TikTok creators have more ways to optimize their content for user searches, thanks to the dramatic increase in the length of video descriptions.
According to a notice sent to users, TikTok is expanding the length of descriptions from 300 characters to 2,200 characters.
In addition to making content more searchable, TikTok says it uses text in the description to decide which videos to recommend to users.
Social media analyst Matt Navarra shared a screenshot of the message he received regarding the change:
Wow …! TikTok has increased the character limit of the video description to 2,200 characters!
This is huge for creators and huge in terms of TikTok’s plans to become a search engine pic.twitter.com/kGhnL97uUM
– Matt Navarra (@MattNavarra) September 23, 2022
Message text:
You can now write up to 2,200 characters in your post descriptions: This allows you to express more detail about your creations, describe what your videos show, giving you the opportunity to get closer to your audience, generate more engagement with more searchability and better To be recommended as TikTok to viewers.”
Younger generations are increasingly using TikTok as a search engine, and TikTok is leaning more towards that by allowing users to make their videos more searchable.
I first wrote about this shift in search behavior in June, when TikTok began adding links to search results in video descriptions.
We seeCould TikTok be a search engine? For many users, it already is
In July, Google publicly acknowledged that TikTok and Instagram are the search engine of choice for a large number of young people.
Google Senior Vice President Prabhakar Raghavan advertiser:
“In our studies, nearly 40% of young adults, when they are looking for a place to have lunch, do not go to Google Maps or search, but rather go to TikTok or Instagram.”
Increasing the length of video descriptions from 300 to 2200 characters allows users to optimize videos for more search terms.
For example, local businesses that market themselves on TikTok can include more keywords related to their city and state.
This can increase the chances of finding a query such as “independent businesses in downtown Toronto”. They will have plenty of room to add descriptive text about the video.
Increased personality also allows creators to add more context to what people see in a video.
Content creators often provide additional details through in-video captions, but this text is of no use to search engines.
Let’s not forget that Google indexes TikTok videos. Writing detailed descriptions can make videos more discoverable in traditional search engines and TikTok.
It will be interesting to see what the creators choose to do with the thousands of other characters in the video description.
Will the creators populate the description area with keywords, like in the early days of SEO?
Are they going to spam the description area with hashtags, like people used to use Instagram?
Some experimentation will be necessary to see what works for TikTok search, so we might see all of the above.
TikTok SEO is an area I’ll be watching as expanded character length spreads to more people.
Featured image: Daniel Constanti/Shutterstock
