Why Instagram is Still Relevant for SEO

Search engine optimization is the process of formatting document markup and content so that it is more readily understandable for the search engine. SEO also aims to help improve document ranking for a set of keywords that may appear on that document. Ultimately everyone would like to rank at the top of the search results and SEO is a legitimate approach to making this happen. However, is Instagram also a legitimate approach? Is it still relevant for SEO?

With the prolific use of these social networking sites, I think it’s safe to say that they can be relevant on how one use them in SEO. Search engines have been using social networking signals as a weight to indicate trustworthiness and relevance. However, in reality, these signals are not really a strong factor in ranking websites or any page for that matter. Google+ is still considered to be the only one which has a “direct” impact on Google’s search engine rankings; although Facebook and Twitter can be a great way to get your content or page to be indexed. But, how about using Instagram?

If we’re talking about using social media, backlinks are one of the widely used SEO techniques for it. When a webpage has backlinks, it is presumed to have more importance. Each backlink can be thought of as a vote. Depending on the reputation of the linking site, a backlink can have more or less weight. However, it is impossible to get followed backlinks from Instagram, so it has no direct impact for SEO. However, you can still use this platform for promoting your business, building up your brand, and gaining followers through free traffic. If that’s the case, might as well only use Twitter and Facebook, right?

Creating an online presence through social media is an important Internet marketing strategy one can take advantage with. So, why limit yourself with Twitter and Facebook? Instagram also has its own fair share of the market with 100 million monthly active users. 40 million photos per day are being uploaded and posted which receive 8500 likes and 1000 comments per second. With that much potential, you can’t really ignore the fact that this social networking service can provide another aspect of your business; through photo-sharing.

Photo-sharing

Well, I think we’re all familiar with the Instagram app, right? You can take pictures with your smartphone and post it on your Instagram web profile or share these instantly on another social networking services at once (e.g. Twitter, Facebook, etc.). This feature can save you considerable time especially if you’re using images to promote your business. Images are great for branding on social media sites. The Instagram web profile of your business features a selection of your recently shared photographs, your profile picture, and information about your brand, giving others a snapshot of the photos you share on Instagram. They won’t get you sales or profits, but they’ll get you shares, comments, and lots of exposure. That’s very significant in social media marketing.

But, in terms of SEO, how can Instagram be significant? As a consumer myself, I can easily deduce that most of us are less likely to visit a business site on a regular basis. So, getting consumers to connect with the brand at different touchpoints enables brands to communicate. By posting attention-grabbing brand photos to your Instagram web profile regularly, they educate people about their existing and new products, as well as their upcoming and present promos. It is vital that you publish images to build organization and brand awareness, as well as to boost consumer interest and stimulate purchase. During this process, you are also improving the likelihood of your site to position higher in search engine results.

Image Optimization

However, it doesn’t end there. Sharing your photos are not enough. You should take advantage of hashtags. Promote pictures with hashtags coupled with the specified hashtag of your business or company. Hashtags create more exposure for your brand. They likewise make it simpler for people to locate your products. Most significant, hashtags can help you increase the quantity of your followers. Also, making use of keywords to name photos and write captions can, together with hashtags, make photos more searchable; and eventually, these will also show up on search engine result pages, which is always a benefit. Leveraging Instagram photos for image optimization can be yet another way to help with organic listing.

Instagram might not be as huge as Facebook and Twitter – at least not just yet. However, businesses are beginning to see this opportunity as they are now including this photo sharing social networking service in their search engine marketing campaigns. In the coming years, you can’t doubt that Instagram is still relevant for SEO.