Instagram is one of the most visual platforms out there, and it initially started as a platform for photographers and creatives to share their images. When you’re on the platform, it is sure to blow you away, take you to a new frame of thinking.
Over time, and with most things, Instagram has found a wider audience, and with that, it has increased its user base significantly. You will find all sorts of people on the platform from bloggers to photographers and yes, even digital marketers. It’s also great for reaching new audiences and getting more followers to stay updated with your latest company news and brand announcements.
The fact that Instagram has such reach means you should be taking advantage of it, and use it to help drive users to your products and services. You may even start to see that your Instagram is helping you appear higher in the search engines.
Yet, getting to a place where your Instagram supports your business website to improve google search can be challenging. Even so, most images from Instagram are not indexed to Google. Your Instagram profile can be indexed and it can add an element of authority.
Therefore let’s discuss how you can go about optimizing your Instagram profile for search.
Set your profile to public
If your profile is set to private, then, unfortunately, it will not be indexed by the search engines, this is by design. Instagram values its user’s privacy. Setting your profile to the public will automatically approve all follow requests, so you may want to consider this before changing.
As a business owner, you want to give your Instagram every chance to be discovered by your potential customer. When you make your profile public, it’s giving Instagram that opportunity to recommend your profile to users they think will find value in it. Another great way to make your profile stand out from the crowd is to add an attractive logo that stands out when users are scrolling through endless status updates. It’s also important to remember that the Instagram profile image is circle, so you will want to adjust your logo design to perfectly display within this section as well.
To set your profile to be viewed by everyone, all you have to do is click the hamburger icon, setting, and then privacy, and you can toggle the menu to choose “public.” It’s that easy; now, your business is ready to be found.
Change your Instagram account to a business account.
While many users say it’s best to do this once you gain about 1000 followers, it’s just hearsay at present, and the benefits of a business account can be helpful. The main reason they say that is that there is the perception that Instagram stifles the reach of business accounts. This is not precise, and as you will see in this post, there are many opportunities to grow your reach, aside from being a personal account.
When you have a business account, you open the doorway for useful analytics to support you in your Instagram optimization journey. Data such as impressions, followers, and user demographics will be available to you. This is helpful because you also get to see which countries your users are in and when they are most active. You can imagine it makes it easier to post content when most of your followers are online.
When your account is active and highly engaged, the algorithm favors this. Also, using the business profile allows you to access a statistics tracking app such as Instrack on your phone. This helps you look at more stats about your Instagram profile such as a trend of your posts and your engagement rate.
Optimize your bio
Your bio tells your ideal customer all about you and also alerts the search engines about what it is your business does. You may consider adding in your core business there, and there is a limit to the characters, making it short and sweet.
As recommended by AxeSEO.com, instead of your name in the title, how about adding your core business: “Instagram growth coach.” Since your handle has your name, you can use the title to represent what you do. When the search engines are scouring for the content, they will look to yours as the most complete and trustworthy provided that you have built an audience that is highly engaged.
Grow your following
You should always seek to get more followers as it’s one of the signals that your Instagram is of high value and authority.
There are many ways to do this, such as organically and with lots of engagement and research, or you could buy ads from Instagram and broaden your reach. Yet, the main aim of ads on Instagram is for posts to get more engagement; often, users do not go to your profile and follow.
In addition to coming up with an effective plan of your own, you will also want to seek out social media case studies from other brands and businesses as well. This will not only help you discover new opportunities for growth, but also give you a better idea of what methods are working best, and which to put to the side.
It’s true growing your following does take time and effort, but it’s one of the critical factors that will improve your rank in Google search.
Have a great bio link landing page
Instagram is unlike any other social media platforms out there, because it’s really not about the content promotion and backlink building. In fact, outside of running paid ad campaigns, the only link that you can direct traffic from Instagram to is the one in your bio.
With this in mind, it’s important to make sure that your bio description and link pop out and grab attention. And not only that, but also make sure you have a great landing page as well.
It’s going to be hard enough to get users to view your bio and site link, but if they do click over to do it, make sure it’s worth their time. And if you have any call to actions in place, make sure they are direct and that you aren’t throwing too many options in their face to scare them away.
Link directly to Instagram posts
You can use your blog or website to create content to related posts on your Instagram, and then include a link in your blog posts.
This works because while your posts on the Instagram platform cannot be indexed, your links in a blog post can be indexed. This is one way to ensure that your posts get indexed in Google.
If you already have a website or blog with a decent amount of traffic flowing to it, then it’s definitely a good idea to add some social sharing plugins to your site. This will allow you to easily set up your preferred social platforms right on your site, while also automatically keeping them updated with your latest content as well.
This method works great for Instagram accounts, as it can provide a fresh supply of visual content to your site, but don’t feel like you are limited to just that platform. There are plenty of plugins to choose from, and some work best with different platforms.
Social Media + SEO = A Winning Formula
The recent stats showing Instagram as a giant in the social media space is proof that you must optimize your profile for better indexing on Google.
Looking at some of the tools and ideas to optimize your Instagram for search also has an added benefit as you will automatically improve your search appearance on the platform itself.
It may take time in the beginning, and learning how to use the platform as a driver of traffic will challenge you, but in the right way.
The best way forward is to ensure that you work at each idea systematically, then move onto the next. Eventually, you may find that when you search online for your business, it will rank much higher, and your Instagram profile would be the reason.
Naturally, this is not a direct factor in determining your rank in Google, but it certainly can help your quest to improve your brand awareness.
We hope you found this post on how to optimize your Instagram account for search engines helpful. Let us know your thoughts in the comments below!