TikTok Increases Length Of Video Descriptions

TikTok creators have extra methods to optimize their content material for customers’ searches, because of a major improve within the size of video descriptions.
According to a notification despatched to customers, TikTok is increasing the size of descriptions from 300 characters to 2,200 characters.
In addition to creating content material extra searchable, TikTok says it makes use of textual content within the description to resolve which movies to advocate to customers.
Social media analyst Matt Navarra shares a screenshot of the message he obtained relating to the change:

Woah…! TikTok has elevated video description character restrict to 2,200 characters!
This is big for creators and large by way of TikTok’s plans for turning into a search engine pic.twitter.com/kGhnL97uUM
— Matt Navarra (@MattNavarra) September 23, 2022
The message reads:
“You can now kind as much as 2200 characters in your posts’ descriptions: This permits you to specific extra particulars about your creations, describing what your movies present, providing you with the chance to get nearer to your viewers, producing extra engagement whereas turning into extra searchable and higher advisable by TikTok to viewers.”
Younger generations are more and more utilizing TikTok as a search engine, and TikTok is leaning additional into it by letting customers make their movies extra search pleasant.
I first wrote about this shift in search conduct in June, when TikTok began including hyperlinks to look leads to video descriptions.
See: Could TikTok Be A Search Engine? For Many Users, It Already Is
In July, Google publicly acknowledged that TikTok and Instagram are the popular serps for a sizeable quantity of younger individuals.
Google Senior Vice President Prabhakar Raghavan acknowledged:
“In our research, one thing like virtually 40% of younger individuals, once they’re searching for a spot for lunch, they don’t go to Google Maps or Search, they go to TikTok or Instagram.”
Increasing the size of video descriptions from 300 to 2,200 characters permits customers to optimize movies for extra search phrases.
For instance, native companies advertising themselves on TikTok can embody extra key phrases associated to their metropolis and state.
That may improve their possibilities of getting discovered for a question like “unbiased companies in downtown Toronto.” And they’ll have loads of room so as to add descriptive textual content in regards to the video.
The character improve additionally permits creators so as to add extra context to what individuals see in a video.
Creators usually present further particulars by means of in-video captions, however that textual content isn’t useful to serps.
Let’s not overlook that Google indexes TikTok movies. Writing detailed descriptions could make movies extra discoverable in conventional serps and TikTok.
It will likely be fascinating to see what creators select to do with 1000’s extra characters in a video description.
Will creators stuff the outline space with key phrases, like within the early days of search engine optimization?
Will they spam the outline space with hashtags, like individuals used to do on Instagram?
Some experimentation will likely be essential to be taught what works for TikTok search, so we might even see the entire above.
TikTok search engine optimization is an space I’ll hold my eye on because the expanded character size rolls out to extra individuals.
Featured Image: Daniel Constante/Shutterstock


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