Not ranking on Instagram hashtags? Although it may seem like youâve hit a bit of a wall â donât worry! You have actually just uncovered a potential area for improvement, and now have a benchmark that will help you start ranking. Luckily, there are only a few things that could possibly be causing you to not rank, and all of them can be managed or fixed.
Common causes:
The hashtags you are using are too competitive for your account
The hashtags are not relevant enough to the post you have made
You havenât given it enough time
You have used banned or flagged hashtags
Not sure how to fix these issues, and improve your hashtag strategy? Weâll walk you through how to combat the common causes of your content failing to rank, so you can get your account back on track.
đAll of the steps listed below will be using our Analytics Suite.
Cause #1: The hashtags you are using are too competitive for your account
What do we mean by âtoo competitiveâ? If the content within a hashtag that you use, isnât similar enough in terms of engagement to your general posts, that hashtag might be too competitive.
So, how do you know if your hashtags are too competitive, and how do you fix it?
First, letâs start by checking the competition of the hashtags youâve used by heading to âHashtags -> Analyzeâ
đĄKey info:
To get the best results from hashtags, you want to rank as highly as possible in the âtop postsâ section.
Where / If you rank in the âtop postsâ section is determined by your ability to rank on that hashtag, usually this is dictated by the engagement received on your post + the relevancy of content vs the existing content on the top posts section of a hashtag.
Here you can see two sets of data:
Usage & performance data
Times used
Times ranked
Rank ratio
Efficiency scor
Hashtagâs general data
Media Count
Average Likes
DAPC
First, letâs order the list of hashtags youâve used by the ratio in which you rank on them.
If you have a low (<15%) ârank ratioâ itâs likely that the hashtags youâre using are too competitive for your account.
Hereâs an example of what that might look like:
Although hashtags that are bigger are likely to provide larger returns, you should make sure that the majority of the hashtags youâre using are likely to provide results.
This means using hashtags with similar average likes to what you usually achieve on your posts.
A lot of Flick users follow a strategy that is similar to the following:
15 hashtags are not very competitive (similar or less than your avg likes)
10 hashtags that are more competitive (Similar or more than your avg likes)
5 hashtags that are very competitive (Hashtags that are considerably higher than your likes)
So, if you get 500 likes per post, the hashtags you select for a post could look like this:
Cause #2: The hashtags are not relevant enough to the post you have made
Think of hashtags like SEO for your Instagram content. If someone is discovering your post via a hashtag, it is because they have searched for that specific keyword. So, if youâre a fitness influencer posting a workout in a food-related hashtag, itâs unlikely youâll rank. This is because people are going to that hashtag to find food-related content, so are less likely to click on, or engage with your post. Ask yourself whether the hashtags you are using on a post, actually relate to the image or video. Think about what you would search, for if you would want to find content like yours, and use this to frame the basis of your initial hashtag research.
đYou might also find that broader hashtags donât work for your posts either. If you are a fitness influencer for example, try swapping out hashtags like â#fitnessâ for more specific hashtags like â#5minuteabsâ.
Cause #3: You havenât given it enough time
If you have only used the hashtag a few times, and havenât seen results yet â try to give it more time. Itâs unlikely that you will rank on a hashtag every single time you post on it. Most of the time you will rank around 30%-70% of the time if that hashtag is working well for you, so you should post using a single hashtag enough times to see initial results â we recommend at least 4 times per hashtag.