SEO for Instagram: tips to increase followers

For those who own a business it is essential to take care of its SEO also through social networks such as Instagram. Here are some tips to increase followers on the famous platform

When the acronym SEO is mentioned, it usually refers to the Search Engine Optimization strategies used to help a website climb to the top of the SERP and guarantee it excellent visibility on the web. In reality, there is another interesting type of SEO optimization, namely that applied to social media .

Yes, even the management of social profiles requires the knowledge of some important optimization tricks that can contribute to the success of an account and its positioning on the platform. Social networks actually work like micro search engines and make some of the basic SEO concepts also implementable for social media management.

Instagram in particular is the ideal example to talk about optimization for social media : its algorithms in fact tend to favor those profiles that are highly performing in terms of SEO for Instagram. This is why, if you want your personal or business profile to achieve greater exposure, you should definitely take care of this aspect: using Instagram in short does not mean only posting captivating images and creating a curated feed, but also requires SEO efforts, because the platform can turn into a real marketing tool for your business.

So let's try to understand what are the main advantages of applying Search Engine Optimization to IG and which are the most effective SEO tactics to put into practice immediately on your account.

What are the benefits of SEO for Instagram?

There are many factors that can contribute to making an IG profile an ace in the hole for a brand or a professional who chooses to communicate also through this channel: once you have taken the right path and applied the best practices in your daily social management . , it will be easy for you to notice the difference between an amateur profile care and a more professional one.

 

A good SEO for Instagram can help you effectively promote your account , increase its visibility and increase its level of engagement, to create a passionate community of followers. The impact of SEO on Instagram followers can in fact be very significant and lead to an exponential increase of the same. All factors that, especially for a profile linked to a specific business, can easily translate into greater conversions, purchases or revenues .

In short, there are more than one compelling reasons why it is worth learning how to master SEO for Instagram.

 

What are the most effective SEO Instagram tips?

The more traditional SEO optimization is based on a series of specific techniques and rules to accompany a website towards the pole position of the search results page and is based on a mix of strategies applicable both to the website itself and to the network of interconnections in which is inserted: SEO On Page, SEO On Site and SEO Off Site are the main branches of search engine optimization, and often join the more targeted Local SEO .

SEO for Instagram takes many of the basic concepts of search engine optimization and translates them into a set of useful practices to grow a profile on the social network and position it in the best possible way: Instagram SEO, in the marketing of a brand, has a decidedly fundamental role.

Here are some of the main tips to put it into practice, in practice.

The first steps of SEO for Instagram: work on name and username

From the moment an IG profile is created, key optimization principles can be used, which allow you to correctly set up not only the account but also its SEO. One of the first steps you should take is to choose a username and a username that respect some key characteristics: they are simple to read and understand , they are sufficiently original and, above all, they are relevant to the activity you carry out.

Username and username are in fact the first of the keywords of crucial importance that you will have to think about integrating in your Instagram profile and in practice act as real keywords when a user types a search query on the social network. Therefore, avoid choosing names that are unlikely and difficult to understand, full of special characters and symbols without particular meaning.

Instead, identify the main keyword of your brand or business and make sure you insert it in these first essential positions: this will facilitate the research work of both your users and the IG algorithm itself.

It's time to think about Bio

The characters that are made available to you by Instagram to create your Bio are certainly not to be wasted to insert irrelevant information or a handful of funny emoticons: instead you will have to elaborate a short but incisive description of your business which, in addition to speaking clearly about you or your business, also contains a good mix of secondary and related keywords , which better define what you do and expand the semantic content of the bio itself.

Short, coherent and, once again, clearly legible: these are the main characteristics that your Bio IG should possess to be considered by Instagram and shown when the users of the platform are looking for profiles in line with yours.

Take care of the captions

Doing SEO on Instagram also means having an obsessive care of your captions, that is the captions you insert under your images. Here your SEO knowledge should guide you in the creation of effective and well-organized micro-texts at the optimization level. In addition to being fresh and engaging, that is, they should harmoniously integrate the best keywords related to the subject matter, to allow the platform algorithm to scan them and understand their content without difficulty.

For IG to show your posts always in good position at the most opportune moments, make careful use of the keywords in your captions, distributing them in the text with naturalness . Don't forget to carefully weight the length of the captions based on the average attention threshold of your followers and to use the best copywriting tricks to insert, for example, opening words that capture attention or final CTAs that push action , maximizing the engagement.

Use Instagram hashtags as real keywords

Within the social universe, hashtags are real keywords and should be used as such. Essential in optimizing an IG profile, hashtags are indispensable both on the algorithm side and on the users side : if on the one hand they help the platform to organize its content flows, on the other they allow users to find exactly the type of content that search by browsing Instagram.

 

However, inserting a group of hashtags not studied in detail can lead you to null or even counterproductive results. To choose your hashtags in a targeted manner, remember to select only those related to your specific business , without remorse neglecting those that are too general, too inflated or not very relevant to your business and your niche.

One of the fundamental but often overlooked suggestions is to include among your hashtags also those related to your brand and your company , which act as a unique identifier and distinguish your posts. Furthermore, it is good to constantly vary the hashtags used, avoiding to make a constant copy and paste of the same batch of keywords, a practice that can even be interpreted as spam by Instagram.

The ideal is to take advantage of the 30 hashtags you have available to mix keywords related to your brand, broader keywords that are always targeted on your field of activity and more generic hashtags or related to geographic location: geographic location is part of the in fact of the rules of SEO for Instagram.

Use geolocation tags to your advantage

If your profile is for any reason linked to a specific territory, your SEO strategy should include Local SEO practices , even at the Instagram level . The location tag is essential for both businesses operating locally and for those wishing to extend their boundaries to other geographic areas.

Very often, even on Instagram as on Google, the queries used by users have in fact local search intent and are aimed at finding places, stores, professionals, information or simple inspirations near their position: do not neglect this aspect and always remember to geolocate your shots or your graphics before sharing them on IG.

Be as specific as possible, to be more likely to intercept audiences near your location.

Don't neglect Instagram Alt texts

The possibility of inserting Alt Text also in Instagram images was initially introduced to facilitate the use of the social network even for the visually impaired, but has now become one of the optimization factors of the platform.

Within the "Advanced Settings" of the social network, in the subsection "Accessibility" it is in fact possible to find the item " Write alternative text " (or Alt Text, in fact): you will have to insert here a short caption that describes as precisely as possible the content shown in the image, always considering the use of well thought out keywords.

A habit that will undoubtedly contribute to your optimal positioning within the social content streams and that, combined with the other SEO tips for Instagram seen in this little guide, will lead you straight to your results.