Where do you put your hashtags?

Do you put them in the comments or do you hide them in the post itself???

I’ve started to see both.

This link states that Insta says to put them in the post itself :thinking:

Curious what ya’ll do and the outcomes!

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Yes, always in the post itself, but with a few lines between them and the main text. I’ve done it this way for a while and it’s fine.

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I’ve also always done it like this, but I’ve ran into some posts that put them in the comments and it got me thinking. Would it be helpful advice to give to let them know its better to put them on the post itself?

Hey @eternalkaz! I have heard so many different things about this.

I know that @jenn said it really doesn’t matter whether you put them in the caption or the comments.

I have also heard people say that having 15-25 hashtags in the caption itself tends to look cluttered and unprofessional. I will say from my experience, I still put them in the caption. It seem to work for me.

I don’t think there is a direct answer for this one though.

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Would love to hear some of our @Instagram_Experts chime in! What do you recommend?

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I always put them directly in the caption, using some periods and returns to move them down. And, contrary to what Adam Mosseri (Instagram CEO) says, I still see reach specifically from hashtags when I check the professional dashboard.

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In the grand scheme of your audience, it doesn’t matter. They honestly don’t care and you’re not annoying them if you leave them in the caption.
Until the last year, I always said it didn’t matter. BUT now that IG is working on improving keyword search, the platform scrapes data from three areas to determine your post relevancy: your bio description, your post caption, and your hashtags (BUT only hashtags in the caption, not in the comments).
Sooo… here’s where it “can” matter. If you are using short captions, then yes, you should keep your hashtags in the caption because they help decipher the intention and topics of the post. However, if you have a longer and descriptive caption, chances are most of your hashtags are actually duplicative of the caption details so it isn’t as necessary to keep them in the caption.
And, one last thing has to do with accessibility. In general, your content is easier to consume and more accessible if the hashtags are in the comments. This is because screen readers get stuck reading hashtags (that are all in lower case) as one word which can’t be deciphered so they are read letter by letter. If you have 20 hashtags in there, that’s a LOT of characters to read off and it’s super annoying to the user. You can get around this, and keep your hashtags in the caption, by using camel case where you #CapitalizeEachWordIndividually

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Thanks for such a detailed response Jenn!! I’ll be keeping my hashtags in the caption. I’ll also be more careful to put camel case since I sometimes tend to # quickly and just do #naturephotography instead of #NaturePhotography.

I do keep my captions rather short.

I’ve always put them in the caption itself.

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Don’t know if I ever considered elsewhere to be honest

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I have always put them in the caption. My ADD can’t handle remembering to go back and put them in the 1st comment.

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Hey Y’all. I’m sorryI haven’t been active, it’s been very stressing lately. Instagram is a little in my wheelhouse Thank you Jenn Herman. Lol. Hashtags can look really messy. I’ve always put them at the bottom of a post. You DO NOT want to put them in the comments bc they they don’t count as SEO. This is how mine look, sometimes depending on the season using emojis is really cut too, but less hidden since the emojis are also SEO. Write it in Google Keep/Mac-Notes/ Windows-Notpad then.Try to insert an emoji here just case.
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:see_no_evil:
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#friends #thisisfun
#Igtips #companytagline #Iusespacesinbetween#
#becausepeoplewillseethemanyway
#butthiswaystiil #lookscleaner

I really hope that I helped. My accounts, including family…have been hacked and the want more $ so I had to let them go. I’m starting over. But that can be a good thing, right?
Jenn can vouch for me. I’m a good person with unfortunate luck.

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Hey Dani! I appreciate your advice and I’m happy you replied and came back!

That’s a bummer to hear about what happened to your accounts. That’s crazy! Did you figure out the way they got in?

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I agree with you, Jenn, about capitalising each letter, not only because it is easier to read but for the user experience too. Apparently, those with speech software (visually impaired users) are able to differentiate each word if they are capitalised

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In addition to IG Hashtags: Don’t forget to utilise alt text for images (you can do this in AP too) to make things more accessible and, I believe, the IG algorithm picks up on these cues too!

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Too embarrassed to answer that question, but the way they keep getting in is beyond me. Facebook can’t keep up with how fast they are. We are noticing that if we work early in the day, it’s easier, bc once it’s later they are able to block all ways for me to get in. We recovered one just to have them take the other again

I’m so sorry Dani. I hope that something breaks thru for you. I know many here share the same sentiment.

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Okay so this is very interesting @jenn! When you talk about “longer captions.” What are you considering long?

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@linaburgjeremy for the most part, if you’ve got 3 or more paragraphs, that’s a “longer” caption. It’s got enough context and content for AI to determine what the post is about. If you’ve only got a one or two sentence caption, that makes it harder for categorization.

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