SEO strategies

Try These SEO Secrets for Instagram

November 4, 2020 by David Sharpe Leave a Comment

Instagram is one of the most useful platforms to take advantage of in your internet marketing strategy.

In fact, 70% of US businesses are already doing so. It's easy to understand why business are using it as a tool when Instagram has 1 billion monthly users.

With so much content being produced, it's a little overwhelming to understand how to make your content stand out. There are many great theories and strategies out there. What one is proven to work the best?

By creating an Instagram SEO strategy, you can reach your target audience easier than ever before. The saying is, “work smarter, not harder”, so let's get you started with a smarter SEO strategy.

Instagram SEO Strategy

Creating a winning Instagram SEO strategy doesn't have to be all business, it can be fun too! You may be wondering what SEO even means. Let's break it down for you!

What Is SEO?

SEO is an acronym that stands for search engine optimization. It's a fancy way of describing the practice of taking advantage of internet searches. By understanding your audience, using keywords, and sprinkling in some creativity, you can use an SEO strategy to drive traffic towards your website.

Search engines will scan your website for keywords. Let's say someone just entered a search for “interior design trends”. If your website has this wording, it will show in that search.

Instagram + SEO

How can you take this marketing strategy to Instagram? Take advantage of using keywords in hashtags. Creating a hashtag SEO strategy will generate more leads and more engagement with your audience.

Using the right keywords in your hashtags will help your brand become more visible. Combine that with some great content, and you've got a recipe for success.

Build Your Strategy

You are looking to build your own Instagram SEO strategy, but how do you know which keywords to choose? Building any successful marketing strategy starts knowing where you are at, and defining your optimization goals.

Define Your Goals

Having clearly defined goals for your SEO strategy is important in understanding whether or not it’s worth your time. If implemented well, it always will be.

Before you begin rolling out a new strategy, it's important to create a list of goals, or things that you’d like to see improvement on. Some great goals to have when creating an Instagram SEO strategy are:

Increased organic traffic
Increased social media activity
Increased sales

In order to ensure that you reach your goals, you will need to know your audience.

Know Your Audience

Marketing strategies begin with knowing your customer. By knowing your audience you can tailor each post to your unique customer's needs.

By analyzing your audience's interactions with your posts, you can learn about them, and get to know them. By interacting with your audience you can learn important things about them.

You can learn things like:

What things is your audience searching for?
Where are your customers located?
What motivates your audience to purchase something?
What hashtags are they using?

Knowing your audience will assist you with choosing a hashtag that your target audience is searching.

If your target audience is orthodontists in New York, you probably won't choose #redpanda as a hashtag.

Learn From Competitors

By looking to other leaders in your industry, you can learn a thing or two from their internet marketing. Analyze what they are doing. You can learn from it what works (and what doesn't).

Take the best of what they do and tweak it so it's customized for your audience. Pay attention to which hashtags they are choosing. Which ones are driving the most traffic?

Not sure how to tell which ones are driving traffic? Search the hashtags your competitors are using, to see which ones are used the most.

Keep It Simple

Keeping your hashtags simple will ensure that they are easy to remember for your audience. Being easy to remember means that customers will use them.

Not only will keeping it simple help build your audience, but it will also help the aesthetic of your Instagram post. Having long or complicated hashtags can make your post look messy or unprofessional.

Less is definitely more when using a hashtag.

Let the Fun Begin!

Now that you know keywords are important, and where to look for them, it's time to start creating posts! How do you create posts with keywords that look natural? We are glad you asked!

Use the Right Amount

Remember how we said less is definitely more when it comes to using hashtags? Research has found that Instagram posts with too many hashtags, is seen as “spammy”. So how many hashtags should you be using?

There are many different opinions on how many hashtags you should be using. Some people suggest using a maximum of 30 hashtags. Others advocate that using the maximum is too much, and 5-6 hashtags are sufficient.

Regardless of how many hashtags you choose to use, the important thing to remember is to choose hashtags that are relevant to what your posting, and to your audience.

Be Creative

There are many ways to be creative with your SEO strategy on Instagram.

One way to take advantage of hashtags is to look to the days of the week for inspiration. Not only will using the days of the week keep you consistent in delivering great content, but it's also something everyone can use (AKA a great way to expand your reach)!

Here are some great examples:

Monday: #MondayMotivation, #MondayVibes, #MondayMood, #

Tuesday: #Tuesday, #TransformationTuesday, #TuesdayThoughts

Wednesday: #WednesdayWisdom, #WednesdayVibes, #WednesdayMood

Thursday: #ThrowbackThursday, #ThursdayVibes, #ThursdayMood, #TBT

Friday: #FeelGoodFriday, #Frinally, #FridayMotivation

Saturday: #SaturdaySelfie, #SaturdaySunshine, #Caturday (if you're a cat lover)

Sunday: #SundayFunday, #SundayVibes

Another creative idea is to brand a hashtag. Create a hashtag just for your business. Some great examples are the State of Michigans hashtag #puremichigan or REI's hashtag #optoutside.

Be Relevant

Remember to take advantage of those keywords! Take advantage of trending hashtags too – as long as they are relevant to what you are posting. If it isn't relevant to your post, your audience may view your choice as a spam attempt.

If what you are offering is keto coffee, you may want to choose hashtags such as #coffee, #keto, or #healthyliving. You wouldn't want to tag #starbucks just because it may be a trending hashtag.

Unless of course, it was relevant to your post. Maybe your business is partnering with Starbucks, and you are announcing that partnership. If that was the case, then using that hashtag would be appropriate.

Use a Hashtag Generator

Not sure which keywords to use for Instagram? Try using a hashtag generator. You can download hashtag generators for free on your phone. A simple one to use is #HashMe.

Once you enter in a keyword to search, the app will find you 30 or more hashtags that are related.

We tried it out and chose “cats” as our keyword. Check out some of the results below!

#cat #gato #meow #kitty #catofthedat #officecat #beantoes #purrfect #ilovemycat #catlovers

Work with a Marketing Firm

By working with a marketing firm you can learn the necessary marketing skills to thrive with confidence in the online marketplace. Working with an expert takes the guesswork out of creating a great SEO strategy.

A marketing firm can help you grow your business using online and cutting edge marketing strategies.

Inspire Your Audience

Using the right keywords is one way to encourage engagement from your audience. Your goal with an Instagram SEO strategy is to inspire your audience to take action.

Inspiring your audience could be as simple as getting them to share your post. It could be to get them to visit your website or buy your product. Inspiring your audience to action is also known as a call to action.

To make a lasting impression with your audience try something unique, like Disney.

Disney has always inspired us. They partnered with Twitter with the #ShareYourEars campaign for Make A Wish Foundation and raised over 3 million dollars.

Create a Winning Strategy

In order to create a successful marketing strategy in today's culture, you need to go where your customers are. That means going digital and interacting with your target audience on social media.

Instagram is a great landscape to grow your audience. There are many ways to incorporate Instagram into your SEO marketing strategy. One great way is to take advantage of the hashtags.

If you are looking for some more great marketing tips,

including how to make multiple high-ticket affiliate commissions each month marketing valuable products people already want to buy, watch our brand new free webclass while access is still free.

7 SEO Tips for Video Marketing

November 1, 2020 by David Sharpe Leave a Comment

You've done your research. You've optimized your site with the best of cutting-edge SEO techniques. But have you optimized your video content?

No, we're not making it up. There is such a thing as video SEO. And we've got about 1500 words worth of valuable tips on the subject.

The best part is these tips aren't limited to videos posted on your website. You can optimize videos wherever you post them. Learn how with our expert guide to video SEO optimization.

Mobile First

The “mobile first” SEO strategy isn't just for websites. It's important for optimizing your video content as well.

Case in point, more than half of all YouTube video views and 90% of Twitter video traffic come from mobile devices. Also, 92% of all consumers share mobile videos.

So, obviously, you do not want to miss out on reaching mobile viewers. Optimizing your video content for mobile viewing will have a huge impact on your overall video marketing success.

Here are the best tips for reaching mobile viewers.

1. Never, Ever Use Flash Videos

This is the most important thing you can do to reach mobile viewers. Delete from your brain the idea of ever posting flash video content. Terminate it with extreme prejudice.

Why, you ask? For starters, there are over 700 million people that won't be able to see your video on their smartphone.

That's the number of iPhones that are currently in use worldwide. And, for whatever reason, Apple still refuses to support flash video files on iOS devices. None of Apple's loyal consumer base will be able to see any flash videos you post.

The second reason is, neither will Google. Unlike with other video file types, Google's crawlers can't interpret anything about flash video content. Search engines will have no idea what your flash videos are about, let alone the quality of the content.

2. Choose the Right Format

Aside from that, keep in mind that loading time has a big impact on your SEO. Longer loading times will lower your search rank and cause impatient visitors to leave early.

This is especially true for mobile views, which usually take longer to load as it is. And the bigger your video file, the longer it takes the visitor (and Google crawlers) to load your page.

You may want to experiment with different video file types that are high enough in quality but a small enough file size to optimize your success.

3. On-Page SEO

Also, when embedding videos on your own website, don't neglect the other aspects of on-page SEO. It won't do to optimize your video format if your website is not optimized for mobile devices. A responsive website is a must.

Next, if you post multiple videos on one page, Google will only see the first one. In other words, don't do that. Post only one video per page.

And don't hide it somewhere halfway down the page. It should be the main focus of the page if you're trying to boost video traffic.

And, just like with images, don't forget to give an appropriate title to your video file. This reassures Google that your video is about what it's supposed to be about.

Make It Pretty

Those are the most basic of video SEO basics. Here are some more advanced bonus tips to earn you some video SEO extra credit.

4. Optimize Your Thumbnails

Wherever you're uploading your video, you typically have the option to pick the thumbnail image. This is the still image that represents the video before it is clicked. And it's what potential viewers will see in search results.

The importance of your thumbnail cannot be overstated. If your video was a book, your thumbnail would be the cover it's judged by.

Once your video appears in search results, the amount of clicks it earns is directly determined by its thumbnail. A high-quality, relevant image earns clicks. A random, blurry screenshot of a weird face you were making mid-sentence will repel potential viewers instead.

How to Optimize Your Thumbnails

There are two methods for obtaining the perfect thumbnail for each video. The best way is to not use a screenshot at all but make a custom thumbnail instead. This way, you can come up with any image you want that perfectly illustrates the main point of the video.

You can shoot fresh, HD photos for the image and add text. But you're also welcome to use one or two dolled-up screenshots from the video if they work. This method takes more time but produces the best results.

The second method is to simply pay attention and find a screenshot that works. It should illustrate the main point of the video, be in focus, and be devoid of weird faces. This method takes very little time but still makes a huge difference.

5. Add Captions

This is so important but so often overlooked. There are tons of benefits to adding a transcript of the video to play as captions.

First, it helps Google understand your video better. More than anything else, Google uses text to rank content.

Without a transcript, Google has a pretty accurate guess as to what your video is. But with a transcript, Google knows exactly what your video is. That makes your video more relevant, which earns it a higher rank.

Secondly, your viewers won't have to guess either. Anytime your video autoplays, such as on Facebook, the captions tell viewers exactly what's going on without them even having to click.

Furthermore, no matter where it's viewed, captions increase the audience's understanding of the video overall. For one thing, the transcript can be translated into multiple languages.

But also, not everyone learns best by watching and listening. Some people learn better specifically through the reading of text.

6. Fill in All Text Boxes

As with your title and transcript, the more text you feed Google, the better. So don't stop there.

When uploading a video, you're usually given a variety of options for describing it, including meta description and tags. Fill in any text field available for the description of your video.

7. Take Advantage of Schema Markup

Rich snippets show off your competence and authenticity to online onlookers. If you really want to impress search engine traffic, implement Schema markup on any videos you post to your own website.

Spread Out

You now know how to properly format and beautify your videos. But where, exactly, should you post them?

8. Upload Everywhere

The best answer: upload everywhere you can. There are several places in addition to your website where you can upload your videos for free. There's YouTube, Vimeo, and Twitter, just to name a few.

And since it's free, why would you market to only one audience when you could market to two? And why market to two when you can market to three?

At the very least, get your videos on YouTube. YouTube makes adding metadata very easy and has an audience to rival that of primetime TV.

9. Upload to Your Site First

That said, don't deprive yourself of the chance to boost traffic to your site. In Google's eyes, posting videos on your site first sets you up as the authoritative source of that original content. That boosts the SEO of your site overall and any future pages/content.

Plus, traffic to your site is traffic right in your hands. Once they're on your site, you can close sales, get signups, or whatever other metrics you're working on.

As a side note, it's extremely important you have a live chat service or at least a chatbot on your site for this purpose. This is a feature that viewers on your YouTube channel won't have.

10. Diversify Your Video Descriptions

The great thing about posting to multiple video sites is that one video can reach much farther. But there's a way you can maximize this reach further still: diversify your video descriptions.

Think about it from Google's perspective. If you post the same video with the same description, four different times, there's no reason for Google to list more than one of them in search results.

Google isn't about to spam its user base with a bunch of similar results. All but one of the videos will be ignored.

But if each site lists the video with a different title, different description, and different keywords, there's a good chance Google will list all four. Furthermore, you have a better chance of achieving a high rank. One of the videos may happen to feature the perfect combination of title, description, and keywords to earn rank 1 on the SERP.

Lastly, different video sites have different audiences. If you do your research, you can optimize your video for each specific site's audience.

Use These Video SEO Optimization Tips

If you care about your website's SEO, it doesn't make sense not to optimize your video content, too. And now, with the tips you've learned in this guide, you can make that happen.

Use these tips and get started with video SEO optimization today.

If you liked this guide on SEO video marketing tips and want to learn more strategies on how to boost traffic to your website and videos along with other marketing tips check out our free webclass.