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In this day and age, traditional marketing is no longer a very effective way to market your business and it will not aid you in helping your brand thrive. Traditional marketing has been replaced by digital marketing or online marketing, and by organic growth companies such as Growthoid, who specialize in helping a business achieve success. One important aspect of digital marketing is SEO, which stands for Search Engine Optimisation. SEO is the increasing of both the quantity and quality of website traffic which brings exposure to your brand through organic search engine results. Whilst this is an important concept on its own, the next thing to put your focus on is Instagram.
 

Why is SEO Important for Instagram?

Instagram SEO is a really important feature for Instagram as many Instagram users are on the app in order to promote their business. This means that the more discoverable their account is, the more followers the account will get. Instagram recently updated the app by making keywords searchable. Previously, only account names and hashtags were searchable. By having keywords be searchable, accounts can now include keywords in their bios to ensure better and more successful discoverability. Currently on Instagram there are over one billion active users. This means there are over one billion Instagram users you could potentially reach with your account. The average Instagram user spends roughly just under an hour on Instagram per day. This is a significant chunk of time out of their day and plenty of time for a user to find your account.  By having very specific keywords in your Instagram bio, you can direct many more people to your account.
 

Use Hashtags as Keywords

Hashtags are one of the most important features on Instagram, if not the most important feature, in order to get your profile to receive as much traffic as possible. Hashtags make your post searchable in a more effective way than keywords in a caption. This is why it is important to make use of both in order to increase your Instagram followers. Hashtags are essentially keywords that are commonly used amongst a niche community and are well known within that community. Another advantage of making use of hashtags as keywords is that you can now follow a hashtag on Instagram. This means that people can follow keywords that you may be using on your post which makes your profile and your posts more discoverable and will ensure a successful Instagram account and posts that do well.
 

The Importance of an Optimized Profile

To optimize your profile is a fairly easy task, you simply need to make careful use of keywords and have a carefully curated profile. Your username should contain your primary keyword. This would be the main keyword that describes your business and should be an easily searchable username so stay away from special characters and number. Your bio should contain secondary keywords that describe your business and the content of your Instagram profile. A lesser-known tip is to make use of the ALT text function on Instagram that is meant to aid the visually impaired. If your profile is not working at its optimum, your business will not benefit from Instagram as it should. Be sure to make your Instagram account a business account in order for people to see that you are in fact a business.
 

Optimize your Captions with Keywords

It is important to make use of secondary keywords in your captions on your posts. Captions are a description under your post and they allow more people to see your post and allow people to understand what your post and your account is all about. The keywords used in a caption should be keywords that directly relate to that post and to your account and business. Use words that are easily searchable and not too specific that Instagram won’t be able to recognise it. Whilst there has been a lot of progress made on Instagram, there are still only basic keywords that are searchable so make sure that your keywords fit your niche, but will still be searchable.