Do you know? Instagram is one of the largest social media platforms with more than 1 billion active users. Meanwhile, Instagram became a viable marketing platform to improve your business by gaining a lot of potential audiences. When you gain a higher reach for your Instagram page, the conversion rate for your business increases rapidly. Focusing on your profile optimization on Instagram takes your business to the next level.
So, how to reach your target audiences and create opportunities to engage with your account? There is a surprising answer. It is nothing but Instagram SEO. Applying SEO techniques on your Instagram profile, optimizing your brand, and gaining visibility among new users.
Find more people interested in your business with Instagram SEO tactics and grow audiences organically.
Before getting into the SEO techniques, we need to know some basic algorithms of Instagram to enhance your profile.
Instagram Algorithm
When your Instagram post ranks higher, there are higher chances to gain organic reach. But, the question is, on what basis the Instagram algorithm works? The simple secrets are:
Post Instagram videos regularly to gain the attention of your target audiences.
User engagement is the biggest factor in determining your Instagram ranking. Engage your users with a constant update in your profile.
Use only the organic way to gain likes, views, and followers, or the Instagram algorithm may ban your profile.
6 SEO Tips To Uplift Your Instagram Reach
Now, think of Instagram as a search engine since it has some in-built features that act like a mini-Google. To boost your visibility on Instagram, one needs a proper SEO technique. Here are some interesting six SEO hacks to expand your Instagram reach.
1. Optimize Your Instagram Profile
Take a step forward to increase your Instagram reach by optimizing your profile. Higher traffic comes to your Instagram profile only if your account looks attractive. Making some unique edits to your profile will help to boost your Instagram SEO. While creating your Instagram account, make sure it looks clear and attractive and follows the branding guidelines.
Follow the few tricks to make your profile stand out from competitors:
Change your profile visibility to public
Select a colorful profile picture that correlates your brand
Create an easily identifiable and recognizable username
Change your Instagram profile to a business account
Include your website link on the bio to gain organic traffic
Profile optimization is the basement for your Instagram SEO improvement, and now, we are moving into the technical optimization steps.
2. Include Keyword In Bio And Username
As Instagram acts as the search engine, you have to include the keywords wherever possible. Provide your primary keyword on your username to find your account in the Instagram search result. Instagram search works similarly to Google search. So, the keywords remain the most relevant factor to show on the search results.
Optimize your profile by providing the target keyword on two main areas:
Username
Instagram Bio
Insert the primary keyword on your username to find your account. But ensure that the name looks natural to gain organic traffic. Next comes the bio. It remains the best opportunity to provide your keyword naturally. Add your keyword with a traceable URL while specifying your business in detail. Make your bio more fun and attractive to grab your audience’s attention.
3. Treat Hashtags As Keyword
The hashtags on Instagram act as a keyword for users to discover the relevant content. When a user searches a specific hashtag, the Instagram search result displays all posts tagged with the same content. Moreover, if you use your keyword with higher search volume as the hashtag, more visitors will land on your post, thus increasing your Instagram reach.
Use the right keywords as your hashtag relevant to your post to gain greater engagement. Inserting keywords as the hashtag remains the traditional SEO strategy to rank your account on Instagram. A clear hashtag strategy with the target keyword boosts your visibility on Instagram.
4. Use Alt Text
Instagram provides a great feature to provide alternative text to the caption of your posts in detail. The alt text on Instagram is a new feature that helps visually impaired users to enjoy using the application. Alt text not only increases the user experience but remains a great path to SEO improvement.
Populate your Instagram post by providing keyword-rich alt text to attract audiences. To utilize the alt text option, head on to the “Advanced Settings” option available right before your shared photo. Then scroll to the bottom and select the “write your alt text” option to craft the perfect description for your image. Optimizing your content with the right keywords in alt text ranks your post better on search results.
5. Go With White-Hat SEO Techniques
Though SEO is more favorable to the search engine algorithm both on search results and Instagram, it is a slow process. While using SEO techniques to improve your business reach, one needs patience. Going ahead with the white-hat SEO techniques for optimizing your Instagram profile provides a permanent and effective result in your ranking.
Some brands move on to black-hat SEO tactics to gain quick results. But, remember these results are only temporary, and there won’t be any authentic visibility to your profile. The black-hat techniques may easily affect your performance on the search results. So, it is best to build genuine white-hat SEO tactics even if it takes time and effort.
6. Encourage Tagging
Apart from the optimization of your profile and content, there is another important and easy factor that helps to discover your Instagram profile. It is nothing but the tags and mentions. Increasing your profile tags and mentions are similar to creating quality backlinks on the website.
When someone tags your profile on one of their posts, their audiences will have a chance to visit your profile. It drives greater visibility for your Instagram account and gains more organic reach. One way to increase the chance of getting tagged is by preparing eye-catching content that makes other people share on their accounts. Getting more tags by other accounts is like a vote of confidence which improves your rank on the Instagram reach.
Wrapping Up
SEO is the primary tool to optimize both your website and social media accounts. The tips and tricks mentioned in the article increase your Instagram presence and build organic reach to your account. Instagram SEO not only boosts your reach but provides an excellent content strategy for audiences.
Invest your marketing efforts on Instagram and turn your audiences into your customers with the right SEO strategy!