You may have heard plenty of Instagram experts talking about how hashtags are dead… or not dead… or you should only use 3 to 5… or 10… or you still should use the full 30… well – they are kind of ALL right.
Ha ha… confusing right? 🤷♀️
Well, Instagram is becoming more sophisticated in its search capabilities (about bloody time) – even though searching for a username is still a massive pain in the butt and it has to be EXACT for it to be found… (hang on – where does that underscore go?).
In terms of content search and indexing, Instagram is operating more and more like a search engine and picking up common keywords across ALL your content – be that your bio, username, caption AND hashtags. This is operating very much like SEO does for your website, using keywords regularly throughout to ensure those web crawlers can find you and get your site seen by people who are actually looking for your type of content.
Previously hashtags and your bio/username were the only ways keywords could be searched. NOT SO ANYMORE. The algorithm is indexing ALL words – even in your captions and across ALL your posts.
What does that mean for you???
Start using Instagram like you would your website – using keywords that relate to your niche regularly, in your captions. I’ve seen content presented as an option in search, even when the keyword is not even used – but it was certainly used often enough in their other posts to ensure all their content started coming up in search as relevant.
What else does this mean? Stop using made-up, stupid, nonsensicle words. The ones that personally make my eyes roll back into my head are: biz, widdle chids, soshewwwl (seriously – I’ve seen this – it’s social – SOCIAL 🙄 ).
Unless your ideal customer is going to search “soshewwwl 4 biz”, then maybe you need to rethink your strategy. I’m not saying don’t play around with language – hell, I do it all the time – just don’t do it for your KEYWORDS or anything you think your audience will be searching for.
To answer the ultimate question – are hashtags redundant? No and yes (don’t you love answers that are as clear as mud 😂 ). If you are using keywords relevant to your niche and customer, then your content will still be searchable – but maybe add a few industry hashtags in regularly to improve your searchability even more.