What is social media SEO?
Social media SEO is making your posts easy to find when people search TikTok, Instagram, YouTube and other platforms, and when those posts appear on Google. The aim is the same as website SEO, but what ranks is different. TikTok says how well a video matches the search usually counts most, and in 18,140 searches we tracked, likes, shares and saves explained little of the order. Results also change a lot from one country to the next.
By Angelica Handover, Co-founder and CEO, SocialSeal Published Updated
What social media SEO covers
People search social platforms the way they search Google. They type “hooker valley track guide” into TikTok, “family surf holidays maldives” into Instagram, a product name into YouTube. Social media SEO is making sure your posts are among the results.
It has two parts:
- Search inside the platform. TikTok, Instagram and YouTube each have their own search, with their own rules.
- Social posts on Google. Google shows videos and posts in its results, and its AI Overviews cite them. In 36 AI Overviews we captured for marketing and travel questions, a quarter of the citations were videos or social posts, most of them on YouTube. See which sources Google’s AI Overviews cite.
How it differs from website SEO
The aim is the same: be the best answer to what people search. What ranks, and why, is different.
| Website SEO | Social media SEO (from our tracked searches) | |
|---|---|---|
| What ranks | Pages | Videos and posts |
| What counts most | Relevance, links and the site’s authority | On TikTok, how well the video matches the search, by TikTok’s own account. Likes, shares and saves explained little of the order |
| Age of what ranks | Pages can rank for years | For the same searches, the median TikTok result was 161 days old and the median Instagram result 15 days |
| Effect of country | Results vary by country | On TikTok, two countries shared about a quarter of the top 20 for the same search on the same day |
| Who holds the top places | Businesses, publishers, platforms | Mostly creators: more than 8 in 10 TikTok results in the New Zealand travel searches we classified |
Common misconceptions
- “Likes, shares and saves decide TikTok rankings.” Across 18,140 TikTok searches, the most-liked video in the top 20 was number one in 6% of them, the most-shared in 6.5% and the most-saved in 7%. By chance alone, it would be 5%. TikTok’s help page says how well a video matches the search usually counts most. See how TikTok search works.
- “You need a big following to rank on TikTok.” More than half of the top-20 TikTok videos (56%) came from accounts with under 10,000 followers, and so did 55% of number-one videos.
- “What you see on your phone is what your customers see.” For the same search on the same day, two countries shared about a quarter of their TikTok top 20. The US and the UK shared 13%.
- “Old videos stop ranking on TikTok.” 24% of top-20 videos were more than a year old, and the median was 166 days.
How to start
- Write down the searches your customers make, market by market, in their language. Start with the platform’s own search suggestions.
- Run each search from your customers’ country.
- Note who ranks: you, competitors, creators or resellers, and how old the posts are.
- Make one post for each search you can answer, with its words in the caption, on screen and spoken.
- Re-check the same searches regularly, and more often on Instagram, where more than half of ranking posts are under a month old.
The questions in this guide
- How do you do TikTok SEO? A six-step plan.
- How does TikTok search work? What TikTok says, and four tests on 18,140 searches.
- Is TikTok search different from Google search? The same 15 searches on both.
- Can a business rank in TikTok search? How often businesses do, and how they get in.
- How do you do Instagram SEO? Why recent posts dominate.
How we know
- TikTok: 18,140 TikTok searches tracked in SocialSeal, mostly for travel and hospitality brands, plus finance, rental and consumer-goods brands, run from 27 countries. The latest capture of each, between November 2025 and 30 October 2026, top 20 results each: 359,995 results. Counts of likes, shares, saves and followers are the latest recorded.
- Instagram: 5,465 Instagram searches tracked for the same brands. 5,141 of them used the same words in the same country as a TikTok search.
- Who made each video: Classified by hand for 73 New Zealand travel searches on TikTok and Instagram, captured on 21 October 2026.
- Google: 36 Google AI Overviews for marketing and travel questions (US, 21 and 26 October 2026).
- Limits: We and our clients chose which searches to track, so they aren't a random sample. The country is where the search ran.
Other questions
- Is social media SEO the same as social media marketing?
- No. Social media marketing covers everything a brand does on social platforms, including ads and community. Social media SEO is one part of it: making sure your posts appear when people search for what you offer.
- Does social media help your website's Google ranking?
- Not directly. Links from social profiles usually don't pass ranking value to your website. Social posts can appear in Google themselves, though, and Google's AI Overviews often cite YouTube videos.
- Which platform should I start with?
- The one your customers search on, in the market you want to reach. Run their searches on each platform from their country and see which one gives them useful answers.
- How do I know if social media SEO is working?
- Track a fixed list of searches from each market, and count how many results are yours and where they rank. Views and followers don't tell you whether people find you when they search.
See who people find when they search for you
The free Visibility Check takes the searches your customers make and shows who they find on TikTok, Instagram and YouTube in each of your markets.
Get your free Visibility Check