Enter the new SEO powerhouse – is your brand ready?

From the 10th July 2025 Instagram began allowing public content from professional accounts to be indexed by Google and other search engines. If you’re a DTC business this is huge! No longer will your Instagram posts live solely in-app. They’re now discoverable in organic search results, effectively turning each of your posts into a new point of discovery for your brand.

Social searching isn’t a new thing by any means. People have been using various platforms such as YouTube, TikTok, and Amazon, to conduct searches for years. One plus point is each of these platforms offer a unique opportunity for brands to enhance their visibility. And as they become more routine destinations for product discovery, Instagram has decided it wants in on the action 👀The result being more people turning to Instagram not only for their search feed but also as a search engine.

So what does this mean for DTC brands? Well one way of looking at it is to effectively treat each post as a mini landing page, let's dig in a bit further.

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Transform Your Instagram Posts into SEO Assets

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Brands that start to harness this potential and optimise their posts with keyword rich captions, SEO friendly alt-text and clear file names, will be able to increase their visibility beyond the app itself and tap into organic Google search results, both for branded and non-branded queries.

To take full advantage of this change implement the following:

• Caption keyword optimisation – ****use search-intent keywords that reflect what your audience might type into Google to help your content rank for Google search queries
• Alt text and file naming – apply descriptive alt text to every image and name your media files with relevant keywords, to improve image SEO and accessibility.
• Public professional profile – ensure your account is set to professional (Business/Creator) and is public, so content can be crawled and indexed.
• Content aligned to high-intent topics – move beyond trend-based posts. Create content that inspires action, speaks to current problems or answers common questions, but also supports user search. The aim is to align both search intent and Instagram engagement goals.

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Takeaway

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Instagram’s latest business update transforms the platform from a content-sharing app into a search-optimised asset. It’s also an indication as to the future of social media and how brands should consider crafting their content. With each public post an opportunity to be discovered via Google and drive high-intent traffic to your shop or website, this could be a game changer for DTC brands. Another point to add to the to-do-list – turn Instagram posts into searchable web assets 💚

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