Why are hashtags so important for SEO?

Hashtags are everywhere on social media. They are the way you make your content searchable. If you have business accounts on any of the social media platforms you will benefit from the clever use of hashtags. Hashtags are like little mini keywords, putting your content right in front of the people who are looking for it.

You can bring users, and potential customers towards you, just with the addition of a well-chosen hashtag. It is also a great way of identifying trending topics and popular subjects so you can join in and put yourself right in the middle of a huge crowd. Even Facebook has cottoned on to the benefits of the hashtag.

If you are not a regular hashtag user, maybe it’s something you can consider. Using them as part of your status updates, tweets and pins will make it much easier to find the content you are sharing.

First develop your own set of corporate hashtags. Even if your brand is not very well-known, it’s worth creating a set of social media ‘styles’ to follow and that includes hashtags. For example, ours would be #IndazoSEO, #Indazo, and so on. Have a look at the types of hashtags other companies and content creators use. Pay particular attention to the hashtags being used by popular influencers on social media, like Mashable, Moz, Wired, The Guardian, NYTimes, etc.

Google can see your Tweets, your Pinterest pins, and it can see your publicly shared posts on Facebook. If you add hashtags to the mix, you are helping users find you, but you are also helping the Google bots spot you! In effect, adding a hashtag is a way of adding a specific keyword that acts like a back link straight to your content.

That’s not a reason to go nuts however. We have seen too many posts, tweets, and pins with large numbers of hashtags. It’s not necessary, looks unprofessional and is reminiscent of spamming.

Start using hashtags, keep an eye on trending topics, and watch as your audience reach for each post expands and grows.