How to increase your Instagram SEO for reach and engagements

You know how to improve your SEO for blog posts, and for your website. But did you know you can improve your SEO for Instagram? To increase your reach and make your posts more discoverable?

Well, we’ll tell you exactly how SEO can help you on Instagram and how you can implement it to increase reach and engagements. So, this means optimizing your content to be discovered in search results. You need to add hashtags and keywords to your posts, alt text, and so much more. Because, when someone searches for a keyword or hashtag in the search box in Instagram, you want your account and content to appear first.

You optimize your website regularly, why not do the same for Instagram? Here’s how to upgrade your Instagram SEO.

Optimize your Instagram profile

To grow your following and to use the Instagram search in your favor, you need to optimize your profile. You can start by adding keywords to your profile name. If you are a hair salon, add the keywords ‘hair’ or ‘salon’ into your username and profile name. This improves your chances of appearing in the top search results.

You can add the same keywords to your Instagram bio as well. And on top of that you can add secondary keywords. In this case, adding keywords that are related to your business, like ‘hair care’, ‘cutting’, ‘color’, ‘treatment’, ‘hair extensions’ etc.

Add descriptive hashtags

Next is optimizing your posts. Treat your hashtags as keywords, and you can use keywords to describe what your posts are about. Most users are not gonna look for your profile directly, they will search with keywords or hashtags. And if your posts have the hashtags the users search, you have better chances to end up in their results. So, if the users are searching for hair extensions, if your posts display this hashtag, you have higher chances to gain followers or gain interactions.

Alt text your posts

Alt texting your posts is another great way for your content to reach a broader audience. This means custom alternative text to offer a richer description of your photos. Apart from optimizing your content is also helping you improve accessibility on the platform. Instagram does this automatically, as it’s a fairly new feature. But you can do this yourself to add value to your content. Just go to advanced settings before posting and it should look like this 👇

Be consistent

You follow the same SEO strategy for a while and see what works and what doesn’t. This way, the algorithm will learn your profile and content and will work in your favour. You teach Instagram who you are, what you are posting, what you offer and Instagram will reward you with showing your content and profile to interested users.

And the most important thing is to follow the platform's guidelines in regards to content. Don’t use bots, don’t buy followers, and don’t steal content. You are providing high-quality content and using these Instagram SEO tactics, Instagram will reward you for your hard work and consistency. The rewards might not come fast, but it will offer you more satisfaction.

Are you ready to increase your reach on Instagram with SEO? At Social Media Boutique Agency, we are keen on helping brands and businesses to improve their social strategy. So, book a FREE discovery call and we’ll chat and see how we can help yours ;)

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