Do I Need To Optimize My Instagram Business Profile For SEO?

We are living in a world dominated by search engines.

With 95% of the search traffic going through Google, Alphabet is constantly updating and changing its algorithms to ensure the best user experience.

Google’s vision is for one to be able to find the information they seek the fastest way possible. And that’s why search engine optimization (SEO) is a great thing for business.

But with Instagram being its own search engine, does it mean there’s such a thing as Instagram SEO?

SEO as a Quality Measurement

At its core, search engine optimization is both the backbone and the result of a quality website. For you to be able to rank higher, your website should be fast, efficient, engaging, on-topic and deliver unique information.

When you ask an SEO specialist how to improve your rankings, you’ll often get a complicated answer with a bunch of phrases you are probably not familiar with. Yet, things are simple.

• Desktop/Mobile Optimization

  When a page is built to load extremely fast on both desktop and mobile. Speed of loading translates to a seamless end-user experience. Usually this is done through image optimization, file reworking and a stable hosting service. Broken links also show a lack of quality.

• Link Building

  This might seem as a complicated thing, but is closely related to the idea of unique information. If there are a lot of high ranking websites linking back to you, it means that what you have to say is rather unique and informative.

• Interlinking

  Your pages should be easy to navigate around. If you have a sitemap and link your posts with each other whenever necessary, instead of repeating yourself, you will ease both the crawlers and the users.

• Image Optimization

  Your images should be small to optimize the speed, but they should also be related to the content you provide. What’s further adding explanatory (alt) text to each image is considered a good practice towards the end-user experience.

• Bounce Back Rate

  If people are clicking links to your website, but quickly closing the tab or exiting your website, it means that you don’t deliver the information they seek. That’s why engaging the reader is key.

• Keyword Density

  Pages within your website should be related to the content and the industry you are targeting. You can’t have a page about dogs and talk about unrelated topics. You also can’t have a page about dogs and just spam the word dog multiple times. Instead, you should add value to the topic of dogs.

• Social Media Shares

  This returns to the reader engagement. If your post is being shared on social media, it means that it is engaging. While not the most important factor of an SEO strategy, it certainly helps.

This is all nice and good. Basically, as long as you know what you are talking about and you deliver quality content on a working website, you are good to go.

But with such a high competition where each and every word counts towards how high you are going to climb on the search ladder, what’s the role of Instagram?

In addition, as Instagram is a search engine on its own, can you do something to improve how quickly people find your photos and drive new and free traffic to your profile? Let’s discuss!

Instagram and SEO Within the Platform

When discussing how to achieve Insta-success on the photo sharing platform, we often stress on the fact that on Instagram the quality of visual content is of utmost importance.

And for the most part, that’s completely true. Unique photos that fit your brand character are a great way to humanize your brand and engage your audience.

But how does this translate to free search traffic? At its core, the organic reach of the platform comes down to the search function and the timeline algorithm.

• Engagement

  One of the factors that goes into the algorithmic choice behind the photos that appear in one’s feed is the engagement of said photo. If the engagement is great, it means that it’s probably something worth seeing. This is one of the most important factors and the reason why engagement rate (ER) is a statistic you should closely follow.

• Recency

  People don’t want to see the same photos over and over again. They want to see something new, different and recent. That’s why recency is also taken into account. While this depends on the industry and your competition, among other factors, posting at least once per day on Instagram is a must if you want to boost you reach.

• Machine Learning Relevancy

  This is not something coming out of fiction. Photo-recognition technology boosted by machine learning helps Instagram categorize your content. The more relevant your photos are to a certain industry, the better the chances that you’ll appear in one’s feed that is interested in said industry.

Of course, much like with Google’s SEO, the Instagram algorithm works in mysterious ways and the aforementioned tips are not a certainty.

Plus, there are more than a few factors outside of your control. These include if a person is searching for your brand or if a person engages with your brand often. Nevertheless, as long as you post quality content related to your industry that fits your brand character, you should be all well and good.

The Social Media Reasoning Behind an Instagram Profile

As we learned from our meta study on how social media brands are using social platforms, Instagram is one of the most neglected networks.

Despite having better engagement rates than most of its competitors, the photo sharing platform is often at the bottom of the pole for most brand executives. This is primarily due to the lack of making direct sales via links.

But what the platform lacks in link sharing it more than makes up for in reach and online brand presence opportunities. With an Instagram profile, you won’t need to perform heavy-duty SEO.

Going further, most often you don’t even have to consider what you write on your posts. Yet, that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t optimize for the algorithms at work on your Instagram feed.

When is your audience most active? What posts grant the most engagement? What are the latest trending hashtags within your industry? These are all questions you have to answer, before posting on Instagram.

And did you know that Locowise can answer all those questions for you? Providing in-depth insights on your competitors and an array of statistically analyzed data to help you post the right content at the right time, Locowise also lets you present all the stats to your clients in a neat manner. Check out what Locowise can do for you and sign up for a 7-day-free trial right here!