With over 1.22 billion monthly users, Instagram is a social media powerhouse. It’s the fourth most-used social platform with a growing global advertising reach that outpaces even Facebook. As such, it’s not hard to understand why many businesses are taking to Instagram to promote their products and services.
It’s clear that Instagram is effective in reaching and engaging target audiences, but does this engagement extend to your business website? It puts forward an interesting question: How does Instagram affect SEO?
How Instagram Creates Engagement and Brand Awareness
If you want your company to be successful in today's market, you need to have a strong social media presence. Your social media strategy dictates the tone and personality of your brand. Social media is an extension of brand marketing and can be used to create a more personal connection with customers.
Instagram enables you to engage with your audience and create brand loyalty and customer satisfaction. For many people, Instagram is the go-to app for selfies, fashion trends, and photo filters. But for brands, it's an opportunity to create engagement and awareness by running contests, providing discounts, or simply letting followers get to know your company on a human level.
The mere presence of your brand on Instagram creates a positive impression on potential customers. People perceived brands on the platform to be popular, creative, entertaining, and relevant.
Creating content on Instagram puts your brand in front of a multitude of people who are searching for solutions to their problems. In fact, according to Meta, which owns Instagram, it makes your products or services searchable and discoverable by 83% of Instagram users.
In a survey of 4,500 active Instagram users, it was found that 44% use Instagram to shop weekly by using features like the Shop tab and shopping tags. Therefore, brand-led communication and interaction have a strong impact on people’s shopping and purchasing journeys.
Does Instagram Engagement Extend to Your Website?
Yes. The social interactions on your Instagram could potentially translate into website engagement. Having connected these two mediums, digital marketers are now able to use the strength of one platform to influence the success of another.
Aside from checking out your brand’s Instagram profile, there are many ways that people interact with your account, such as liking, commenting, tagging friends, joining contests, and sharing your posts.
If you want your website to benefit from these interactions, you should design an Instagram marketing strategy that will compel people to click on a link that will take them to your official website.
Can Instagram Influence Your Website’s Search Ranking?
Although Google has stated that social signals are not a direct search ranking factor, it does not make them less important in the realm of search engine optimization (SEO). Not surprisingly, Google will keep information about their search ranking algorithm to a minimum, so there’s no way of knowing exactly how social media signals affect your website’s search ranking.
What we do know is that companies and brands with a strong social media presence and high engagement tend to do well in search rankings. It cannot be denied that social media provides enormous benefits for SEO. Otherwise, businesses will not invest time, money, and energy in building a robust social media presence.
How Does Instagram Affect SEO?
Instagram boosts the search visibility of your business's online profile. Moreover, your social media optimization strategies on Instagram can have a positive impact on your website’s search ranking. This helps tremendously in creating greater brand awareness.
Instagram has become one of the most important platforms for your brand to utilize in your digital marketing efforts. Here are some proven Instagram SEO best practices that can help create brand awareness and boost search visibility.
1. Optimize your Instagram profile for search and visibility.
Your Instagram bio is your ticket to searchability on Instagram search, Google, and other search engines. It’s the important space where you introduce your brand and convey its personality. This is also where you put the link to your website.
You’re only given 150 characters to let people know what you do. You must also use core keywords that best represent what your brand is all about. After reading your Instagram profile, people should be compelled to follow you.
2. Set your brand up for success by creating high-quality, engaging content.
In order to capture the attention of potential customers and turn them into loyal supporters, it is important to have properly crafted content that gets your point across concisely and effectively. Let your photos and captions communicate what your brand is all about. They must be interesting and compelling enough to make people click on your profile, visit your website, leave a comment, or give you a follow.
3. Engage at every step through Call-to-Action.
A Call-to-Action (CTA) is a method of actively persuading consumers to take some form of desired behavior. When you create CTAs, you are looking to drive conversions, which can include website clicks, social media follows, comments, video views, and more.
If you want your audience to take any type of action, you should make it easy for them by using CTAs in your link in bio,Instagram marketing campaigns and Instagram posts.
Also Read- How to Get More Likes On Instagram and Why Is It Important?
4. Use Instagram Hashtags.
Aside from using relevant keywords in your posts, you must also use the right hashtags in your captions. Hashtags can be a common theme or topic of discussion for posts or be specific to a location, event, business, or hobby. They can also be brand-centered or campaign-based.
Check your Instagram Insights to get an idea of which hashtags are driving traffic to your posts. If you want to build a data-driven Instagram hashtag strategy that will increase your audience reach and boost engagement, take this free Instagram Hashtag Course from Flick Academy.
Instagram and SEO Strategy
Since there is a positive relationship between Instagram and search ranking, your Instagram SEO campaigns should augment your overall SEO strategy to organically increase your brand’s discoverability, audience reach, engagement, and conversion.
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