Hashtags are out. SEO is in! In this blog, you will find tips on how to use SEO on Instagram. For years, we have adopted the practice of including hashtags in our captions and sometimes in our comment section (#hashtaghide). Hashtags were included as a primary strategy for SEO, reach, and engagement. Now, hashtags play a great role in research. By clicking a hashtag within your nice, you can use it to search content with the best practices (views, engagement, reach) and use it to your advantage.
“I treat our social pages like a mini landing page and website. I try to imagine using our social channels as the main point of purchase.” – Hootsuite’s Social Media Marketing Lead, Brayden Cohen
If you are looking for new methods to use to increase your SEO, check out the tips below:
- Optimize Your Instagram Profile for Search
Update your name to include how you help (i.e. Financial Coach, Business Coach, Gluten Free Recipe Blogger). When you include your title, name of business, and how you help, this helps your name to be displayed sooner when users are looking for what you may have. For example, if I am looking for a financial coach, I will type in financial coach in the search tab, and your account may be one of the first to pop up in my search.
2. Write Keyword-Optimized Captions
Use keywords within your captions that reflect your business. If you are a financial coach, leverage your captions by mentioning keywords your audience looks for. (i.e. budgeting, investing, paying off debt). Short captions are great to use on occasion to break up the style of your content. However, longer captions using specific keywords will allow for a much better performance of your content.
3. Consider Hashtags as Keywords
Where you would put #budgeting, remove the hashtag, and it will still serve as a keyword (SEO). Include more keywords in your captions, in a natural way, of course, and consider those to be your hashtags and improve your SEO.
4. Make the Most Out of Alt Text
Alt Text is an invisible description of a photo that a screen reader can read out loud with audio to people who are blind or visually impaired. Insert your keywords within alt text as a form of SEO as well.
5. Encourage Tagging
Ask your audience to tag someone who could value your content. By encouraging tagging, you increase your chances of being seen by another audience. Creating sharable content helps reach as well.
Track and Optimize
– When reviewing your analytics at the end of each month, track which pieces of content worked best and optimize.
What do you think about this new SEO trend?