Hashtags have become a powerful tool in digital marketing, with their roots deeply embedded in today’s pop culture. Some **** them, others totally don’t. Few know how to use them strategically, while the majority just think it’s cool to throw in 1, 2, 5… or 50 hashtags in a post. While some play around with fun, embedded words following a hashtag, others focus on getting the most out of these little social media wonders. Whether you’re using related hashtags or just experimenting, they have become a staple in every marketer’s toolbox.
But how did this happen? Why has everyone started using them like crazy over the past few years? And why is there still so little intelligence on how hashtags work within search engines or on the algorithms of a marketing platform? Despite their popularity, there’s a surprising lack of tips and educated advice on how to rank higher on social platform hashtag pages.
These questions, along with many more, have led us to dive deep into each platform. We aim to uncover what algorithm lies behind hashtagged posts, how keywords and hashtags interplay, and why some posts soar while others fall flat.
The thing is though, there aren’t many of us who know the hashtag game through and through. First, we need to understand the role of hashtags in social media. Second, we have to grasp how they work. And third, we should determine whether they can actually benefit our SEO campaigns in the long run. In short, are they any good for us? And most importantly, how can we go all out on them to see results?
Hashtags can play a key role in driving visibility, but to truly harness their power, you’ll want to integrate them with your SEO keyword strategy. By doing so, you can align your hashtag usage with the efforts you’re already putting into various SEO tools. This combined approach can elevate both your social media presence and your overall search engine rankings.
- What Is a Hashtag and How It Was Born
- How To Rank High on Social Media Using Hashtags
- Why You Should Double Down On Hashtags
1. What Is a Hashtag and How It Was Born
A hashtag is a discovery tool, heavily used by both social media users and brands. It’s essentially a new function of search—a stream of conversation used by those with a mutual interest in something. Hashtags usually cover contemporary trends, known facts, niche hashtags, particular interests, or simply anything you write after the pound symbol.
All major search engines, like Google, Bing, and Yahoo, index hashtags. They’re a great invention of the 21st century, helping people come together, share common interests, and inspire one another. Hashtags for Instagram, for example, allow users to jump into discussions by following hashtag feeds or pages, which enhances communication, bonding, and growth.
Hashtags can even boost traffic and engagement for marketing campaigns.
The hashtag is a word or phrase following a hash/pound mark (#), widely used on social media channels such as Twitter and Instagram. It helps identify, gather, and generate conversations around a specific topic. Instagram’s SEO can benefit from a well-chosen hashtag strategy, especially when paired with a good hashtags generator to find trending and niche terms.
In the beginning, hashtags were used only by social media early adopters, but they quickly caught the attention of advertisers and brands. Now, hashtags have become central to marketing campaigns, whether they’re used in a video description or as part of broader customer care initiatives. By leveraging social media analytics and social listening, brands can engage with accounts more effectively and refine their hashtag strategies for maximum impact. Even choosing the right Instagram name and hashtag can help accounts gain visibility and connect with their audience on a deeper level.
Hashtags are now part of the pop culture.
However, every trend comes with its fair share of madness and blunders. With the current fashion of using hashtags on everything—both online and offline—it’s no surprise that many people don’t really know how to use them properly. As a result, hashtags are often misused, misunderstood, abused, or misplaced.
Also known by their technical name—metadata tags—hashtags are searchable links that can significantly relate to SEO efforts, driving referral traffic to your website. Established in 2007, they have continued to thrive, enchanting users and brands alike. Whether you’re using a caption generator to craft engaging posts or a name generator to brand your content, the right hashtags can make all the difference.
Many people overlook that hashtags related to their niche can help boost visibility, especially when optimized in places like the search bar or when monitored with tools like Google Analytics. Beethoven might disagree, but for today’s marketers, hashtags are a powerful tool for enhancing searchability and engagement.
IRC (Internet Relay Chats) were the first to use hashtags, establishing themselves as a precursor of today’s social platforms. Resembling in form and style with today’s social websites, IRCs were live chats and messaging means where people could gather and share similar interests. When adopted by Twitter, hashtags were initially used for tweet chats, running like open groups where people could talk about a particular topic. Chris Messina was the mastermind behind the hashtag integration on Twitter. His idea was to incorporate a tracking tool on the platform, one that could be easily accessed by people in, say, the tweet itself.
how do you feel about using # (pound) for groups. As in #barcamp [msg]?
— Chris Messina (@chrismessina) August 23, 2007
Although Twitter initially rejected the idea, Messina’s followers and other users embraced hashtags immediately. Thanks to them, Twitter became the first platform where hashtags gained traction (and let’s not forget that Twitter was also one of the first major mobile-friendly sites). Just a couple of decades earlier, the pound symbol was merely a way to navigate phone systems or return to the main menu. Now, the hash sign has taken on a new life, allowing people with similar interests to connect in evergreen groups where posts stay live and fresh.
Today, hashtags are essential for increasing brand awareness and reaching broader audiences. The Instagram algorithm, for example, uses hashtags as one of its key ranking factors to determine how well posts perform. By using AI social media tools and AI social algorithms, brands can target specific keywords more effectively, optimizing their content to appear in searches or even through Instagram’s search function. This helps brands expand beyond niche markets and engage broader audiences. Whether your goal is brand visibility or SEO, hashtags remain a crucial tool in the digital marketing arsenal.
Remember when we said marketers were drawn to this new social media invention? The thing with the hashtag is that, whenever you want to optimize conversations, titles, content and any other type of text form with hashtags, your activity will get more visible to the audiences both on social media and on search engines. For marketers, hashtags are a way to engage their brand with their market, and they usually deploy 3 types of marketing strategies:
- brand or campaign hashtags – create a hashtag for your particular brand/campaign (#CocaCola)
- trending hashtags – seize the trends of the moment and post content related to them (#WinterOlympics)
- content hashtags (hashtag random words in your post).
Hashtag words work as brand mentions if you want. Marketers all over the world use them to gather and analyze what others are talking about their brands. Hashtags track conversations and keep them safe on pages. Hashtagged-words are like long-tail keywords – when spot on, they promise low search traffic, (sometimes) low competition, and high conversion.
As already mentioned before, Google crawls and indexes hashtags, be they from Twitter, Google+, or blog posts – they’re all there.
source: intelligenthq.com
Although listed first in the image, Facebook is not the most popular social platform for using hashtags. In the beginning, Facebook was against the idea of hashtags, but eventually adopted them after seeing Twitter’s engagement success. Most marketers and SEO experts viewed hashtags as a smart alternative to paid ads that appeared out of nowhere. Hashtags, by contrast, were relevant and organic, which led to better results in driving traffic to your website.
Slowly but steadily, Google+ followed suit, incorporating hashtags on their platform in May 2013. Looking back, Google+ and Google as a search engine did a much better job with hashtags than Facebook. While Facebook lacks depth, Google integrated hashtags into the SERPs, making them an essential part of SEO strategy and social media strategy alike. For example, SEO for Instagram relies heavily on hashtag optimization to boost increased visibility, while Google uses them in search to improve website traffic.
Hashtags depend on different rules dictated by each social platform. You can’t apply the same SEO guide to all of them because each platform has a unique approach. On Instagram, the Instagram search bar and hashtag search are critical for ranking higher. Incorporating the right Instagram keyword or targeted keyword into your Instagram content can make a big difference, especially when using tools like a description generator or video description generator to refine your captions. This is crucial because hashtags affect SEO, influencing user activity and how often your posts appear in hashtag feeds.
Writing alt text for images, using a specific word or phrase in your content, or optimizing your YouTube video description can all contribute to ranking higher in search results. A well-rounded social media strategy that takes into account these factors will help you see better results in terms of both hashtag rankings and overall website traffic.
2. How To Rank High on Social Media Using Hashtags
It’s a good habit to clear the clutter from our lives, and the same principle applies to hashtags. We need to ignore the spammers who use popular hashtags that have nothing to do with their content or those randomly playing with words after the hash mark. Instead, we should focus on what truly makes a hashtag post successful. This means choosing relevant hashtags, especially since they have a short lifespan—though their impact on search engine optimization (SEO) can be long-lasting.
How does a word or phrase preceded by a pound symbol influence SEO and search results? What’s the algorithm behind hashtags that makes some posts rank in Instagram’s Top Stories while others show up in Most Recent? Why does the Twitter hashtag feed often seem chaotic, not following a clear set of ranking factors like engagement, page authority, or followers? Could it be that hashtagged posts are ordered based on a mix of your search, location, and interests?
These are common questions, echoing what you’ll find in SEO FAQs and online discussions. Hashtags are central to any strong SEO strategy, driving traffic and boosting online presence. Platforms like Instagram use branded hashtags and tools like an Instagram hashtag generator to help users optimize their posts for better reach. If you’re crafting an Instagram caption or generating hashtags for a YouTube video, tools like these can be essential for success.
Instagram recommendations guidelines highlight the importance of using hashtags that align with your content and audience, while the Instagram search feature helps users find posts with the most relevant hashtags. Employee advocacy can also play a role, as staff members can boost branded hashtags across their networks, further enhancing visibility.
Ultimately, a well-planned SEO strategy that uses targeted hashtags, whether generated by an Instagram search or a dedicated tool, can significantly improve search results and online engagement.
On our way to finding the answers to our questions, we realized we can’t take more than an educated guess on how social platforms rank hashtag posts on their timeline and what you should do in order to succeed with your hashtag marketing strategy. Afterall, this would be a guess made on other guesses, since nobody actually knows social media/search engines algorithms, but only try to read their behaviors and changes. Plus, we wouldn’t be the only ones to try:
source: makelight.com
How To Use Hashtags on Twitter for Maximum Engagement
Given the little information we could find about what’s the algorithm behind hashtag pages, we had to look at the algorithm Twitter uses for their usual posts. However twisted and complicated it seems, one thing is certain: Twitter’s really secretive and stingy when they’re to give information on their workings. There are many educated assumptions on how Twitter might rank tweets and display them on the feed – so our first thought was that maybe the same situation stands for hashtags a well.
As if things weren’t tangled enough, on March 15, 2016, Twitter changed to a new algorithm that displayed a non-chronological selection of tweets on the top feed.
| Tweets you are likely to care about most will show up first in your timeline. We choose them based on accounts you interact with most, Tweets you engage with, and much more. | |
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Twitter team |
Just like on any other major social media platform, engagement is a key factor in the Twitter timeline algorithm. It not only impacts your online relationship with your followers but also determines what content you’ll see first. In addition, tweets follow the rule of thumb—relevancy. This includes factors like freshness, overall engagement (likes, retweets, clicks, favorites, external shares, and time spent on the post), as well as the author of the post (your relationship with them, how often you’ve interacted), and your activity (how often you log in and how much time you spend on the platform).
For social media marketing, integrating hashtags for SEO into your posts can help improve visibility. Proper keyword research, including the use of keyword tools, is essential to ensure you’re using the right terms to drive engagement. Optimizing with alt text for images and linking content to your YouTube channel can further boost reach across platforms. By applying these SEO techniques, you can enhance your overall social presence and achieve better results on Twitter and beyond.
| When you open Twitter after being away for a while, the Tweets you’re most likely to care about will appear at the top of your timeline – still recent and in reverse chronological order. The rest of the Tweets will be displayed right underneath, also in reverse chronological order, as always. | |
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Mike jahr |
| Former Senior Engineering Manager at Twitter @mjahr | |
So, the logic is this: should you have skipped a few days or months since you last visited Twitter, once you eventually sign in, Twitter will show you posts in reverse-chronological order so that you’d be taking things over from where you last left them. These being said, is’ obvious – it all looks natural and clear now: Twitter doesn’t want you to miss on anything that might impact you. Twitter is faithful.
However, if you’re not really in the mood of revising everything you’ve been missing out while you were “outside Twitter”, you can always click “Happening Now” and check what’s cooking at that very moment on your timeline.
Anyways, if you want to rank high with your tweets, then you’d better start using hashtags. The thing is though, you cannot apply any rule comes to your mind, or those that work on other social websites. You need to know the game. And studies show that tweets with hashtags had 2 times more engagement than those without, plus 55% more retweets.
Employing a seo guide and keyword tools can aid in finding the best seo keyword combinations that boost brand awareness. For companies using employee advocacy, encouraging employees to share posts with popular hashtags can expand reach. Additionally, social listening and social media analytics provide deeper insights into how hashtags affect SEO and allow you to engage with accounts more meaningfully.
Speaking of Twitter hashtag techniques, the most effective tweets include not one thousand or one hundred, but 1-2 hashtags. Avoid adding too many or else you can ruin the audience flow to your post. The former 140, now 280 character-limit should make it obvious that hashtags should engage too much space. You are allowed to use as many you wish in your post, but hashtags won’t perform as good as you’d expect them to.
source: searchenginewatch.com
Last but not least, make your hashtags relevant and a natural part of your tweet or post on Instagram. Hashtags should align with your content and, if possible, summarize the topic of the post. Avoid spamming with irrelevant hashtags, such as attaching a popular but unrelated hashtag on Instagram just for more visibility. This can irritate your audience rather than inspire them.
For a more effective approach, follow recommendations guidelines and incorporate Instagram SEO tips to ensure your hashtags improve your reach. Crafting a well-optimized Instagram bio with the right keywords can also enhance your visibility, helping your posts gain traction and making your account more discoverable.
Instagram and Hashtags – A Story of Power and Charm
If we were to make a top listing how hard it is for marketers to nail the hashtag ranking algorithm on various social platforms, Twitter would be head of the list, closely followed by Instagram, then Google+, and Facebook.
The Instagram hashtag pages can be divided into two sections: “Top Posts” and “Most Recent.
Instagram is a little bit easier to navigate, especially when looking at the “Most Recent” section of a hashtag page. I conducted an experiment by posting a random photo from my phone on Instagram using the #healthyeating and #butterchicken hashtags. And voila! They appeared in the Most Recent section. However, in the second screenshot, my post didn’t show up in the top three posts but was instead pushed down by others. The reason? That particular SEO hashtag is highly trending, so new posts appear just seconds apart.
This highlights that hashtags and visibility on social media platforms like Instagram have a very short lifespan unless a post has a large, engaged audience consistently voting, commenting, liking, and saving it. For social media managers, this is where effective use of Instagram Reels and optimizing SEO on Instagram becomes crucial.
Following community guidelines and leveraging the right strategy can help boost a post’s staying power in the feed. Implementing these tactics can ensure that your content continues to gain traction beyond the initial post window.
Today, Instagram is probably the best place to use hashtags in. It is heaven to hashtags. The more pound marks a post has, the bigger the audience. And digital marketers know it and use them to their maximum potential. The success recipe is to use 9 hashtags – these bring the best engagement ( studies show a rise of 28,548 interactions per post).
source: searchenginewatch.com
Even stories marked with a hashtag can get on the hashtag pages.
The good thing is that there’s no character or hashtag limit, hence you can add up to 30 hashtags per post. You have the chance to rapidly expand your audience, provided you have attractive content. You know it already – content is king. Along with many other factors that might matter only if you want to get a spot in Top Posts.
source: https://blog.bufferapp.com/instagram-algorithm
Longer hashtags have higher engagement. Just as with long-tail keywords, the more specific hashtags are, the better. Usually, the more generic and simpler ones bring less traffic.
Instagram doesn’t like giving specific information on how hashtags work on their platform, opting for neutrality in answers.
Do Facebook Hashtags Offer Enough Exposure?
When it comes to Facebook, there very little we can say in regard to their hashtag approach. They were the last ones to adopt this social media invention and didn’t seem to be willing to invest too much in it, like the two aforementioned social platforms did, creating a whole religion around it.
Similar to Instagram, people are able to see only posts either from their friends or coming from profile pages with public settings. So one step would be to set your brand page as visible as possible, that is to promote it. Then, pair your highly-engaging and attractive posts with brand/campaign, trending, or content hashtags.
There’s no limitation as to how many hashtags a post should have, hence, the increased interaction depends only on the right choice of numbers. The same Trackmaven studies show that more hashtags a Facebook post has, the weaker the engagement will be. If you want to score big from the very beginning, keep in mind that one hashtag brings more traffic than more – approximately 1,771.
source: searchenginewatch.com
On Instagram, using hashtags effectively is key to boosting SEO for Instagram. Instagram SEO tips suggest that optimizing instagram posts, instagram captions, and even instagram reels with hashtags for seo can enhance user activity and increase social media analytics insights. Tools like an instagram hashtag generator or hashtag generator tool help you find keywords and hashtags that drive traffic and engagement. These hashtags also impact the Instagram algorithm, influencing where your content appears in the instagram search bar or during a hashtag search. Adding a specific keyword or instagram keyword into your bio generator or instagram content further strengthens your online presence.
When it comes to the order algorithm behind how Facebook displays hashtag results, most probably it would be a mix of the following:
source: https://blog.bufferapp.com/facebook-news-feed-algorithm
Google+ Only Shows You Posts From Your Agenda
A quick search shows that Google is no longer displaying Google+ hashtag results in their SERPs. There’s no official press release from Google announcing this, but it appears you can now only see hashtagged posts shared directly on the Google+ platform.
Google+ operates similarly to Instagram and Facebook—you can only view posts from your connections and other public content. Truth be told, Facebook and Google+ are the least targeted platforms among the big four. However, you can still perform a hashtag search for any keyword that comes to mind, and also see trending hashtags by checking the “*** Topics” section.
For platforms like Instagram, social media tools and Instagram SEO tools can help optimize your strategy to reach target audiences. Instagram recommends using relevant hashtags to boost visibility. By applying SEO tips and keeping an eye on what’s trending, you can maximize your post’s reach and engagement on social media.
Why You Should Double Down On Hashtags
Hashtags mean networking, discovering, community building opportunities, popularity, advertising, and loads of traffic. They work somehow as a library where you can find everything related to a certain subject (e.g. #Grammys, #Oscars). They do work but they show results only when you’re not doing overkill.
Knowing that Google indexes tweets, you should double down on using hashtags that can boost brand visibility and impact your SEO strategy by increasing awareness and brand searches. By incorporating hashtags into your social marketing strategy, you’ll create more opportunities for your brand name, content, and social media activity to appear in Google search results.
Utilizing a hashtag generator tool can help you find the most relevant and trending hashtags for your Instagram posts, ensuring better visibility. This is crucial, as the right specific hashtag can enhance social media engagement and drive traffic to your site. Whether you’re posting on Twitter, Instagram, Google+, or Facebook, using the hash mark properly allows users to discover your brand based on their interests and needs.
Speed is important for maximizing engagement, as a hashtagged post has a short lifespan, but when done right, hashtags can generate long-term traffic. Monitoring trends and being the first to post on a trending topic is key to visibility. For this, a tool like Hashtagify.me can be useful in identifying the most popular and relevant hashtags for your posts.
Finally, don’t forget to optimize other elements of your social media presence, such as using a bio generator to create a compelling Instagram bio. If you have insights into how hashtags work or how to rank higher in SERPs and timelines, feel free to leave a comment—we’d **** to hear your thoughts!
Conclusion
Hashtags have evolved into a powerful tool that goes beyond simple social media posts, playing a crucial role in search engine optimization (SEO) and increasing brand visibility. For social media managers, understanding the nuances of using related hashtags, niche hashtags, and targeted keywords can greatly improve their overall social media marketing strategy. Hashtags help to boost social media engagement and connect with target audiences, making them indispensable in modern social media platforms like Instagram.
Adhering to instagram recommendations guidelines and community guidelines is also crucial for long-term success. Proper use of writing alt text, thoughtful youtube video description writing, and incorporating video description generators can further enhance visibility across platforms like Instagram and YouTube. For businesses leveraging AI social media tools, generating hashtags strategically helps amplify content reach and social media engagement.
Ultimately, the right combination of SEO on Instagram, hashtag on Instagram, and marketing platform integration can help you achieve increased visibility, drive traffic, and sustain a strong online presence. By optimizing content with SEO tools and applying Instagram SEO tips, businesses can elevate their brand’s performance across social media.
Article reviewed by Catalin Dracsineanu
