the tool that is helping thousands of PR teams around the world spend less time and effort on reporting so they can put their energy back into the more important parts of PR. CoverageBook replaces the manual tasks of collating screenshots, sourcing metrics and engagement rates, and then designing and presenting into a report. We cut out the need to use PowerPoint, Slides, Canva, or Docs. But it’s not just about glossy reports. Many people come for the metrics, but then they stay for our estimated coverage views figures. That’s right. We predict how many people may see your article or social post. We don’t just tell you the total amount of people that happen to go to a publisher site or an influencer’s feed. We really are about helping PR professionals be taken seriously at the important time of measuring success. So why don’t you give it a try? Test the metrics and see how much time your team can save. Go to coveragebook.com for your free trial.

Louise:
Has there been a more divisive industry statement in 2024 than TikTok is a search engine? Regardless of whether you think it is or not, the fact is that there are lots of people searching on it. And no, they aren’t just Gen Zs and they aren’t all just looking for the latest viral dance. To discuss this more, we’ve got Ray Saddiq from Rise at Seven on the podcast. His agency has been one of the big voices behind social search and its importance in the industry. So we’re thrilled to be able to pick his brain on the subject.

Steve:
Hi, Ray. Thanks so much for joining us on the podcast. It’s a pleasure to have you on. Before we jump in with the questions around TikTok and social search, we wonder whether you could tell us a little bit about yourself, your career path and your current role and how you got there.

Ray:
Yeah, firstly, thank you guys for having me on. It’s amazing to be here. Of course, Louise, I’ve followed you for so long. It’s funny that we’re talking about TikTok today because you were one of the first people I saw posting in this space with short form content. So it’s very cool to be here today. Yeah, a little bit about me. Hi, I’m Ray. I’m currently the global head of marketing at Rise at Seven. And I come from a bit of a background which combines social and search, but mostly on the organic side of things. So I started off my career mostly in social media, organic social media, working across Instagram, TikTok, Pinterest, Reddit, anything on the organic side, I’ve had a go at it, or I’ve worked with a different brand to do a strategy for them in some way on the social side. I eventually ended up going into SEO, which is what I’ve been in the last couple of years. And from that, I’ve worked brand side, I’ve worked agency side. And along the journey, I ended up meeting Carrie here, who is the founder at Rise at Seven, and now I’m here.

Louise:
Great. Yeah, I think I saw on LinkedIn maybe somewhere, didn’t she say like, oh, you’re going to join Rise at Seven at some point, very early days or something like that?

Ray:
Yeah, so the first time she WhatsApped me, we had a conversation about social search. And later on in that conversation, she goes, I want you to come work for me. I’m just not ready for you yet. And I was like, okay, cool. I was at a different brand at the time and I just moved to somewhere and she basically put together a job spec and she said, I’ve got this job spec together, I’ve put it together with you in mind, so I’m sending it straight to you. I looked at it and I was like, yeah, this is exactly everything I’ve been looking for in a role. I’m just really grateful that she’s thought of me for it and here we are, yeah.

Louise:
How amazing, ah, lovely.

Steve:
That’s so flattering as well to get someone to do that. And look at Lou, she’s still beaming from your TikTok comments as well. She loved that.

Louise:
Made my day, thanks.

Steve:
She loved that.

Louise:
Never gets old. Great. I’m going to start off with a very nice, easy question, which is, what is TikTok a search engine?

Ray:
I feel like right now in the industry, everyone has a different opinion of this. My personal opinion is yes, it is a search engine, but not in the traditional sense. Because of course, like I said, I come from an SEO background and I’ve worked very heavily on tech SEO. So I completely understand the differences and why people, especially traditional SEOs, why they don’t see it as a search engine. Because from a technical standpoint, there are a lot of things that it’s lacking. But in terms of the way that consumers and users are searching on the platform, that’s very real, and there’s a lot of them using it. So in my opinion, it is because people are searching there. They’re actively using it as a place to search. TikTok is categorising videos around keywords. They’ve released things like create a search insights that allows you to see things from a keyword perspective. They’re indexing videos in a very similar format to how YouTube videos are indexed and shown. They have loads of SERP features. I mean, if any of you have spent time searching for something on TikTok, you’ll see the various different SERP features that come up. So there are so many similarities. And to me, yeah, it’s a search engine.

Steve:
That is a spectacularly good answer. I genuinely mean that because we put that in as the first question because we know it’s generated a lot of debate, but that makes perfect sense to me. I’m interested to know how you think the way people search, you’ve mentioned consumers there, but how the way people search has changed or is changing, and TikTok obviously is playing a part in that.

Ray:
Yeah, there’s a lot of stuff that’s happening in the industry. You’ve probably seen everything with AI, of course, unless you’ve been under a rock. You’ve probably seen everything with search GPT. The way that we as consumers are getting answers has drastically changed. I think in everyone’s mind, everyone’s thinking, for example, whenever I say TikTok SEO or TikTok search, traditional SEOs or people who are search marketers, they often go directly to thinking I’m saying that TikTok is replacing Google and that’s not what’s happening at all here. What I’m trying to say to people is that Google isn’t being replaced but the search journey has just grown. So I actually wrote a blog post literally I think like last week about this on LinkedIn. It was like my first ever blog post on LinkedIn and on there I put a whole thing about the messy middle. Are you guys familiar with the messy middle?

Louise:
Go into more detail for the listeners.

Ray:
Yeah, so the messy middle is this framework from Google that usually is used for paid marketing. It talks about how different triggers lead to people searching across different platforms, predominantly from a paid marketing point of view. They evaluate, they explore, and then they make the decision to purchase. And I think that this exact model is being applied more and more to organic search. So when people are going on their search journey, they’re doing that exploration and the evaluation on different platforms, on multiple different platforms, and they all count as different search touch points. If you search up the framework from Google, the messy middle, you’ll be able to see what I’m talking about for anyone who’s listening. But how I see it is there’s two sections, right? So the exploration, where I think majority of people are doing searches on places like TikTok and Pinterest, and then there’s the evaluation stage, which is the other one where people are actually evaluating their search and making a decision. So a lot more consideration style content, which is where Google, Reddit, all these other platforms are still playing a massive part in. And that’s the other thing. There’s a lot of data to say, we all know that TikTok is being used by a lot of people to search, but it’s not replacing Google because the majority of people, I think I’ve got a data point somewhere here in my notes, that basically says a majority of people are still going to Google for search. And we know that. That’s what this whole search journey is about. They might start a search on, let’s say we’re looking for running trainers, right? I’ve recently started running, so this is an example search that I might have gone through. I might have seen in my Facebook group for my running club that these are the trainers that everyone’s wearing. I’ve gone away and I’ve gone on TikTok and I’ve searched best running trainers. That’s come up with a bunch of results in different comparison style videos. I’ve clicked on one and I’ve gone, oh, I really like this brand. Actually, let me go away and look a bit further into this. Because as consumers, we’re not stupid. We want to make a decision based off the best deal, the best information. We think a lot more critically now. So I’ll go away over to Google and I’ll go, OK, let me search for this brand and its reviews. And then I might go into Reddit and look for UGC style content. And I’ll bounce between these platforms all during, you know, making the decision based off my search terms. And then at the end, I might go and then just send it to, you know, send a screenshot to my mate in a WhatsApp group and go, should I buy these? And he might say no or yes. And then I’ll go away and then purchase them. And that’s how I think the search journey has grown. And within that now, I don’t know if you guys have tried much with SearchGPT yet, but I might even end up using SearchGPT. That’s the other thing. And I feel like with the introduction of SearchGPT within that as well, it just shows that people want answers faster. And I know this. I’m an SEO, and I spend a lot of my time actually getting answers from SearchGPT. So it’s kind of scary how much I prefer getting a faster answer. If that’s me and part of my job relies on Google, and I’m using this as a platform, imagine when the adoption then comes from a regular person. For example, my brother’s an electrician, and he used to just always use Google for everything. But now because of Snap AI, he’s getting the answer from that, or he’s searching on TikTok. And he’s told me that multiple times. I’ve sat here, and I’ve asked him a question. Instead of going to Google, he’s gone to TikTok, or he’s gone to Snap AI and asked, what do you think of this? And I think that’s where people are thinking, oh, it’s not the case of Google’s being replaced or this platform is going to be doing better. People want an answer fast and they’ll go to whichever platform is easiest of use. But if they want further information, they’ll still go to places like Google.

Louise:
For sure. With TikTok specifically, What about that platform do you think has made it so popular? So for me personally, when you were talking about in your previous answer, that kind of immediacy and kind of getting to the answer. On Google, you often find there’s a load of ads and you’re just kind of dodging the paid media stuff to get to something that you feel is a bit more authentic. That’s from my perspective anyway. Whereas TikTok, you feel it’s a bit of a cleaner journey. Would you agree with that? And what are the other parts of TikTok particularly that you feel make it so popular?

Ray:
Oh yeah, 100% that. We’ve all spent loads of time on TikTok and it’s just so easy to get an answer sometimes. Especially, let’s think of it from a recipe standpoint. If I’m cooking something in the kitchen and I just want a quick answer, if I go to Google, I have to go past a few ads, I have to click on a recipe, I have to read an entire paragraph background story of how this leaf that’s in this recipe was you know, made in some country and then shipped over here. And then I finally get to the recipe. Whereas I go on TikTok and I click, I don’t know, how to make a steak sandwich or something, I don’t know. And it’s come up with a video straight away and the person step-by-step has it and then has the ingredients in the comments or the bio or the caption. And I’ve gone, that’s the answer I needed. So the first thing is, yeah, the ease of answering is really powerful. But I think TikTok is a platform on its own. It’s so interesting, it’s so different. The first thing I think is it’s the rapid impact it has on culture. I was speaking to Wes, our social and campaigns director the other day here at Rise, and he’s a genius with social. He always teaches me something new about this. And he said something that really stuck out to me, which was he gave me an example of how the rapid impact on culture that TikTok has. In America, he was showing me this time, I can’t remember exactly what it was, but a video went viral and a trend basically started going off of it in America. A day later, that trend was on a flag in real life. In Glastonbury. It’s crazy how much of an impact it has and how much hold it has on consumers as a platform. Not only that, it’s one of the only platforms where you can go into Superdrug and you’ll see one of those TikTok made me buy it stands with all kinds of different beauty stuff. And then from an online perspective, I know this was before I started, but I know that Rise has done a bunch of stuff with different clients where they’ve built pages where it’s like as seen on social. because it has that much of an impact that it’s not just on the platform, it’s outside of the platform that people are able to gain visibility from it, are able to leverage it to help consumers to purchase. Because think about it, you wouldn’t really have like Reddit made me buy it in a superdrug, but TikTok made me buy it. People will be like, oh, this is what’s going viral on TikTok. That means everyone’s talking about it. This is cool. A load of other people are using it. There’s a lot of trust signals there. Let me buy this. So it’s such a powerful tool, not just as a platform, but externally as well. It just has such a huge impact on culture. The other thing is what I call it as, this is going to make me sound old, but back in the day, I don’t know if you remember, like people would call it like the YouTube rabbit hole. and you go down that rabbit hole of different videos, you get that with TikTok, but it’s in your hand constantly. So you could be sat at work and all of a sudden you’re in a TikTok rabbit hole for hours. I mean, there’s a client that I used to work with where they weren’t too sure if their business should be on TikTok. And I said to them, spend at least a week using the platform before you do just search up stuff you’re interested in because the FYP will feed you random stuff and you’ll hate it the first day you use it but search up stuff you’re interested in search up stuff that’s related to your business and spend a week using it he came back to me literally a week later I’d forgotten I’d actually asked him to do this and he came up to me and he was like Ray I hate you because I’m addicted to this platform now. I’m spending more time scrolling than with my kids on most nights. And that just shows how powerful it is. You both have probably spent loads of time on it. I’m guessing you’ve entered the doom scrolling era as well at some point. but it’s a powerful platform for that. And that’s because it goes into niche and sub-communities. A lot of the content that’s on there, because it has such a great creator economy, people are incentivised to make content, to optimise the content, to make it show up, because they get paid for it at the end of the day. You get all these niche subjects, all these things, you can go really deep into every subject, and there’s small cults around it, community-led. It’s so different to any other platform. The other thing is that, like I mentioned, the creator economy. So you’ve got the TikTok management program. Brands can pay you to post on there. And then there’s the difference between the interest versus follower graph, if you’ve seen that before, which is basically looking at how It’s a platform where you don’t necessarily need to have followers to be followed. People can just follow you off the FYP page just by seeing you constantly, just by interacting with your content. Of course, it’s great. You can still grow a following there, but you don’t necessarily need to. That’s the best thing about it as well. You can start as a brand on there with zero followers, and you can have a video get five million views, two million views. It’s so powerful in that case, and it promotes the creators then go away and go, we can gain traffic here, we can build out videos that are very interesting. It incentivises you to build good content because you’ll get paid for it and you’ll gain visibility. You’re not just doing it on another platform where you might not get seen or you put in all that work and nothing really comes off the back of it. it’s got a very young audience, the core audience is a young audience, which means that the shareability side of things, it’s very easy to share a video and it can go viral because of that. But the thing that I find most interesting is because we’re no longer in 2020, this isn’t just Gen Z using this platform anymore. So for example, like now that we know, GWI data basically shows us that 33% of 25 to 34 year olds use TikTok to find and buy products. 25% of 35 to 44 year olds use TikTok more than once a day. And 15% of 45 to 54 year olds say TikTok is their favorite social media app. And that just literally shows you that it’s not just Gen Z users. Those are people who have more buying power, potentially higher income rates, have more intent to purchase, more interest in industries which traditionally wouldn’t have started on TikTok in 2020. So overall, it’s gained so much traction across all these different demographics, these age gaps, where you can take a brand that might not have been on TikTok, put it onto TikTok, and gain visibility with the customers they’re looking for. So it’s really powerful for that. And then finally, search. We all know people do search there, and now you can optimise for search, and there’s so many different tools that go with it. So yeah, that’s why it’s such a great platform. I love it.

Steve:
Yeah it’s well you can tell you can tell your your knowledge your passion your enthusiasm for I mean it’s I could see you nodding along when Ray was talking about the the amount of views you can get on your videos I remember you in the when you first started making those TikTok videos you were like I don’t have any followers but I’m getting like a million views or hundreds of thousands of views, which I found really, really fascinating. God’s honest truth, it scares me a little bit because I have used it and I find it easily the most addictive social media platform. You can just have hours spent on it because it is so endlessly fascinating with the amount of content that’s out there and being created. But I want to come back to something you mentioned at the end of that last answer there, and that was about brands. How can brands think about and use TikTok? Are there, in your experience, sectors that are more appropriate for or types of business that are more appropriate for it? I’m just interested to kind of get your take on that side of things for brands.

Ray:
Yeah, there’s a bunch of industries I think that can do really well on there. Definitely B2C businesses I find do a lot better on TikTok, just because it’s so consumer-based. But B2B businesses also have a place. I mean, ClickUp and SEMrush are probably a really great example of ones that are crushing it on that platform, if you’ve seen their content. It’s really cool. But yeah, to think about it as a brand, I think you have to think of it in a different way. And it’s something, again, shout out to Wes, because he actually said this to me very recently, and it’s got me thinking in a different way. One thing that he’s found, and I’ve even seen this with other brands, is brands will often have all their social media platforms all grouped together. TikTok is almost its own thing. It sits on its own. That’s because it’s so different, and it’s looked at differently by brands because it’s got TikTok shop, it’s got search functionality, it’s got the ability to get the interest over the follower graph. That’s what makes it so so different to all these other platforms. So the first thing is to look at it that way, not look at it as every other social platform, because of course you need your own strategy, every platform needs its own strategy. But TikTok is completely different. And it’s to start off by looking at that. And then it’s to look at the interest versus follower side of things, where you’re looking at how you know making sure that you’re making content that’s stopping someone scrolling someone who might not have seen you before making sure that you’re able to then understand that even if they don’t follow you though on your second video they may have seen a previous video they may have interacted with you especially if you’ve got a video that’s gained a load of engagement TikTok is more likely to show another video that you posted after that to the same audience that interacted with that so it’s important to look at it as a point of view is it might be a new user but you also have to be able to take them along on a journey. It’s like when you’re on a night out and you go past a group of people and they’re having a conversation, you jump into a conversation because you know you can be part of that, maybe because you’ve had a few drinks or you’re feeling a bit more confident. And I feel like TikTok has that same vibe where you go past a video and it has to make it feel like it’s inviting you in and you feel confident enough to feel like this video, you can interact with it, it’s relevant to you. And yeah, that’s how I think they need to start looking at it from a perspective of this is all about interest and less about followers. It’s massively a discovery engine because of that. People use this platform in a way to find new products to use, to find hacks. I mean, you’ve probably, I can guarantee you’ve probably definitely found like a hack of TikTok or something that’s, you know, whether it’s like a cooking hack, a marketing hack, someone always shares something. And that’s what that platform is usually used for, which is why I think it’s so powerful in the awareness stage of the consumer journey. The other thing is that TikTok search is obviously being spoke about a lot, but what often happens and what I speak to a lot of search marketers and what I find is they often only look at it as either a search thing or either a social thing. And that’s not the way that you should be looking at it because you can’t, like a traditional SEO will probably look at a TikTok video and go, I need to add keywords into the description. I need to add keywords into the video. I need to add hashtags. That’s me done. But what they’ll forget then is the social side of things. Whereas a social marketer will look at it and go, I need to create a video that stops people scrolling, that has high watch time and is actually really cool or interesting or is on brand. And what happens is those two don’t often overlap. And if you want to make them work for both, if you want to create a really good piece of social content that then lasts for longer than the 72-hour period that a normal piece of social content lasts for, you need to then optimise it for search. So you need to make them work together. And that starts with figuring out what content actually works. and then optimising it for search. A good examples of these are like, you’ve probably seen all the stuff about Currys, you’ve probably seen that going viral on LinkedIn today. Yeah, I love their videos, the Gen Z and Millennial. I feel like because I fall into that age gap, that I’m technically a Gen Z, but all my friends are Millennials, and I’ve got loads of friends that are Gen Zs. I love that stuff that Currys have been doing. But they’re a really good example of, you know, that’s really powerful, good social content, and that’s the type of content that does really well on the platform. And then, have you guys seen Nutter Butter? Which is a peanut butter brand in America I don’t know how to explain their social strategy just search it if you’re listening, just search up the brand Nutter Butter it’s just mental and it doesn’t like it’s so weird and strange but it’s great and it works really well for them and I like those two examples there the reason why i like those two is because Nutter Butter doesn’t need search. And as much as I love to push out search on TikTok, and I think it’s so powerful, not every brand needs it. And I don’t think Nutter Butter, with how their brand strategy and their social strategy, they’re a brand that might not necessarily need it right now. Whereas Currys, they’re doing great with their social content, but they could also actually benefit from having a search element. So, they could use, let’s say, they’ve done their content already on their Gen Z versus Milleneals. They could take that exact same trend and do a comparison of washing machines and optimise that for the best washing machines or the best microwaves or whatever. I’m trying to think of what products Currys sell, but those different products there, they could do comparison, list articles, the same stuff that we would do as SEOs in that style of format that works on social, but optimised for search on the platform. And that’s an example of how a brand like Currys might be able to use it. And then it’s looking into actually how the algorithm works. So from a social standpoint, it’s really interesting because because you’ve probably seen how this works with your own videos, but often what happens is when a video gets posted out, it gets shown to a group of your followers, a small segment of people who don’t follow you, and then it’s based off watch time. So watch time is right now, and I have to put a disclaimer because next week the algorithm will probably change, but watch time is the most important thing right now. So if you can keep people retained watching for long enough when they go through that first user group testing, it will make your video pop off a bit more. So yeah, it’ll go through that first user group testing, it’ll pass it on to a second group, which is slightly bigger, and then a third group. And then in the fourth group is like the mass distribution. So that’s when you have that viral moment, when you see like hundreds of thousands of views come in. And that’s how TikTok works. It just works with different user testing based on how much people engage with it, how long people watch for, and eventually your video pops off. But ways that you can actually improve that as a brand is to increase your watch time, is to look at different things that are working. So pick niche subjects. So really go niche. And Nutter Butter is a good example of this, and so is Currys, where they’ve gone really niche with the audience that they want to target and the type of content that they want to create. So pick that, but then relate it to relevant trends that are happening. Because if it’s happening at the time, similar to if you look at Reddit and Twitter, the effect that Reddit and Twitter have, the reason why they were so powerful, is because it’s trending topics, right? You’re going away, and you’re looking at all these trending topics that are happening. You want to be involved in that conversation. So if you can relate that back to your niche subjects and your niche content, that’s really powerful and that will help you to retain people for longer because it’s current. Use relevant hashtags. Don’t use things like hashtag FYP because people will tell you to use these hashtags as a hack. No, because the people who are going to come off that are not going to watch your video to the end and you want people who are looking for that specific hashtag. Obviously, the same thing goes for keywords. Pick keywords that are relevant to your video. Don’t just try and stuff them in there because your watch time won’t go up. It’s something that you have to look at. And then finally, music as well. Music plays a massive part. Sound in general plays a massive part when it comes to short form video, but music in particular. If you can find a sound that people are engaging with and link it to a video that’s related to the content you’re creating, it will incentivise people to just watch a bit longer because they might just enjoy listening to the song. It drives an emotion. We know that music drives a massive emotion for people. So having the right song picked for your video is incredibly powerful. It’ll keep people watching longer.

Louise:
You can see why some people get a little bit intimidated by thinking about starting TikTok for their brand or TikTok themselves even, because it feels so different to when you’re talking about SEO for Google. It’s a lot less technical. You’re talking a lot more about what’s going to engage with people, what’s going to keep them. The algorithm is very much based on the shareability of something, which is kind of a lot more psychological than links and keywords and things like that. Although, obviously, keywords and things are still important. Fascinating. And you’ve got so much knowledge and you say it so enthusiastically that I’m like, yeah, like we should get all our brands on TikTok. When it comes to the data that TikTok provides, what are your thoughts on it? Do you think there is enough? Do you think it’s user-friendly enough? What bits do you use the most in terms of what they provide you and what’s freely available?

Ray:
Actually, to be fair, before we go on to that, I was just thinking about what you said there about how brands might find it a bit intimidating. And you are right. It can be quite scary because there’s a lot of things to learn. And this is one thing I tell SEOs because within the community, I often get questions from SEOs going, I’ve had a bunch of comments where people say, how do you expect me to learn all this? And what I usually say, especially if you’re brand side or even if you’re agency side, I’m not saying that you have to go out and become a social media marketer as an SEO, or you don’t have to become an SEO as a social media marketer. What you have to do is leverage your teams. Because often what happens is, I’ve been in-house and I’ve seen how the social team doesn’t often speak to the SEO team at all, and this is an opportunity to bridge that gap. It’s the same with PR as well. TikTok and PR, you’ve seen how powerful they can be together from just using the data to create stories, but there’s so much more. You can push a story further if you can create a good social campaign off the back of it as well. So it’s about getting the two skill sets, people in your team to speak to each other. And that’s one thing I’m a big advocate of. Or go to an agency that specialises in SEO if you’ve got a social team in-house. Or if you’ve got an SEO team and you need an agency that helps you with social, get that side. You need to find the people that can actually work with you so you don’t spend all your time trying to learn a complete new skill. Although I think it’s really cool and I think everyone should try and develop as much as they can when it comes to marketing. But sometimes, yeah, it just comes down to where, as an SEO, Especially a traditional SEO, like you said, you look at keywords and you look at the technical side of a website, you look at indexing, you look at all these things that necessarily might not be stuff that can be transferred directly into what a social media marketer might do. But what does work really well is things like content mapping. and consumer journey mapping. So as an SEO, one thing that you usually do is you look at exactly how people’s search journey looks. And we have the data to access that, which what social media marketers don’t. So it makes us really important to that team. So we can go to them and go, look, this is exactly how we’ve done our persona workshop. We’ve understand exactly who our buyer personas are. We know exactly how they search and what kind of places they go to across the web. This is all the content they’re interested in. And not only that, we have our website that we’ve had for the next, for the last 10, 20 years. It’s got content that’s already doing really well. We know that this gets generic keyword searches constantly. Let’s take that content. Let’s take this keyword map and this user journey. Let’s turn it into TikTok content. Can you help us do that? How can we do that? These are the top priority ones. These are the ones that drive the most traffic. Can we turn them into TikTok? Can we test this? And that’s how that gap has to be bridged. So if you’re listening, especially for your brand side, don’t be afraid and think, oh, this is so much. Leverage the skill set you already have and work with the people in your organisation, with your agency partners to make that happen. You can bring a lot of value to them. But yeah, onto what you guys are saying there. Yeah, it’s very early in this, to be honest. So early because this platform is still developing it. There’s something I like to say whenever I speak about this as well, is if you look at it from a search functionality, right? Every single social media app has a form of search functionality. Facebook has had a search bar for how long, right? None of them have actively invested in search, but TikTok has. You can see from their search features, you can see from how they categorise things via keyword, how they’ve got greater search insights, all these different things. So that’s one thing to keep in mind that although it’s very early in this, there’s still so much to come. But I’m going to break down into what tools and what kind of data points that I use and how and exactly how you can use them and how they can work. So the first thing is with keyword research. So I mentioned a little bit there about how a brand can go away and do keyword research. But it’s about using a variety of tools because a bunch of these tools use different methods to collect data. And it’s not like traditional SEO, which is, I think, the mistake that happens in the industry. Everyone within the SEO space, for some reason, thinks of it as TikTok SEO should be the exact same as Google SEO. And that’s not what’s happening. Even with Bing, Google and Bing have so many differences. If you’re optimising for Amazon, it’s completely different. You’re optimising for Etsy, it’s completely different to Google. And it’s the same way to get this research and this data. You have to use a variety of tools to make your decision. And it’s not about like, you know, with Google, you might target longer tail keywords. With TikTok, it’s more focused on topic association. So you’d go for what in Google terms would be the primary keyword. But in TikTok terms, that’s the main topic or the association. So it might be instead of things to do for kids under the age of five in this small town at this time, whatever, that might be a long tail keyword, right? But on TikTok, you’d be focusing more on a keyword like things to do in X location, a lot more broader, a lot more topic associated because it’s a lot less competitive right now. A lot of these brands are focusing on it, and it’s easier to rank for things like that. I think right now, we’re finding that you can rank position one on TikTok within six weeks for a term like that, for things to do terms. On Google, that could take eight months, six months of like links, technical, internal links, content, topical authority, all these different things that you have to do before you get to that point. Whereas on TikTok, you can produce a video, optimise it correctly, make sure it’s led by engagements and watch time and have it ranking within six weeks, which is really powerful. So I started looking at what content already does well on the website, pulling the keywords to do that. Use Google keyword data as well to understand exactly. Because we have that. It’s real data. People are searching for that. And then if it links to your product, I would then test it to see how it does on TikTok. Within TikTok, you’ve got a bunch of other tools. I know SEO Clarity have got their own version of this, which is pretty cool. I tested that out recently. There’s KeywordsTools.io, and there’s a bunch of other ones. But don’t rely on one, because like I said, every single one is still working out how it gets this data. Make your decision based off a variety of data points. It’s like really old school SEO. This is a completely new space. So you can’t, it’s not as easy as we have Ahrefs or we have SEMrush. It’s about being able to make a creative decision and going, this is what it looks like. It’s relevant to our users. There’s a bunch of data points that we’ve critically analysed and said, this is making up enough information for us to target this and then going ahead with that. So yeah, it’s very different to WebSEO, but yeah, that’s how I would do the keyword research side of things. Then there are internal tools that TikTok provides. So like Creator Search Insights, if you guys have seen that, it’s really cool. If you go on the search bar and search it, Creator Search Insights, it’s a really, really cool tool. It basically tells you what people are searching for from a keyword standpoint on TikTok. And within that, there’s something called Content Gap. I don’t know if you’ve seen that as well, but anyone who’s listening, Content Gap is so cool. So what it does, and this is where I think TikTok does really well with its creator economy, because what it’s doing is it’s giving you keywords people are searching for, but within that Content Gap, it will tell you that they’re in demand, they’re trending, a lot of search volume, but there’s not enough content. So as a creator or a brand, you can then go away and fill that gap. That’s exactly what TikTok wants you to do, so that platform has all the content on there. So, yeah, that’s one of the examples. You can use Create Search Insights. You can balance that up against what you’re seeing in terms of the keyword research you’ve done, and then you can go away and make a decision based on that. The other thing is, I did a LinkedIn post about this recently, which is search ads. They are going to be very cool because, again, this is one of the only platforms that has search ads outside of Google. And the very cool thing about this is, in the video that I saw for search ads, you can see monthly search volume. And as an SEO, that made me incredibly happy. I was like, it is amazing because now that we’ve got that, all I need is SEMrush, Ahrefs, you know, all these tools. If any tools are listening right now, that is a huge opportunity. That’s something that needs to be filled because we will have the search volume data. so it’ll be a great time for any tool to come in and just build out that functionality for it from an organic perspective so then you can start to rank for it. Same with rank tracking as well, it’s a manual process right now, it’s a manual and scraping process, but again this is early days with stuff like this search ads, with tools actively invested, with the interest that brands are showing for this as a platform, there’s gonna be tools that are gonna be helping for ranking. But yeah, search ads, one to look out for because similar to keyword planner, we’ll have monthly search volume. So yeah, definitely one to look out for. The next thing is the internal search data it gives. I think I’ve got an example of it here from a video. Let me just pull that up. So this is from a beauty influencer and it basically shows what type of queries that they get. Let me just pull that up. So If any video, you’ve probably seen this, Lou, on your TikTok videos where it’s like search queries. You go across and it will show you exactly the stuff that people are searching for you to find your video. And it’s really cool because then what you can do is you can go away, make further content for it, and you can see what people are actually interested in, what they’re finding you for. And then you can actually review your videos because especially from a creator standpoint, if I saw that and I look through and I go, oh, I actually mentioned that in my caption, I mentioned that in the video, and I mentioned it as a hashtag, maybe that’s why people are finding it. So it’s an easy way to understand how people are looking for you. And then the final thing is Google. So like I said, at the very start of this podcast, this search journey is growing, right? It’s growing massively. Part of that is Google understands that TikTok is one of those platforms that isn’t going away. So instead of trying to beat them, it’s basically joined them, where it’s pulling videos into the SERPs, right? You’ve seen this. It’s really cool because since January 2023, TikTok has grown from 129 million visits to 500 million visits. in that period from Google. That just shows how much it’s expanded, how many more videos they’re pulling into SERPs, and how many people are actively searching and visiting TikTok from Google search. And this is a really powerful thing, I think, because we had this with a client case study recently where we got them ranking in position one on TikTok and it did really well. I think a bunch of their videos as part of that campaign got millions of views, hundreds of thousands of views. Shout out to the social team because they did all the work for this and it was a great campaign. And as part of that, not only within six weeks did it rank on TikTok, but it got pulled into Google SERPs and it got pulled into Google SERPs above competitors who had been ranking there for years, who had spent and invested loads of money. That video came up as a SERP feature higher than them. What’s really interesting from that is because of the intent of that search, and as an SEO you’ll know this, some people will want a quicker answer or a video format answer. So especially for things to do searches or B2C searches, they might want to see a video. Similar to how YouTube takes away clicks sometimes they might want to see a blog understandable but having that top position there where people can just see you above organic results underneath ads but then before people also ask that’s a really prime bit of real estate on Google so people are then going away and clicking on that as well so that’s how it’s also powerful because Google’s also pulling it in so there is an overlap between SEO and social there as well.

Steve:
There’s so much to it. You mentioned, Ray, that it’s still early days. So the final question we have for you on TikTok is we’re going to ask you to channel your inner Nostradamus and just predict for us how you think. I mean, you’ve been amazing at telling us how TikTok’s working right now, but how do you think it will change in the future?

Ray:
Yeah that’s a good question to be fair. I think it depends on what’s going to happen in the US because of course there’s everything that’s happening with the TikTok ban and things like that. The only thing is of course that’s in the US. In the UK and Europe it’s still a really powerful thing and I think it’ll continue to be regardless of what happens there. I don’t think personally they’ll ban it. Maybe they will. We’ll see. But then there’s also search ads. Search ads, like I’ve already mentioned here, I think that’s going to be really powerful. I think it’s something that is going to change the way that we use and see the platform from a search perspective in general, but just from a user perspective as well, because it’s going to have more focus on that consumer journey from a search. And we’ve seen what happened with Google with search ads. And I think that’s going to be a similar story with what happens with TikTok. I’m thinking links in videos will be coming. The reason why I say this and the reason why I, well, first, the reason why I think they haven’t done it yet is because they’re nervous of sending people away from the platform. But the more that it’s being used as a search engine or people are using search there, it provides a massive opportunity for TikTok. And I think eventually links in videos will come. And if they come, just to let you know, like if links in videos appear on TikTok, it’s going to change the industry massively. It’s going to be huge because look at how many people use this platform. It’s going to be very powerful. I think more SERP features are definitely going to be on the way and more unique SERP features. Because the one thing I like about TikTok is it’s integrating search features, different types of SERP features. They’re similar to Google, but it also has really unique ones. I posted one on LinkedIn the other day, which was just, instead of, well, I think I cooked up, I searched like a Nutella cake recipe or something. You can see that my diet is not going great. They had like a bunch of sub-features that came up with how many views each recipe got and it was so different and so unique and I thought, you know, things like this is what they’re investing in and what makes it so easy to use as a platform. The other thing I think is going to be on its way is AI functionality. Because we’ve all seen like, you know, there has to be some use of AI integrated somehow. I don’t know what that’s going to look like at the moment, whether that’s going to be some sort of, I don’t know, like an AI overview, AI overview that pulls in video format. I don’t know. I just know that they’re going to do it in a very unique format and they’re going to integrate that somehow because they have to in order to continue to compete. And then finally, the community and UGC side, I think it’s just going to grow massively. There’s going to be more options for creators, more opportunities to make money as a creator, more opportunity for brands to grow on the platform as well.

Steve:
Yeah, well, watch this space. Some amazing things already happening, some amazing things to come. Lou, I believe it’s time for our last question.

Louise:
Yes, we have a choice of questions. Would you either like to share a digital PR campaign? To be fair, I’m going to throw in a curveball. You can share a TikTok campaign that you particularly like and have admired recently, or you could tell us which brand you would love to work with.

Ray:
From a PR point of view, it’s got to be a Rise campaign because just because I feel like I’ve just been like ingrained in like different Rise campaigns. But we did one recently. The U.S. team has just done one. It’s really cool. It’s like the wiener connoisseur, because, you know, in the U.S. they call hot dogs wieners. So they went to different stadiums and they got somebody to get measure the biggest wiener.

Louise:
That’s so crazy.

Ray:
I think it picked up like 300 links or something. It was insane. Yeah, really cool. And then brands that I’d love to work with. I think there’s, yeah, definitely two brands that came to mind. I’m a massive fan of Gymshark. I absolutely love Gymshark. Would love to work with them. Or Netflix. That’s just because I spend my whole life, like outside TikTok, I’m on Netflix basically. So yeah, those two would probably be my favourite brands to ever work with. Excellent.

Steve:
I love the fact, Ray, your enthusiasm is so infectious, but you actually answered both of our questions, which is brilliant. So thank you for that. And thank you so much for your time on the podcast today. I’ve certainly learned a lot and I hope our listeners have as well. If anyone wants to get in touch with you, either to work with Rise or to kind of pick your brains on, you know, what’s going on with TikTok and social search now and in the future, how should they get in touch?

Ray:
Yeah, LinkedIn. Definitely just messaged me on LinkedIn. I’m constantly posting on there. So you’ll see my face on there. Ray Saddiq.

Steve:
Great stuff. Thank you so much, Ray. It’s been an absolute pleasure having you on the podcast. We really, really appreciate it. Thank you.

Ray:
Thank you. Appreciate you guys having me on. It’s been great.