Are you looking for ways to reach a new Instagram audience? Wondering if adding SEO optimization can drive more people to open their brand on social media?
It is fair to say that we social media marketers have a difficult time when it comes to discovering our brands. For example, take content marketing people. They have Google. They can optimize the content for SEO.
Now, if they did it well, these pages would eventually start attracting traffic from search results month after month. But for us, well, we have to resort to word of mouth and trust users to share our content with their networks. It turns out that we can also do SEO and use this marketing strategy to gain new customers.
In this post, we will discuss SEO for Instagram in detail. We will also look at some strategies for optimizing your posts and social profile for relevant keywords.
Before we discuss that, let’s discuss how Instagram keyword search works and how it has changed recently.
How Keyword Search affects Instagram SEO
Instagram has always supported keywords. Well, at least to some extent.
Users can always use them to find other Instagram profiles. Users can find them in search as long as the account includes these keywords in Instagram profiles (such as name, username, bio) or is used in hashtags.
Recently, however, social media platforms have taken their SEO capabilities to the next level. Now I should already be and let you know that you cannot yet use this facility depending on where you live. This is because keyword searches are not yet available to everyone (but most likely soon).
However, users in the US, UK, Ireland and Canada can now use keywords to search for content. This means that Instagram search works like a regular search engine. Of course, the results you get are different from the ones you see on Google. However, searching in this way (and can be searched) makes a huge difference for brands.
However, to take advantage of this, you must understand how Instagram’s algorithm works and optimize your content for search.
So let’s first understand the algorithm.
Like search engines, we rarely know how Instagram determines what content to display in search results. According to the social media platform, it takes into account many factors such as content type, caption and even posting time. He also claims to use machine learning to find content.
We agree that the above Instagram says very little about Instagram options. However, this is enough to make us understand what to do to make our content more discoverable, with some degree of certainty.
And here it is.
How to optimize content for your Instagram account and SEO
Section I – Instagram profile optimization
While the purpose of Instagram SEO is to make your content – posts, stories, photos and videos – searchable, you need to start by optimizing your profile.
Apart from being discoverable, there is another reason for this: you need to provide a user experience to welcome new visitors and convert them into customers.
Here are the best ways to do this:
# 1 Find Your Username. This is the first thing a social platform user will research for keywords. So make sure your username is simple and has the most relevant keywords related to your brand or product category. Ideally, it should not even have symbols that mislead the public.
# 2. If possible, at least include a keyword in your company name. Naturally, your brand name may not contain any specific keywords. However, you can expand it on Instagram and include additional words next to the brand name. We did this with our account by linking our product category to the title. As a result, the product category also appears in our profile title tag and hopefully increases reach.
#3. Finally, include a trackable link in your bio. In this way, you will be able to track interactions on your profile.
Section II. Using keywords in your Instagram content
SEO for Instagram is about including the right keywords in the right content. So let’s take a look at the various options you post with different phrases that Instagram users can enter in the search box.
The three most common places to include keywords on Instagram are:
- Your biography,
- Signature for publications and
- Hashtags.
# 1 Including Keywords in Instagram Bio
Your primary target keyword – the phrase that most accurately describes your business or brand category – should go into your business name. We covered it above.
But, of course, this is not the only word for which you should optimize your profile. And the best place to include those secondary keywords is in your bio.
Secondary keywords are phrases that complement your primary keyword. They are associated with this because they enrich and expand the meaning of the main keyword.
# 2. With keyword in signature
Writing good Instagram captions is an art in itself. But you can take it a step further and make sure that they help your content appear in the search results of social platforms.
This can be done in two ways:
If you are posting something related to your product or service, supplement the title with additional keywords.
However, if you are promoting your content, include keywords related to its main topic. In short, these will be secondary keywords of the phrase you originally optimized for your content.
#3. Including keywords in hashtags
Hashtags allow you to optimize your posts and add additional search-optimized keywords without expanding the title.
An additional benefit of optimizing hashtags for SEO is that they allow you to include keywords and phrases that may not fit in the title.
#4. Using keywords in optional image tags
When it comes to Instagram, the Alt tag works in the same way as similar tags applied to websites. This short piece of text is intended to help blind users find out what is in the image in front of them and immerse themselves in the Internet. But like traditional SEO, you can use tags to improve your keyword targeting.
When adding a new photo to a social network, select the “Right All Text” option to add your tag. Describe what is depicted in the image and include at least one primary secondary keyword. This will help Instagram to better understand the content of posts and find them in relevant user searches.