The 2nd largest search engine in the world is… completely untapped? 🖼️

25 million people viewed the GIF I created to promote my company. Here’s how I did it in 1 hour and $0 budget.

Aug 04, 2023

Now is the perfect time to invest in GIF-Engine-Optimization (GEO) — the playful evil twin of SEO.

Wait, there are GIF search engines now?

Yes! The last time you searched for a GIF on Instagram, WhatsApp, or even Slack, your search happened through GIPHY, the second-largest search engine in the world (according to its CEO).

The global GIF market is dominated by just two major players: Tenor (acquired by Google in 2018) and GIPHY (acquired by Facebook in 20201), with the latter holding the lion’s share. Over 10 billion GIFs are sent every day (!) via GIPHY.

But the marketing potential is largely untapped.

Not many have discovered the secret power of GIPHY for brand exposure: Uploading your own GIFs and getting them indexed in the search results. 🔥

And guess what? It’s free!

I made this discovery while working at Jolt, an EdTech startup. I created a quick GIF—a CV on a rocket with our logo. Uploaded it on GIPHY and sat back. Today, the view counter stands at a mind-blowing 26 million!

And you can do it, too. Ranking high on GIPHY search results isn't rocket science. I replicated this achievement so many times. It is all about smart keyword play, strategic logo placement, and some creativity to stand out.

Here’s the super effective 5-step guide.

Step 1: Create a business account on GIPHY

This is necessary because only GIFs from businesses and verified creators are indexed in search results. How to do it? Sign up for a regular account using a company domain email (not a personal one like gmail.com), upload 5 random GIFs (you can remove these later), and then apply for a business account with this link.

✨ BONUS: Surprisingly, you can create more than one business account on GIPHY for each business. I suggest creating 4-5 business accounts at the same time using different company emails. More on this trick later! ✨

Approval from GIPHY usually arrives via email in under 24 hours.

Step 2: Hunt for the best GIF keywords

Now, let's go hunting for GIF keywords. Unlike Google, where users search for information, GIPHY users seek emotions and self-expression. There are two paths you can take:

Data-driven gaps: We aim to rank high. For that, we need keywords with high search volumes but few results. We need those rare gems — GIFs that people search for but don't find easily.
Brand-driven emotional keywords: Here, we match our brand with emotional keywords. These types of GIFs not only increase visibility but also encourage potential customers to associate these feelings with our brand.

The best-case scenario? A keyword that is both data-driven and brand-related.

📈 How to identify high-volume search keywords

Unfortunately, there isn't an official way to know the number of GIPHY searches for a particular keyword2. But don’t worry!

There are workarounds to find high-volume search keywords:

Use a 3rd party analytics tool: My favorite tool is Trend Stream's free tool, which provides hourly updates on top trending GIF searches on GIPHY.
Check searches on Google: Since some people search their GIFs on Google instead of GIPHY, we can simply use traditional SEO tools to find popular “{X}+GIF” searches. Simply search “GIF” and you’ll find the trendy combinations. If you’re looking for a free and quick SEO tool, I recommend Wordstream or Ahrefs. No sign-up is required for both.
Steal GIPHY’s insights: Once you’re approved as a business account, you’ll be able to see “Trending Searches” on your dashboard. You’ll also see “Content Gaps”, which are highly searched terms on GIPHY that are in need of more of content. This data is official and reliable, but the downside here is that GIPHY only shares a few keywords here every week.

🧠 How to identify underserved keywords

This one is straightforward: Enter your keyword on the GIPHY search bar and check the number of results that appear. The counter is displayed at the top.

If a keyword has over 10,000 results, it's likely too competitive. However, if there are less than 10,000 but more than 1,000, it's viable, and if there are less than 1,000, it's a gold mine.

❤️‍🔥 How to identify brand-related emotional keywords

Here, the focus is on your audience and its pain points. It comes down to one very simple question: What core desire does your product satisfy?

Money/Economic: Positive keywords include powerful, secured, superior. Negative keywords include stressed, poor, worry.
Knowledge: Positive keywords include confident, clever, understand. Negative keywords include confused, unsure, inferior.
Social: Positive keywords include important, praised, admired. Negative keywords include isolated, anxious, rejected.
Sex/Love: Positive keywords include passion, affectionate, devoted. Negative keywords include hurt, heartbroken, alone.
Entertainment: Positive keywords include interested, fun, amazed. Negative keywords include bored, annoyed, sad.
Purpose: Positive keywords include optimistic, confident, spirited. Negative keywords include empty, distressed, fraustrated.
Health: Positive keywords include energetic, alive, strong. Negative keywords include uncomfortable, pain, weak.

Step 3: Create your GIFs

Now that we got our keywords, it’s time to create the actual animated graphics. You can use free tools like ‘GIFnText’ and Canva. They allow you to overlay texts and logos on stock videos or create entirely animated GIFs.

One important tip here: Make sure to place your logo at one of the corners of the GIF, without disturbing the overall visual too much. Also, keep in mind that GIPHY uses image recognition technology to determine the content of your GIF, so make sure it aligns with your keywords.

Step 4: Tag, tag, tag

The next step is to upload your GIFs. You can include up to 20 tags when doing so. GIPHY got its own tagging guidelines, but I recommend tagging the following:

Your original keyword: First up, tag the magic keyword you found in Step 2. If it's a multiple-word phrase, get creative and tag it with spaces, without spaces, and as standalone words too.
Synonyms. Next, sprinkle in some other words with the same meaning.
Partial words: Now, for the secret sauce… GIPHY usually shows search results in real-time (while typing). So, slice up your keyword into smaller bits and tag those too. For example, if your keyword is Powerful, then add the tags #powe, #power, #powerf, and #powerfu. This trick moved the needle for my GIFs.

Step 5: Play the waiting game

Our GIFs now are live — hooray! Once published, the best practice is to simply wait. Even if a particular GIF barely gets any views at first, it can explode later, even without taking any further action. I, therefore, advise posting branded GIFs as early as possible in order to reap the rewards down the road.

Success is not guaranteed, but if you try again and again with enough GIFs and improve your tag game after measuring the performance of each GIF, at least one GIF will most likely break out and be exposed to millions. It is therefore important not to put all your eggs on one GIF, because there is no limit to the number of GIFs you can publish (and quantity doesn’t really hurt any single GIF’s probability of success).

My CV on a rocket took 2 months to reach its first 1M views, and other GIFs I made for other companies took a bit longer.

✨ BONUS: Leverage one powerful cognitive bias

GIFs are noisy products. When people are looking for a GIF, they are exposed to lots of moving pictures at the same time, each trying to grab their attention.

So how do you beat the noise?

In my case, I used a trick that probably led to the immediate success of the GIF: earlier we mentioned that multiple business accounts could be created for the same company — so I posted the exact same GIF from different accounts.

I posted the GIF with one account, then with another account, and then with another account. This led to the fact that amidst all the noise of the search results, there was one GIF that popped up repeatedly and grabbed people’s attention. The move is in line with a cognitive bias called the mere-exposure effect, which says: the more exposed, the more loved (up to a point, where said pattern is reversed). If the assumption is correct, then the initial exposure to the GIF results in viewers liking the next exposures more, as they continue to scroll.

That’s it!

You now have everything you need to start experimenting with GEO ✅

While some people think that GIF views are a mere vanity metric — I argue otherwise. For every company I did this for, we saw a nice spike in website traffic (from direct/search) when the GIF exploded. Also, when considering the tiny amount of time and resources required to start GIF Engine Optimization, I truly believe it’s totally worth it.

P.S. Drop links to your published GIFs here in the comments. I’d love to see them and help you amplify them 🎉