Episode 8

It may surprise you to hear that Instagram SEO is really important for businesses and brand owners who are thinking about getting more eyes and more engagement on their Instagram posts. 

So how can you optimize your posts for SEO? Well, you can still use hashtags and search for user accounts, but now you can also search via interest. This is similar to Google Suggest where, you click on the search, you put in something that you’re searching for, and instead of hitting enter, you get a pop-up of suggestions similar to what you’re searching for. What comes up are similar keywords that you can think about having in your website. It’s the same thing with Instagram. Initially, when searching hashtags and user accounts on Instagram, search results would only show hashtags or accounts that have used that word in their posts or their account names, which was limiting. 

Now Instagram has broadened their search horizons by incorporating some more of this “searcher intent.” This is good news for any business on Instagram, because they now have a wider audience that can find more content through Instagram search. Businesses will have more potential customers who are actively looking for what you promote and are going to be able to find you faster. Also businesses don’t have to feel limited by the use of hashtags, and they can do more competitive research, more efficiently learning about what others in their space are doing on Instagram. And businesses can build community in their space as well. 

So how do you use this search by intent or by interest on Instagram? Well, it’s the same way you would find an account. You just head on over to that little magnifying glass icon on your desktop or on your app and type in the topic of interest. For example, if I wanted to find vintage furniture, I would type in “mid-century furniture.” With that search, as soon as I started typing in “mid-century” or “mid cen”, I’d get “mid-century interiors,” “mid-century chair,” “mid-century interiors leather,” etc. So now you can see what other people are searching for on Instagram. Now that you have this information from Instagram, you can attract new customers through some of your photos and your copy. You can drive your potential customers to your website because they are searching for what you’re writing about in your caption and even in the alt text fields of your photo. 

So should you really worry about Instagram SEO? Yes, you should. It’s about optimizing everything that you do, whether it’s your website, podcast, or Instagram. It’s about taking the time to really think about your Instagram posts and making sure that you’re getting the most engagement and ROI on each of them.

There are about one billion users on Instagram. So why not stand out by using this function that’s available and completely free? So again, all you have to do is head on over to that magnifying glass on Instagram, search for just a topic that you might be offering, and before you hit enter, take a look at what pops up. That’s what people are searching for! It’s going to be other keywords, which we know are so important for SEO. Including those keywords in your captions is a win-win! Just make sure that these keywords and phrases stand out and are relevant to what your post is about. Honestly, most of your competitors probably aren’t doing this, so definitely give this feature a try! It opens a world of possibilities as users can now find your content based on your whole caption, not just your hashtags.

How genius is that?