Nowadays, Instagram is positioned as one of the top platforms for growing your business. Instagram reaches more than one billion active monthly users and now it’s arguably more popular than social media giants such as Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn.
Do you want to reach more users to make your business stand out through your Instagram posts? You need to do SEO for your Instagram. SEO has been a growing topic of conversation as businesses strive to grow their discoverability.
What is Instagram SEO?
Instagram SEO means optimizing your Instagram content to be found in search results. When someone uses a hashtag for searching in the search box, you want your account to appear at the top. The users must know about your brand to increase your discoverability on Instagram in an organic way. These SEO tips and guidance will help you achieve improved discoverability.
Let’s dig into eight of the top techniques you can apply.
Techniques To Improve Your Instagram Discoverability
- Optimize your Instagram profile
- Use relevant keywords
- Use right hashtags
- Image captions
- Instagram analytics
- Advantage of an Instagram video
- Use secondary keywords in the bio
- Include primary keyword in your display name
1. Optimize Your Instagram Profile
Make sure your profile is set up as a business page and needs to be set for the public. Your Instagram profile image should be clear, attractive, and related to your content, and also you have followed any brand themes for Instagram. Choosing a username should be brand-appropriate, memorable, and searchable on Instagram.
Add your website link or social sites in your bio to drive referral traffic to your website. Switch to a professional account for getting more features on Instagram. Business accounts or creators are able to add locations in each post.
Here are a few tips to optimize your Instagram profile:
- Make your profile public
- Choose an attractive brand image
- Choose a recognizable username
- Switch to the business account
- Include your website link in the bio
Your location only displays on your profile page on the application, not the web version of Instagram. Once it is attached to your account, it sends a ranking signal to the Instagram search engine. Set the groundwork to build up your Instagram business profile to improve your Instagram SEO.
2. Use Relevant Keywords
Instagram recommends including relevant keywords in post captions to improve your brand discoverability. Instagram search results only included relevant hashtags, accounts, and places in the old version. Now, search results also include keyword results for browsing. It is more helpful for lesser-known brands, and easy for people to find your content without searching for your specific account name.
To find target keywords for your business, use keyword research tools to see the target keywords that are driving traffic to your website. If you want to use manual keyword research, then start with Instagram. Click the magnifying glass to search for a phrase or long-tail keyword and see what comes up.
For example, when an Instagram user makes use of the explore page to search for content. The user might search for the phrase #socialmediamarketing or #socialmediamanagementtool or #socialmediamanagementapps to find creative content on this subject. All the trending posts, accounts, tags, and places will show up on top. If you optimize the right keyword for your business, you can get more organic traffic to your website.
3. Use Right Hashtags
Hashtags are a powerful key to making your business more discoverable on Instagram.
Instagram now disclosed that keywords and hashtags should appear directly in the caption to impact the search results. It allows up to 30 hashtags per post, but the truth of Instagram is adding 10-20 hashtags will not help you get additional distribution.
Some specific hashtag tips for showing up your profile in the search results:
- Use only relevant hashtags
- Insert 3 to 5 hashtags per post
- Select the relevant keywords for your business
- Prefer choosing branded hashtags
The best SEO hashtags depend on your business and your audience. Take a look at your Instagram insights to get a sense of which hashtags are already driving traffic to your posts. Instagram insights show you insights into which hashtags people use to visit your profile. To identify trending hashtags on Instagram, go to the explore page and type a hashtag into the search bar. You will see a list of trending hashtags on top. Tap on it to see the total number of posts for each.
4. Image Captions
Adding image captions is an effective SEO technique to improve your discoverability. The image caption is a description of a particular image that makes the content accessible to those with visual impairment. It also describes the image in case the image fails to load. Adding tags and descriptions in the image captions will help people discover your content.
Instagram uses object recognition technology to create an automatic description of each photo, and it also provides information to the search results about the content of your photo. The automatic alt text will never be as detailed as alt text created by a human. The alt text is more accurate, and people might use it to search for content.
5. White Hat SEO Techniques
SEO is not only important for the website, it also takes a significant place in Instagram search results. If you want to get quality traffic on your Instagram page, you need to follow white-hat SEO tactics for getting effective results. While using SEO techniques to improve your brand visibility, you can see a massive reach in your rankings.
Many business pages are doing black-hat SEO to get quick results. The black-hat techniques easily affect your page performance and rankings on the search results, but they can have a negative impact over time. You should remember SEO is a slow process but it is permanent and generates authentic visibility for your profile.
6. Instagram Analytics
Instagram has an in-platform analytics feature. It shows you everything about your page’s performance. It shows you the posts with the most engagement, impressions, completion rate, reach, reply count, demographics data, etc. You could identify your audience’s highest engagement time on Instagram and other stats to help you post more effectively.
Use demographic data like age and gender to guide your content strategy and find your follower’s locations. You could track click-through rates, page views, and website clicks with Instagram analytics. You could identify your most viewed content and create your future content based on that.
7. Advantage Of Instagram Video
Video has become the accepted form of absorbing content and grabbing your viewer’s attention. Your videos will automatically start playing when people are scrolling their feeds. Instagram Reels and other video content offer a great way to attract Instagram users and make it easy to consume your content.
Instagram video allows your business to increase the 30-second time limit so that the user gets the full message of your video. You could highlight secondary keywords and hashtags in your video captions. Video content has more chances to be clicked on, watched, shared in stories, and over a DM. It increases engagement, and other social media KPIs, which hopefully reach new users on Instagram. This will create a positive for your Instagram discoverability.
8. Include Primary Keyword In Your User Name
Instagram has its own self-contained search engine result page. To show up your page in the search bar, you need to work within the app itself to reach that top-of-search positioning.
You should use your primary keyword in both display name and user name. When you have used the primary keyword in both places, you are more likely to show up in the search results. Your page gets more chances of being picked up by the algorithm.
Conclusion
The ability to search for content on Instagram is a great opportunity for business owners, bloggers, entrepreneurs, and influencers. It makes your content more widely accessible and also increases the significance of creating strategic, intentional content and value-driven. If you are adding alt-text to your image, your content will become more comprehensive and accessible than ever. Use the above 8 Instagram SEO tricks to optimize your content for discoverability, accessibility, and searchability. Always clear on your target audiences, how you can serve them and you have a winning Instagram SEO strategy.
Related posts:
- 8 Must-Use SEO Techniques To Increase Your Discoverability On Instagram - February 28, 2022
Instagram’s community guidelines clearly state that “posting repetitive comments or content” is not okay. If you use the same hashtags for every post, your “content” will be penalized by the algorithm. When you create a post, only use hashtags that make sense.
Great points, Robert, and thanks for reading. Jamming your posts full of non-relevant hashtags is not helpful. It can actually hurt your efforts.