Instagram SEO: How to Rank on Instagram and Get Your Posts on Google

This week, I searched for a lip balm and found that two of the suggested posts were from Instagram.

And it’s not a fluke: Instagram is actively working toward not just improving its internal search, but also indexing your Instagram posts so they show up on search engines like Google. The line between traditional search engine optimization (SEO) and Instagram SEO is getting blurrier by the day.

In this article, I’ll explain how Instagram SEO works and how you can use it to increase visibility beyond the app itself.

What is Instagram SEO?

Instagram SEO is the process of optimizing your profile and posts so they appear at the top of search results — within Instagram and outside of it.

For example, when I search for the brand “Fix my curls” on Google and Instagram, here’s what I see:

• On Instagram, the brand account ranks on top, followed by other videos — some of which are of creators using the products from Fix My Curls.
• On Google, Instagram videos from creators talking about the brand’s products appear on the first page.

When you optimize your Instagram posts for search, you boost your content’s reach and discoverability. Instead of solely relying on Instagram’s algorithm to show up organically on the reels tab, explore page, or home feed, you are also working to get discovered when your target audience searches for something on Instagram or Google.

As someone who uses Instagram daily, I can attest to the fact that I go to the explore page to search several things — recipe ideas, fashion hacks, and travel itineraries being a few. And I’m far from alone: 46% of Generation Z and 35% of millennials prefer social media over other search websites, according to eMarketer.

But how does Instagram decide which content ranks on top within the app?

How Instagram ranks search results within the app

When you type something in the Instagram search bar (you can find it in the explore page), you can see:

• A personalized ‘For You’ feed that’s a mix of AI summary, top accounts, and posts
• The accounts tab shows Instagram profiles that contain the keyword you searched for
• The reels tab shows the best reels for your keyword search
• The audio, tags, and places tabs also show results that match the text you searched for

Instagram says it uses three signals to decide the ranking in search results:

• Search text: The keywords someone uses in the search bar is the most important factor that determines what shows up at the top of the results. The closer the keywords match, the higher the ranking.
• User activity: The results within the Instagram app are also personalized to each individual user. Instagram considers someone’s past interactions, people and hashtags they follow, and posts viewed in the past to customize the Instagram search results.
• Post popularity: Instagram content that matches the search intent and has good engagement (likes, comments, shares) ranks higher than posts with less engagement.

Your content must also follow Instagram’s community guidelines to rank in search results.

Earlier, your Instagram posts could only show in search results within the Instagram app itself. But as of July 10, 2025, this has changed.

How Instagram SEO has changed (hint: Your content can now appear on Google!)

Recently, many Instagram users got a notification informing them that their posts on the platform will soon be visible on search engines.

“Instagram generally requests that search engines like Google and Microsoft Bing do not index the content of users’ photos and videos from stories, reels, posts, and highlights,” Instagram says. “However, we allow search engines to index photos and videos from public reels and posts that were uploaded or posted from January 1, 2020 onwards.”

This means all posts published after January 1, 2020 can show up in traditional search websites like Google and Microsoft Bing. But your Instagram account has to meet the following criteria:

• You must have an Instagram bus