Maisie Lloyd
I'm passionate about recording the world, but most of all driven by creativity and collaborative environments. My experience revolves around the production of digital content, pertaining to graphic design, writing copy, and video and audio content.
What’s Instagram SEO?
Like traditional SEO, Instagram SEO focuses on optimising your content in order for it to be easier to discover. Optimisation ensures that content is positioned to an audience without having to invest money in ad campaigns.
How does Instagram SEO work?
Instagram will display the searched for content depending on a few elements of the content:
- The captions
- Using hashtags
- Profile bios
What factors are considered for the algorithm?
Instagram’s algorithm works in various ways for each area of its app, i.e., reels, the main feed, and the explore page. It factors in context from the search term, the searcher’s profile, and then considers all the content out there to provide an accurate response.
Instagram’s algorithm utilises the keywords from users’ search terms to provide profiles and posts that are relevant to the search. Instagram looks to marry the search term to existing content containing hashtags, locations, captions, and profile bios. So it works in a very similar way to that of search engines like Google.
The algorithm will prioritise displaying content that is successful. So, content that has successfully garnered clicks, likes, saves, follows, shares, and comments will also be a factor in whether it is displayed to people.
Instagram’s algorithm will factor in context for display results, so things like the kind of content the user interacts with, or the people the searcher follows. This will allow Instagram to provide more tailored results.
Does my business need to do Instagram SEO?
Instagram SEO gives businesses an opportunity to get more from their social content, increasing the probability for newer audiences to see their content.
Having an awareness and appreciation for the impact of Instagram SEO can inform how content is created. When content is properly optimised, it increases the probability of the content seeing success, as well as an increased chance of expanding your audience.
How to optimise your Instagram content?
Account optimisations – bio, name, captions, link trees
Optimising your Instagram is essential, and there’s no better place to begin the process than on your profile. Optimising your profile is actually quite simple, just follow these simple steps:
- Make sure your username is aligned with your brand, ensuring you’re easy to find online. Use your business’s name, if it’s taken, consider adding the year of establishment to the end of the handle.
- Make sure your business’s location is attached to the page; Instagram will then be able to factor this in when displaying geo-relevant content. This applies to both your profile and the posts you share.
- Your bio should utilise the keywords that summarise your business and what it offers in terms of products or services. Clear sign posting will ensure you’re connected to the right potential audience sooner.
Geo-tagging //Location-based Optimisation
Tagging your location in posts can be just as important as including this information on your profile. Location tagging, like with hashtags, can be a great way to ‘tag’ content, which then groups that particular content with anything else that tags that location.
Caption optimisation (including hashtags) – Implementing your keywords
Hashtags can serve as a really useful tool. They can be used as a tagging tool that can differentiate your content from others. So instead of using your keywords as a hashtag, create a quality caption utilising keywords.
Then use the hashtags as additional qualifiers, so tag the location or maybe a niche that the content pertains to. For instance, if a photographer shares a photo of a bird, instead of tagging #bird, they would be better typing #50mmbirdphotgraphy – This provides the search engine with a little bit more information, and it diversifies the hashtag enough that your content wont be lost in a sea of content using the same generic hashtag.
Include alt text – making content accessible – including captions on video content and descriptive captions.
Alt text is different from the caption, it’s an accessibility feature that allows a brand to describe what is featured in the content. This allows those with impairments to still access social content. This is critical, not only to improve your general strategy but to demonstrate your brand’s ability to deal with accessibility challenges. Alike alt text, captions allow those with auditory impairments to still access and enjoy content alike their peers without accessibility hurdles.
To add alt text, you’ll need to create a new post > press more options at the bottom of the controls panel > scroll to the bottom of the more options page to find the alt text feature.
Scheduling – knowing the optimal posting times
Another facet of Instagram optimisation is to perfect your scheduling. Pinpointing your audience’s most responsive periods will increase the likelihood of driving engagement and traffic.
Instagram helps businesses figure this out in its insights dashboard. Simply navigate to > Settings and activity > Under the for professionals section, you’ll see ‘Insights’, click on this > The navigate to new followers and tap again > Swipe down and you’ll be able to see when your followers utilise Instagram.
Using Instagram’s collaborative tool for influencer campaigns and collaborations
Utilise the features Instagram provides to make the most of your content. Particularly the collaborative feature, which, like link building in traditional SEO, can help provide authority by sharing content across 2 accounts.
This works particularly well when collaborating with influencers or brands that have an established audience that intersects with your existing one. It positions your brand to many more people, whilst still placing it in front of relevant members.
Optimising for Instagram helps you to create a strategy that focuses on a symbiotic relationship between the different aspects of your marketing strategy, ensuring the goals for your website are being supported by the output of content on your social channels. It helps you to direct your traffic to the product, service, or content that you’re trying to push!
