Instagram Posts Now Showing In Google Search
Starting July 10th, 2025, Instagram business accounts are now automatically crawled and indexed by Google. This means, your professional Instagram account is now part of the SERP landscape.
All of your public photos, videos, and reels can now show up in search results. This fundamental platform update is following a pattern that we have seen over the last couple of years where social platforms, more and more, are becoming part of search.
Why is Instagram Important For Your Brand?
To date — Instagram has over 2 billion users worldwide. It is one of the biggest social media platforms available and has a built-in search engine. The days of just scrolling feeds is over — users now are actively searching for products, brands, and contents in Instagram with a variety of keywords, hashtags, and the Explore Page.
Now that Instagram will be showing in search engines, such as Google and Bing, SEO is more important than ever to help you rank higher. By using SEO best practices to optimize your content, you can increase your visibility across the SERP and obtain more engagement and followers.
What is Instagram SEO?
Instagram SEO is the art of tailoring your social content, reels, and posts to achieve maximum discovery in the Instagram platform. Not only are you optimizing for the overall SERP landscape, but Instagram SEO is different in that you are optimizing for Instagram’s algorithm as well.
Here are some ways Instagram SEO can be beneficial:
Grow Your Audience: Being able to reach more users means that there is a higher chance of obtaining engagement, followers, and new customers without the need for ad spend.
Increase Discoverability: Since Instagram already acts as it’s own search engine. Using SEO best practices helps your brand appear more in Instagram search, Explore feeds, and now in Google. This gives you a massive opportunity for more reach.
Boost Long-term Reach: Well-optimized Instagram posts can continuously attract different users and obtain engagement at any time.
Competitve Edge: By utilizing Instagram SEO, your brand can perform better against your any competitors in your niche.
How Can I Optimize My Posts for Instagram?
In order to start understanding how to optimize your posts for Instagram, you need to first understand Instagram’s algorithm and how SEO works in the platform.
How Instagram SEO Works.
Instagram has stated that they “use information from accounts, hashtags, and places — called signals — to rank search results.” But what are those signals? The main signals for Instagram are:
Text: Instagram’s algorithm matches the text that users enter into the search bar with relevant keywords, hashtags, content, and accounts.
Post Popularity: As with any search engine, posts with that more clicks, likes, shares, etc are going to rank higher.
User Activity: Instagram ranks posts based on the users previous activity within the app. This activity can be posts they’ve viewed or any accounts that they have followed or interacted with.
Publish Date: The more recent posts signals to Instagram that is content is more up-to-date and relevant for the users.
Now that you know the basics of how SEO works in the Instagram platform, you can start to optimize your content.
Tip 1: Use Keywords
The days of “vague” captions on posts are out. Use clear, keyword-rich language in your posts that is relevant to your content. But what is your audience searching for? This is where having an SEO expert can help you in your keyword research to help you plan your content on topics that your audience wants to see.
There are some tools you can use to find relevant keywords, such as:
Instagram’s Own Search Bar
Google Trends
SEO Platforms such as Ahrefs, SEMRush, Brightedge, etc.
You will want to acquire a list of relevant keywords to work into your captions naturally.
Tip 2: Use Relevant Hashtags
Similarly to using keywords in captions, you will want to use relevant hashtags in your posts. Hashtags are a great way to increase reach and discoverability as they signal to the user that the post is relevant for what they are looking for. However, make sure to not cram dozens of hashtags into each post — find 3-5 relevant hashtags for each post and use those accordingly.
Tip 3: Add Alt-Text
An often overlooked ranking feature is utilizing alt-text on Instagram posts. Alt-text allows you to write custom text for a richer description of your posts. This feature is mainly designed for accessibility, but it can be used for SEO as well.
It is best not to keyword stuff and still prioritize accessibility for this feature; treat it like metadata.
Tip 4: Add Text-Overlays to Reels
The last few years with the rise of social platforms like TikTok, there has been an uptick in the need for video content. YouTube created shorts and Instagram has Reels. However, accessibility and optimization doesn’t stop at alt-text. Use text-overlays like subtitles and captions in your Reels to add additional content. This helps your video to rank higher as Google can read this text too.
Make sure the text is accessible and SEO-friendly using relevant keywords and phrasing.
Tip 5: Get LOCAL!
Although using Instagram helps engage your reach broadly, it is important to still think local.
Optimize your profile name and bio by using relevant keywords and including your location in the description.
Another way to get local is to tag the location on your Instagram posts. This helps to ensure that your post is relevant for specfic topics and people.
4 SEO Instagram Mistakes to Avoid:
Now that we have gone over the steps to start optimizing your Instagram posts, we need to talk about the no-nos of Instagram SEO.
Using Non-Relevant Keywords
You want to make sure you are only using keywords that are relevant to your business and audience in your profile. This means in your captions, hashtags, alt-text, profile name, description, etc.
Keyword Stuffing
As mentioned before, there is an art to utilizing keywords and hashtags. Cramming a bunch into your posts might seem like a good idea, but it can actually hurt engagement and rankings.
Algorithms favor relevant, natural content, so ensure you incorporate your keywords and hashtags naturally.
Not Posting Reels
Not only is video content extremely popular right now, Reels offer profound SEO opportunities via captions and subtitles. By ignoring Reels, you are harming your ability to get discovered on the Explore page.
Using Watermarked Content
With any search engine, original content is prioritized. Any form of watermarked content will be ranked lower in Instagram’s search results, which will then affect your ranking in Google. Often, watermarks are transferred over when sharing videos across Capcut, TikTok, and YouTube shorts. Be sure to remove these prior to posting so that your content can be seen as unique.
Use an SEO Expert to Help Manage Your Instagram SEO
While SEO experts are not always (or rarely are) social media experts, having an SEO expert work hand-in-hand with your social team is more important than ever in 2025. If you need help optimizing your Instagram content for search, feel free to contact me to get started.
