Instagram SEO: Top Tips to Boost Your Visibility on Instagram

You can learn how to optimize your content and Instagram SEO profile to increase your brand awareness and attract 10k organic Instagram followers.

Are you looking to reach new audiences on Instagram? How can adding SEO optimization help more people discover your brand on the social network?

Social media marketers need help getting our brands discovered. Take the content marketing guys, for example. They have Google, and they can optimize content for SEO.

If they’ve done this well, the pages will eventually attract traffic from search results.

We must rely on word of mouth; users share the content with their social media audience.

What to do?

We, too, can do SEO and use this marketing strategy to attract organic followers.

In this article, we will discuss Instagram SEO in detail and share some strategies for optimizing your social media posts and profiles for relevant keywords.

Before that, let’s discuss how keyword search works on Instagram and what’s changed recently.

How Does Keyword Search Affect Instagram SEO?

Instagram has always been a keyword-friendly place. Well, at least to some extent. Users can always use them to find other Instagram user accounts.

As long as, the account includes these keywords in its Instagram profile. Such as name, username, and bio —or using a hashtag. Instagram users can find you when it is searching.

However, in recent times, the Instagram platform has taken its SEO capabilities to the next level. Now, I should warn you upfront that depending on where you live, you may still need to be able to use this feature. That’s because keyword search is only available to some people now (but it probably will be soon).

However, USA, UK, Canada, and Australia users can now use keywords to search for content. This means that Instagram search is starting to work a lot like a regular search engine. Of course, the type of results you get differs from what you see on Google. However, being able to search (and be found) this way is of enormous value to brands.

However, to take advantage of it, you need to understand how the Instagram algorithm works and optimize your content for search. So, let’s first understand the algorithm. Like search engines, we know little about how Instagram determines what content to display in search results.

The social media platform considers several factors, such as the type of content, captions, and even when it was posted. It also claims to use machine learning to find content.

The above only tells us a little about Instagram SEO capabilities. However, it does tell us enough to know, with some confidence, what to do to make your content more discoverable.

And here it is.

How to Optimize Instagram Accounts and Contents?

#1 Instagram Profile Optimization

While Instagram SEO is about making your content—posts, stories, photos, and videos—discoverable, you should start by optimizing your profile.

However, beyond discoverability, you must provide a great user experience to get new visitors and convert them into subscribers.

Here are some of the best and most valuable ways to achieve this:

• Make your username searchable: This is the first thing the social platform will look for regarding the user’s keywords. So, ensure your username is simple and contains the most relevant keywords to your brand or product category. Ideally, it should also be free of any characters that confuse the public.
• Include a keyword in your business name: Naturally, your brand name may not contain any exact keywords. However, you can expand on Instagram to include additional terms next to your brand name. For example, you can add your product category to the name.
• Finally, include a tracking link in your bio: This will allow you to track interactions with your profile.

#2 Using Keywords in Your Instagram Content

SEO for Instagram is mainly about including the right keywords in your content. So, let’s look at the different options for enriching what you post with the other phrases on Instagram. Users can type their name or username in the search box.

These three most common places to include keywords on Instagram are:

• Your bio;
• Post captions;
• Hashtags;
• Alt text:

Let’s quickly review each of these. We’ll also discuss including keywords in your image alt tags to boost your Instagram SEO.

#1 Including Keywords in Instagram Bio

Your primary target keyword—the phrase that best describes your business or brand category—should be part of your business name. We covered this above. But of course, there are other terms you should optimize your profile for. And the best place to include these secondary keywords is in your bio.

Secondary keywords are phrases that complement your focus keyword. They are related to your niche because they enrich and expand the meaning of the focus keyword.

#2: Including keywords in your signature

Writing proper captions on Instagram is an art in itself. However, you can take it further and ensure they help your content appear in the Instagram platform’s search results.

There are two ways to do this:

If you post something related to your product or service, could you add the title with additional keywords?

However, if you promote your content, include keywords related to its main topic. In short, these will be secondary keywords for the phrase for which you initially optimized the content.

Let’s use our profile as an example again.
As you can see, our main keyword is Canva. After all, this is Canva – a comprehensive internet photo editor.
Our secondary keywords build on this and reveal more about our brand and services. They will give you more information about Canva and tell you what services we provide. Check out: @Canva Another example is a photo editor platform.
In this case, the brand didn’t need to add the main keyword to the name, as it was already present in their brand. However, they cleverly included product categories in the bio and some sales pitches.

Here’s an example of how we do this with our content:

#3: Including keywords in hashtags

Instagram allows you to optimize Hashtags on posts and add additional search-optimized keywords without expanding your title.

An added benefit of optimizing hashtags for SEO is that they allow you to include keywords and phrases that might not naturally fit into a title.

Take a look at the same post above. We cannot include all these keywords in the title. However, with hashtags, we can easily target them all.

That’s the power of hashtags when it comes to Instagram SEO. They give you an extra chance to be found in searches that are relevant to your content.

#4 Using keywords in image Alt tags

Regarding Instagram, the Alt Tag works like similar tags implemented on websites. A short text is meant to help visually impaired users detect what is in the image in front of them and fully immerse themselves in their online experience.

But, like traditional SEO, you can use the tag to improve your keyword targeting.

Select “write alt text” to add your tag when adding a new photo to the social network. Describe what’s in the image and include at least a primary additional keyword. This will help Instagram better understand the post’s content and find it in relevant user searches. Therefore, using the right keyword also helps to grow followers count on Instagram.

Conclusion

Instagram’s SEO capabilities are less advanced than those of Yandex, Google, and other search engines. However, it is enough to help you increase the recognition of your brand and content.