Instagram is the second-best social media platform for online marketing with its over 1 billion users, a milestone it reached in June 2018.

Are you using Instagram to promote your business? Maybe you want to become an influencer. Or, maybe you share interesting and/or useful content you want a lot of people to see it.

Regardless of your reason for using Instagram, now, you can grow your account using the good old SEO. I know it sounds are bit weird because SEO was always about websites but, trust me, it’s easier done than said. Actually, you can optimize your account even if you’ve never done it before.

How?

In this post, we’ll show you exactly how to use an SEO strategy on your Instagram account and take you through all the steps of the process.

What Is SEO?

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the practice of improving aspects of your website to boost its visibility on search engines for relevant search queries. It usually includes using keywords, headings and subheadings, alt text for images, writing quality content, internal and external linking, technical optimization, and more.

Does this sound intimidating?

You don’t have to worry about most of these things because you use only the basic ones!

5 Instagram SEO Tips to Boost Your Account Visibility

1. Use Hashtags

Hashtags are the most basic method for optimizing Instagram. They work like the keywords do in website optimization, allowing users to find specific content using them. When you use hashtags, you rank your posts on them. In that way, you make them visible to anyone who searches for the hashtags used in them in the Tags search section.

In order to rank high in the Tags search results, you need to use the right hashtags. To do that, you can try finding hashtags manually by analyzing similar accounts to yours or searching online. Or, you can save yourself from that daunting task by using our Hashtag Wizard app.

Using our app is easy as a pie. All you need is to write a word that’s relevant for your content or a hashtag you’ve seen in similar posts and our wizard will work its magic and find the best hashtags for your content.

2. Optimize Your Profile

Instagram, just like browsers, can be searched. You can write any words you like and the profiles that best match your query will appear in the search results. Moreover, users can search Instagram for keywords since late 2020. That’s why you need to optimize your profile.

Your profile includes your name, username, and bio. These are the most visible part of your profile. Plus, they are searchable and work like ranking factors, which is why you need to optimize all three of them and eventually match them to boost your profile rank in search results.

Your name and username are easy to match, but you still need to optimize them. You can do that by using your primary keywords. For example, if you own a coffee shop, you could use the keyword “(your name) coffee shop” or “coffee shop (your location)”.

When it comes to the bio, you should spare a few minutes to think about how to craft it. Your bio should tell who you are and why should people follow you. It should also include your brand’s name, your secondary keywords, and the main hashtag you want to rank for.

Take a look at this profile. Do you see how its name, username, and bio match? Do you see the words they share? You should do the same to optimize your profile.

3. Use Alt Text in Your Posts

In website SEO, we use Alt text to make images searchable by search engines. You can use also it in your posts to increase their reach and impressions.

By adding alt text to your captions, you describe your photo in detail to help the Instagram algorithm better understand its content. Plus, it allows visually impaired users to understand your content. And, while Instagram automatically generated the alt text for your photos, you should edit them to make them more descriptive and optimize them with keywords.

To access this feature, you need to create a new post and right before publishing it, go to:

• “Advanced settings”
• “Write Alt Text”
• Write a descriptive caption of your photo.
• Click the check symbol and share your post.

4. Write Keyword-Optimized and Descriptive Captions

With the introduction of searching by keywords, Instagram allowed users to search profiles for keywords in addition to usernames and hashtags. That means Instagram can rank any keyword-optimized profile. Hence, to rank in the search engines for keywords, you need to write captions with keywords. For example, if you are an interior designer, adding keywords like “interior design”, “home decor”, and “home interiors” to your captions will help Instagram better understand your post and rank it for the relevant keywords.

To further help the Instagram algorithm understand your content, your captions should be as descriptive as possible. And, if you want to promote and sell products/services via your posts, the captions should also be catchy and engaging to make users want to buy what you sell.

5. Get Tagged

And, last but not least, you can use tagging as part of your SEO Instagram strategy. By getting tagged, your profile will reach a wider audience, will drive more visitors to your profile, and eventually turn (some of) them into followers and customers.

Think of tagging as backlinking but instead of other websites linking back to your site’s pages, on Instagram, other profiles tag you in their posts. It’s somewhat similar, right? Well, the result is the same – your profile gets greater exposure.

But, how to get tagged?

You can encourage people to tag you in their posts by running giveaways and promotions that involve tagging your account or by featuring them in your posts, thus promoting their account in return.

 Using SEO strategy on your Instagram account sounds pretty simple, right? So, what are you waiting for? Open the app and start optimizing your profile right now!

“Finding the best hashtags has never been so easy”