We just got word of how Instagram Search works from the Instagram CEO himself, but how does it compare to YouTube SEO? Let's find out!

How Instagram SEO Works

First, let's dive into how Instagram ranks photos, videos, and any content in general on Search. With any search engine or searchable type of content, Instagram wants to show you the most relevant content to what you searched, and these rankings are going to depend on the text you search and also your activity. In other words, what you interact with the most. A lot of the time the most popular content can also show up in there as well. How do you show up more in Search? That is the question!

There are three basic ways that the Instagram CEO had mentioned how they get that information from the actual account, and that is going to be, first things first, your handle and your profile name.

3 Ways You Can Show Up In Instagram Search

We already understand how to get Instagram Search to work. Based upon your activity and what IG knows about you, they give you the most type of content. Now, how do we use that information and apply it to how you can rank in Search? So there are three basic ways that the Instagram CEO had mentioned how they get that information from the actual account, and that is going to be, first things first, your handle and your profile name.

Your IG Handle and Your Profile Name

When you are choosing what your Instagram handle is going to be, make sure it relates to the field or the industry you're in, and make sure your profile relates to the target audience. Most people include the industry title in their handle (accounting, financial, health coaching, etc.) or they put it inside of their title on Instagram. For me, I have a “YouTube strategist and Educator”.

Keywords & Location Within Your Bio

The second way that helps Instagram show you in Search is through your keywords and locations in your bio. When you're using this, you want to be mindful of the things you choose. Put your statement of how you help people. What are some keywords you specialize in? Is it going to be a marketing consultant?

For instance, I help people rank on YouTube. I want to make sure that I include YouTube in there somewhere. I want to make sure that I even include growth on YouTube or whatever that may be. So you have to also equate that to your industry. What are some of those keywords that make up what your Instagram is going to be about?

Instagram Captions

Lastly, the caption is the other way Instagram determines how you rank in search because they're using the caption to figure out what the account is about. It's important to think about including keywords in your captions and putting your hashtags inside of your caption.

That was a big thing for us to figure out! Do we put our hashtags in our comments or our captions? It was just said that it's probably best for us to put the hashtags inside of the caption because it helps the audience figure out what your content is about and how can they categorize it in their algorithm.

How YouTube SEO Works

Now, let's get into how YouTube ranks your content. How does IG compare to YouTube SEO? I want to have y'all understand how this is a little bit different in how notadvanced the Instagram SEO is!

How YouTube Ranks Your Content

When it comes to YouTube, I want you to know how YouTube ranks your content. YouTube also ranks your content based upon relevancy like Instagram but there's a way they can gather more data points to make sure the video is worth showing to the user. YouTube takes into consideration your title, your click-through rates, your audience retention, and what actions are being taken after your user watches the video.

More data points are going on and figuring out if this video is worth showing to someone. YouTube wants to know when the audience clicks on a video, did they stay or did they go away? Did they watch it all the way through? Did they go on to watch more videos? At the end of the day, YouTube wants people to stay on the app for as long as possible. So is your content making people watch more and more and more? If that's the case, then they're going to want to boost it up. There's a lot of other data points playing a bigger role in how YouTube is ranking your content and when you have that many data points then you have much more of an opportunity to hone in on who you want to target. With Instagram's SEO, it’s really broad and general.

If you type "#sushi" on Instagram, I can get: People who know how to make sushi, find sushi recipes, and find all these other things that do with sushi. On YouTube, if you type in the word "sushi", it will be general but you can type in more specific things to get more of an idea of what you're trying to get at.

YouTube vs. Instagram SEO Opinion

What do I think about Instagram SEO and YouTube SEO? I think when it comes to Instagram SEO we see people want to find content faster and the longer the platform gets more and more users then there's going to be a lot of noise. Having a really good search function helps hone in on you finding exactly what you need, and so it's no wonder why Instagram is starting this right now.

YouTube SEO Has a Better Rankability Factor

YouTube SEO is still way more powerful. The search engine's ability to find exactly what you need is so much more powerful than Instagram SEO. Granted, it is just the beginning for YouTube, so maybe they'll get there but I want you to understand that YouTube SEO is still more powerful because there are different ways that you can influence your rankability factor.

When it comes to YouTube, you're able to influence how you rank in so many different ways. It does depend on the types of keywords that you are using though!

When it comes to Instagram, you can only influence it with your profile name, your bio, and the captions that you write. Is that enough information for you to influence how you rank? When it comes to YouTube, you're able to influence how you rank in so many different ways. It does depend on the types of keywords that you are using though! So it is robust!

When it comes to Instagram SEO, it's very similar to how YouTube crawls your video descriptions when figuring out what your video is about. So that's just one function of what YouTube SEO does to figure out if your video is relevant. With that being said, it's like, "Okay, that's it? But what about how many people are watching it? What about how many people are engaging with it?" When it comes to Instagram SEO, it's not that advanced, and that's why I think it's just, I don't know, a two out of 10!