Hashtags and keywords are a very important part of getting your content seen and discovered. They are a key part of SEO. However, it is not an exact science. Also, everything actually starts with you, your business, and understanding who is your target customer. If you have this clear, then you can start using hashtags and keywords effectively to reach your audience.

In terms of social media, as an example, Instagram allows you to use a number of characters per post. Make sure you are using some of those characters for hashtags so you may reach increase your chances of reaching your audience. However, your perfect keywords and hashtag research is never done. You need to use common sense and you also need to pay attention to the platform you’re using or what is trending and understand if the trending conversation matches your brand and your target market. If it does, definitely leverage those trending hashtags or keywords.

A good starting point to work on a good set of hashtags or keywords is to take pen and paper and start listing them. A great way to accomplish this is think about what your customers would type in a Google search if they were looking for your product. Also, perform the actual search yourself and see if what you get back are products that are similar to yours. If you don’t then continue with a variation of the same search words. Continue this way until you have a good set of keywords.

You have probably noticed that when you type in a hashtag on Instagram, the app gives you a list with the hashtag and other similar ones below it, together with a number that represents how many of those occurrences of hashtags are in the Instagram app on that specific moment. I know it can be overwhelming, but you need to understand that having millions of occurrences of the hashtag may not necessarily make that hashtag good for you to add to the post, because the competition is too high. If you pick a hashtag that has a number in the thousands, then that one may be a more possible hashtag. The words possible or difficult refer to what is the overall likelihood of your post getting more or less visibility. Google Search Console and Semrush are examples of some of the tools your could use during your process of getting your keyword list together.

The practice of identifying keywords for your business coupled with good content, good graphics, creative art or videos should establish a good base for your presence online. Last, since Google SEO changes, it is also important to stay up to date on how the algorithms are updated since keywords and hashtags do not exist alone but are part of a mix of tools and processes making up the basics of how online search works. I hope this blog was helpful and at least gave you an initial idea or understanding of why keywords and hashtags are important and how they help in getting your content found and seen.