Instagram SEO: How to Gain Visibility and Reach on Instagram in 2021

Instagram Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the quality and quantity of traffic to an IG profile/account. It targets unpaid, natural, or organic traffic. It’s no secret that search engine optimization is a powerful & incredible implementation for ranking higher on the platform. When it comes to brands and marketers, Instagram SEO is used to help companies to reach their respective customers or target audiences through fascinating imagery of branded content in an amusing, graphic environment.

Are you struggling with your Instagram marketing strategy, and ways to reach new audiences on Instagram? Or are you a newbie who wants to begin with a good approach? Wherever you are in your path, this guide on Instagram SEO 2021 will definitely help you get the results you deserve. You can also get your rankings further boosted by the algorithm via buying Instagram followers (www.growrealfollowers.com) from legit service providers.

What is Instagram SEO?

Instagram SEO is a set of practices aimed at optimizing your videos/posts to get them ranked higher in the Instagram search results. IG SEO best practices help you improve your chances of being discovered by the target audience who are searching keywords associated to your business. For example, if you search “Samsung” IG will crowd numerous recommendations in the search results that contain that keyword. In the drop-down menu, you will see ‘samsungindia’, ‘samsungmobile’, ‘Samsung’, ‘samsungwithgalaxy’, etc.

That is the power of a search engine, which is a software system that is designed to carry out web searches and often populate automatic suggestion when inserted a letter/word in search bar. In more simple words, if you click-through to one, you’ll go on a page highlighting posts that are linked to the keyword — along with other relevant keywords at the top of the page.

Instagram SEO Evolution

Formerly, to search anything on Instagram, users were restricted to probing for hashtags for searching for account names. When a user would type something into the search bar, a drop-down menu appeared from which he/she could select with respect to relevance. On condition that an account included those keywords in the profile – name, username, bio, or have utilized it in a hashtag, searchers were able to explore it in the search.

The social media platform, on 17 November, 2020 upgraded its SEO proficiencies & search functionality to another phase – a better search engine, that is, from hashtags to alt text now. Instagram Introduced “Keyword Search” that do not necessitate Hashtags. In Instagram’s own words, English-speaking users in six countries, including the US, UK, Ireland, and Canada can now search for content on the platform using keywords, not just hashtags.

Just like Google, Instagram recompenses well-optimized pages with a higher ranking. If you are wondering, how to optimize Instagram business page, stay tuned.

Also read: How to Leverage IGTV for Promoting your business on Instagram in 2021

Why is Instagram SEO Important?

If you are wondering, how will it benefit you, keep reading! Optimizing your content increases your reach, discoverability, and fuels engagement, all of the 3 being success metrics for IG content. The platform is allowing operators use keywords to search for posts too! Instagram’s search activates to work very much like a typical search engine, and being able to be discovered this way makes a huge difference to brands.

Instagram was among the top five most-downloaded apps in both the App Store and via Google Play last year. The app scored 13 million downloads in Q2 2020 alone. As of January 2021, the app is second only to TikTok in the App Store in terms of downloads (occasionally sparring with Facebook).

Image source- https://go.sensortower.com/rs/351-RWH-315/images/Sensor-Tower-Q2-2020-Data-Digest.pdf

Increase your search rankings, discoverability, and engagement

If you played your SEO skills right, they can help you boost your reach, discoverability, and increase engagement on the platform.

Connect with more target audience

Instagram SEO is vital because it enables you to connect with viewers who are enthusiastically searching for content correlated to your business/topic. With a significant change in ranking, your content gets more exposure - this mechanism helps you to gain more potential leads, giving you an opportunity to make an optimistic imprint and drive high-quality traffic to your profile and your website too. SEO is crucial to capitalize on these prospects — the key to engaging & converting probable clienteles.

Help marketers reach latent customers

Image source- https://www.marketingcharts.com/charts/use-of-social-media-to-follow-brands

SEO has the power to reach, drive & convert. IG is a popular platform for brands. It provides them not only the opportunities to sell products as a marketplace, but also provide customer amenity and support. More than 200 million IG users visit a business profile on a daily basis. 66% of those visits come from users who do not yet follow the profiles they’re visiting. And, 60% of all IG users say they’ve learned about new products through the platform.

Instagram’s user development has been constant and doesn’t give any cyphers of getting down. With such an incredible free of cost advertisement service marketers powers the platform to increase their sales, creditability, revenue, advocacy, and leads eventually. On the other hand, target audience sees Instagram as a mode to discover new businesses, new brands, and new products.

Penetrating for specific & relevant keywords and employing them while create Instagram posts and crafting your bio is only way that help them discover new businesses. Instagram provides a platform where user and marketer can interconnect openly and directly, making it an idyllic podium for corporations to join with their existing/probable customers.

Boost your Instagram engagement rate

Image source- https://www.socialinsider.io/blog/instagram-carousel-research/

Increased rankings and targeted audience give ways to boosted engagement in terms of likes, comments and shares. Carousel posts score the highest engagement rate (1.94%) followed by images (1.74%) and video posts (1.45%). Yoking a proper IG SEO strategy to your content will help you boost organic growth to your IG page.

Help you gain new followers

According to The Verge, Instagram says it considers “a number of factors,” including the “type of content, captions, when it was posted,” and more to surface relevant results. It also uses machine learning to “find the highest quality content that’s relevant to you.” When target audience gain specific content, they are more likely to follow your channel.

Note- You must optimize your posts for various relevant keywords by writing evocative captions, and counting alt text, so that they may appear in keyword search results

Also read: How to create Instagram Reels in 2021

How Does Instagram SEO Work?

Image Source- https://sproutsocial.com/insights/instagram-stats/

Instagram has 1.074 billion users worldwide in 2021 who share 95 million photos and videos on it per day. According to The Verge, Instagram says it considers “a number of factors,” including the “type of content, captions, when it was posted,” and more to surface relevant results. It also uses machine learning to “find the highest quality content that’s relevant to you.”

Moreover, users are now be able to search for posts using keywords that may appear in photo & video captions.

Instagram SEO Tips: Strategies to Increase Your Discoverability

1. How to optimize Instagram profile for search

The process is similar to that of Google & YouTube, you can use the search bar on the top of the Explore page to find and discover accounts, hashtags, brands and locations. Instagram algorithm decides which search results to parade. According to Instagram blog, the search results you see are based on a variety of factors, including the people you follow, who you’re connected to, and what photos and videos you like on Instagram. Plus, they are simply based on keywords! It examines through millions of accounts to find the most useful, relevant suggestions similar to your seed keyword or interest. Then it displays accounts that cover that keyword. To hack the total process, you need to optimize your profile for those keywords.

Target optimizing:

• Name & Username- To rank for a keyword on Instagram, incorporate it into both your name and username. To do so, just go to your profile and tap “Edit Profile” to change the name.
• Instagram Bio SEO- If you are wondering how to optimize Instagram business page, harness the target keywords for your content in your bio.
• Make your profile public
• Go with a colourful, on-brand profile image
• Create an identifiable and searchable @Username
• Include a searchable business name
• Create an Instagram Business account
• Add links in your bio

2. Place the seed keyword in your display name and username

Just like Google, Instagram has its own autonomous search engine. There to show up for the accurate keywords in the search bar, you need to work within the app itself to get that desired placement.

3. Place your supplementary keywords in bio

Supplementary or secondary keywords are great tools for driving interested audience, who might not be searching for your seed keyword but could still be interested in your content.

4. Write Relevant & Descriptive Captions

Writing pertinent and expressive captions, can help you reach more target audience. Instagram Explore page looks completely different to every user – Do you know why? Because IG unambiguously tailor what you’ve already shown an interest in, and represent you a personalized viewing together with influences like the accounts you follow, your location, and how recently a piece of content was posted. Writing captions that are descriptive of your business, help IG rely on that and rank your videos in with comparable accounts.

5. Include SEO Hashtags for Instagram Hashtags like Keywords

Many users may have discovered you through a hashtag on a specific post. Therefore, each of your posts should have its own hashtag strategy. You must endorse these hashtags like secondary keywords. Using relevant, targeted and beleaguered hashtags on your posts and stories is one of the best tactics to get discovered by new audiences. The “right” hashtags can drive new target audience and help you to build community on the platform, obtaining user-generated content, running campaigns, contests, polls, giveaways or studying your audience, and more.

6. Create Your Own Alternative Text

Instagram alt text is a new feature that permits users to write custom alternative text so that they add a richer description of their uploads. Although it was premeditated to help visually impaired users enjoy their experience, but it is another feature to rank with IG SEO, too. Instagram automatically populates alt text possibilities for your photos if you skip this step with its artificial intelligence of speech recognition. But it's well to do it yourself to guarantee the caption is well sequenced with respect to your content.

Follow these simple steps-

• To see and edit alt text for a photo before you upload it on your Instagram account, go to Advanced Settings at the bottom of the screen. then, click on Write Alt Text and tap Done!
• To change the alt text of a photo after you’ve previously uploaded it on your Instagram, go to the photo, click the ellipsis button, and hit Edit. Now, tap Edit Alt Text in the bottom right corner and write the alt text in the box and tap Done.

7. Get Tagged to Boost your Rankings with Instagram SEO

Do you want to drive discovery of your profile on Instagram? Then go for tags and mentions. Tags and mentions are a lot like backlinks on the web. If someone tags your account in one of their posts or stories, other viewers who see their post can head to your profile, which is an incredible way to drive searchability. Receiving tags and mentions are also like a promotion through word of mouth– it tells Instagram that your content is appreciated and viewers are interested in it. Therefore, IG algorithm can help your content appear on the Explore page or people’s home feeds.

8. Track Your Instagram Reach

If you want to know, how efficiently, our Instagram SEO 2021 strategy is working, then you check your Instagram analytics! After you upgrade to a business profile or creator account on Instagram, you can use Instagram Insights to know more about your followers and the audiences interacting with your business. To track Post Insights, open a post and tap the View Insights button below it. Now head down to the Discovery section.

Here you can see a set of insights around how many visitors saw your content and the traffic sources, including from their feed (follower), hashtags, the Explore page, or from shares, saves, tags, mentions, and notifications. Using this data, you can quickly determine how optimized your content is for discovery. You can also see IG insights, from your profile. Go to the Activity tab, you’ll find data around Discovery and Interactions, which highlights the number of profiles visits you received. Track them, study them and learn from them to improve!

I hope you found this a useful guide in understanding Instagram SEO 2021.

Feel free to share!