instagram

By Harris Scott

Instagram is ideal platform, which is largely accepted now to upload and filter photos and small videos. Even though it was initially a personal network platform, now digital marketers have converted it to one of the best performing promotional platforms in business marketing. So, how does this help business to gain more SEO value? Let’s have an overview of Instagram in SEO and better social reach.

Social media for SEO

The dominant feature of Instagram is a built-in search function, which works on the search principle of hashtags. However, being a subsidiary of Facebook now, similar filtering like based on demographics, brands, companies anything is possible on this platform now. As a user types your business name or a popular hashtag representing your product, you have control over what to be ideally displayed.

To a large extent, social and SEO are interconnect, but the real question marketers raise is whether social engagement affects search engine ranking page (SERP) positioning? Google announced they do not use social media elements for ranking. That said, many digital marketers believe there is no scope for working at social media promotions, but this approach is wrong.

Even though social media does not directly influence SEO, the social engagement it creates as a byproduct of quality content can undoubtedly generate much inbound traffic, links, and mentions on the always enthralling social media platforms. It ultimately leads to a better link structure, increased traffic to your product pages, lower bounce rates, and repeat readers, which are admired SEO signals which search engines care about.

Instagram is also a search engine

As we mentioned above, similar to Google or Bind, Instagram too has a search mechanism. Search engines now also drive traffic to the social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter and all. So, to take advantage of this, one need to ensure that your brand’s account is fully featured on these major social media platforms and the information you put on social media is complete and relevant for the social audience. Users on Instagram may search for people, hashtags, generic product names, and places.

Changing trends in search engines and SEO

Business marketers know that it is not very practical if you have to manage five or six social media accounts for promotions. Each of the social ecosystems on various platforms requires careful mentoring and tending. It is always ideal to set up a simple profile which has links to all relevant destinations, right images, right logo, and proper search tags and hashtags.

The decision to choose an appropriate social media platform may be based on the product you try to promote or the services offered. Say for example, if you are promoting HR Outsourcing, then you may not have much worthy content on Instagram as like a jewelry designer or touring package provider. However, Instagram is a meeting place for many in your target group too. So it is ideal to keep those active minds engaged with you.

Most importantly, with search engines like Google moving to a mobile-first world, apps like FB and Instagram may have a more significant impact on what shows up organically on the search engine results.

How to go about Instagram SEO?

Instagram is the top grossing social media platform now, so the businesses which don’t even have image-driven initiatives too are getting largely involved. Many marketers think that creativity needs to be at the peak to play on Instagram, whereas some others think that it is as easy by going after buy Instagram followers and likes offers. Creativity will surely help you reach your goals faster. However, more importantly, it is a strategy, which allows you to find ultimate success through Instagram. Further, we will discuss such a strategic approach to get your Instagram efforts work towards SEO.

  • Do #hashtag research. It incorporates the conventional SEO techniques to social networking too. The search function for Instagram is hashtags, so you need to carefully research on keywords with ‘#’ at the beginning, which are the key search terms on Instagram. Hashtags are used by individuals making posts to give their images maximum exposure. You can add as many as tags as possible to provide maximum exposure, but it is always better to limit the number to 4-5.
  • Running contests. It is one among the top social media promotional techniques, but it is still relevant as far as you add an excellent catch to it in terms of the prizes or special offers users get to prompt them to get engaged. There are many innovative ways to create social media contests, but when it comes to Instagram, you need to keep in mind for what people come to this platform. Have a focus on image-based contests, and don’t forget to leverage the benefits of hashtags.
  • Make use of the Business Tools of Instagram for ads. For businesses, Instagram is the platform to connect with their target audience through photos and stories, but going a step ahead you can think of paid advertising. Now, you have the scope of using the Instagram features which are specially created for business. These features allow you to see the stats also as to how your ads are performing and other essential insights to enhance your strategies. There are three ads formats on Instagram now as:
  • Photo
  • Video
  • Carousel

Take over an Instagram account with many followers

As in case of websites, you may also think of taking over an already established Instagram account than starting anew. However, the significant risk of this approach may be getting an audience which is wrong in light of your target audience if you are not very careful. You need to find an account which has a similar audience as to what you are looking for and monitoring its performance and the kind of engagement happening before making the purchase.

Using influencer marketing and telling stories to feature a brand are other common strategies as we discussed in detail in other articles here. It is a reassuring factor for digital marketers that social media platforms are now becoming other search engines with their own unique algorithms, search optimization practices, and this puts forth many unique benefits to the users as well as the promoters to perform at best.

Harris Scott is a leading blog writer and content marketing professional. He wrote many articles about how to buy Instagram followers and likes and also about the changing strategies in social media marketing.