Best practices for Keyword expansion for TikTok Shop Ads

Note: Keyword expansion for Shop Ads is currently available to all advertisers in the US and SEA and will slowly be rolling out to advertisers in other locales.

Keyword expansion is available for PSA and VSA TikTok Shop Ads. Keyword expansion works best for advertisers who have experience with keyword lists on other platforms and know which keywords work best for them.

Keyword best practices

1. Finding the right keywords:

   • Ensure quality delivery and search matches with keywords that are relevant to your ad creative.

   • Use keywords that work well for your business. Choose keywords that have performed well in the past, or use industry best practices to choose broadly successful keywords.

     • Put yourself in your customers' shoes: Imagine how your customer thinks of your product or service, target that category rather than trying to anticipate their exact search.

     • Use your well known brand and sub-brand names: this is how you're leveraging your brand's value

     • Use descriptions: Start small and then add more descriptors and keywords over time to optimize your campaign. (e.g., start with "eye shadow", then later explore "best eye shadow")

     • Use more than just one word: Make sure to link your keywords by theme, and ensure the keywords are clear and relevant to one another. (e.g., "movies", "funny movies", and "new comedy actors" are all clearly related.)

   • If you need a place to start, you can go to Keyword Ranking in Seller Center to see popular or trending keywords related to your business. Note: You'll need to be the owner of the Seller Center shop to see search analytics for your shop.

   • Match keywords to your products and search intent. People commonly search for categories, product or brand names, and influencers.

   • Optimize your keyword selections by monitoring performance at the campaign, ad group, and keyword levels.

2. Match type:

   • Use broad match type. Broad match allows your ad campaign to explore and deliver your ads based on common and relevant search terms.

Measuring success

• Keyword reporting: Measure your keyword success. See reporting for your keywords in TikTok Ads Manager to see which are performing the best.

  • Use metrics like click-through rate or conversion metrics like Purchase rate to refine your keyword list or adjust your budget.

  • You can compare these metrics from your manual keywords and the performance of the overall ad group to better understand the impact your keywords have

• Keywords are applied at adgroup level, so do think through how to group your products by adgroup

  • Keywords should be relevant to the products in the adgroup to ensure a high relevance score and maximize delivery.

• Note: Remember that Keyword expansion is NOT keyword targeting and not all purchases will come from keywords. PSA and VSA ads are delivered to TikTok the feed AND to search at the same time. Ads are more likely to reach high intent users with keyword expansion, but ads will reach users based on your defined targeting criteria (audience, demographics, interests, behaviors, device) Keyword expansion is an optional ADDITION to expand into search placements.

General PSA & VSA best practices

• Best practices for Video Shopping Ads with TikTok Shop

• Best practices for Product Shopping Ads

Note: Negative keywords are not available at this time.

Learn how to use Keyword expansion for TikTok Shop ads, learn more about Keyword expansion for TikTok Shop ads, and see reporting for Keyword expansion in TikTok Ads Manager.