The short answer
Social media SEO means using the words people actually search in your profile name, bio, captions, voiceover and on-screen text. Instagram matches searches against usernames, profile names, bios, captions, hashtags and places; TikTok reads descriptions, voiceovers, captions and on-screen text; YouTube compares titles, tags, descriptions and the video itself to the search. Public posts from professional Instagram accounts can also be indexed by Google and Bing.
Most restaurant and apartment accounts in Metro Detroit post often enough. The trouble is that the posts are written for people who already follow the account. Someone who types “brunch Royal Oak” into Instagram, “pet friendly apartments Detroit” into TikTok or “Corktown pizza” into YouTube never sees them, because nothing in the profile or the post uses those words.
Social media SEO is the work of fixing that. Instagram, TikTok and YouTube have each published how their search reads an account. This guide covers what each platform says in its own documentation, how Google and AI tools pick up social posts, and a checklist with examples for a restaurant and an apartment building.
How does Instagram search decide what to show?
Instagram’s explainer on how search works says the text a person types is “by far the most important signal,” followed by that person’s own activity and the popularity of the results. Instagram says it tries to match a search against “usernames, bios, captions, hashtags and places.”
The Meta Transparency Center page on Instagram Search, updated June 23, 2026, lists the signals in more detail. Among them:
- how similar the words in a search are to an account’s username or profile name
- for photos, videos and reels, how similar the search words are to the result
- how many people saved, liked or visited the profile from a post
- how close the searcher’s location is to that of the post’s author
- how often people running the same search in your country clicked an account and then followed it or liked a post
The location signal is the one local businesses should notice. Instagram counts distance between the searcher and the author, so a Ferndale restaurant’s posts are weighed differently for someone searching from Ferndale than for someone in Phoenix.
What should go in your Instagram name, username and bio?
Instagram’s search explainer gives three direct tips. Use a handle or profile name related to what you post. Put keywords about who you are and what the profile is about in your bio. If the account is tied to a place, “like for a small business,” put the location in the bio.
The profile name is the bold line above your bio, separate from your @username. Since the Transparency Center lists both username and profile name as matching signals, the name field is the place for a short description. “[Restaurant name] | Tacos in Ferndale” gives search three more words to match than the restaurant name alone.
The bio should say what you are and where you are in its first line. “Birria tacos and mezcal on Nine Mile in Ferndale” is searchable. “Good food, good vibes” is not.
Do captions, hashtags and alt text help on Instagram?
Captions do. Instagram’s explainer says to “put keywords and hashtags in the caption, not the comments.” Instagram’s Creators page on improving your reach says followers and non-followers find accounts by searching, and it tells creators to include relevant keywords “in your content, your caption, your bio, and your hashtags.”
The same Creators page says Instagram is less likely to recommend reposts of a reel already on Instagram, content with noticeable watermarks, or accounts that regularly collect and reshare other people’s content. If your reels carry another app’s logo, export clean files instead.
Alt text works differently. Instagram’s Help Center page on alt text presents it as an accessibility feature and says the description “will only be read if someone is using a screen reader.” Write it to describe the photo accurately for those users. Instagram does not say alt text affects search ranking, so there is no reason to stuff it with keywords.
On-screen text in reels is in a similar spot. Instagram’s published search guidance does not mention it, so treat it as something for viewers. A title card that reads “Friday fish fry, 4 to 9 p.m.” tells a person watching on mute what the post is about.
Instagram also limits what it recommends. Its Help Center explains that some posts are kept out of Explore and search results when they conflict with its Recommendation Guidelines, and the Creators page says Account Status shows whether your account and its content are eligible to be recommended to non-followers. If reach from search drops suddenly, check Account Status before changing anything else.
Can Instagram posts show up in Google?
Yes, for some accounts. Instagram’s Help Center says it generally asks search engines such as Google and Microsoft Bing not to index photos and videos. It does allow indexing of public reels and posts uploaded on or after January 1, 2020, from accounts that meet three conditions: the account holder is over 18, the account is public, and it is a professional account. Once an account qualifies, photos and videos from its public reels, story highlights and posts can be indexed.
Instagram lists three ways to opt out:
- Turn off the option in your account privacy settings that lets your public photos and videos appear in search engine results.
- Set the account to private.
- Switch the account from professional to personal.
Instagram adds that de-indexing can take time, and that your username, profile picture and bio may still appear in search engine results.
For a restaurant or a leasing office, the setting is usually worth leaving on. It means a post can be found by people who never open Instagram, so captions should make sense to a stranger who lands on them from Google.
How does TikTok search read your videos?
TikTok’s Creator Academy article Getting discovered with Search, last updated August 18, 2026, is unusually direct. It tells creators to use “your video’s description, voiceovers, captions, and on-screen text” to make clear what a video is about so it connects with searchers.
The article also corrects three common beliefs:
- Tiny or off-screen keyword text helps. TikTok says unrelated text added this way “can get your video flagged for spam.”
- You must edit inside TikTok to rank. TikTok says you can edit with whatever tools you like and search performance won’t be affected.
- Long hashtag lists help. TikTok says overloading a caption with loosely related keywords or hashtags “can actually work against you.”
For keyword ideas, TikTok points to Creator Search Insights. TikTok’s newsroom introduced the tool in March 2024 as a way to see what people search for, including content gaps where searches have few videos. You can open it by typing “Creator Search Insights” in TikTok’s search bar. The Creator Academy article says you need 1,000 followers to see the topics your own followers search for.
For a restaurant, this means the words in the voiceover count. A voiceover that says “birria tacos in Ferndale, Thursday through Sunday” gives TikTok the same words a hungry person would type.
How do YouTube Shorts get found in search?
YouTube’s Help Center page on how YouTube search works names three main elements: relevance, engagement and quality. For relevance, YouTube looks at “how well the title, tags, description, and video content match your search query.”
YouTube’s Shorts search and discovery page says Shorts in search results are ranked on factors that include how well the metadata matches the viewer’s search and whether viewers click and watch.
YouTube’s tips for video descriptions give the clearest instruction any of the three platforms publishes. Identify one or two main words that describe the video and feature them prominently in both the title and the description. Give every video a unique description. The field holds up to 5,000 characters.
Hashtags have firm limits on YouTube. Its hashtag help page says up to three hashtags from the description can appear by the title, that a video with more than 60 hashtags has all of them ignored, and that misleading or unrelated hashtags can get a video removed.
A Short titled “New 1-bedroom tour” competes with every apartment on YouTube. “1-bedroom apartment tour in downtown Royal Oak,” with a description that names the building, the street and the move-in season, matches what a renter actually types.
How does Google index social posts and video?
Google’s video SEO best practices say that when you embed a video from YouTube, Vimeo or Facebook on your website, “Google may index the video both on your web page and on the third-party platform’s equivalent page.” A tour video embedded on your site can therefore surface in Google from two places.
The same page says Google looks for a watch page whose main purpose is to show a single video, with its own title and description. For an apartment building, that argues for one page per floor plan with its tour video on it, rather than a gallery page with a dozen clips.
Google has also made room for social content in regular results. In May 2023 it announced a Perspectives filter for “long- and short-form videos, images and written posts that people have shared on discussion boards, Q&A sites and social media platforms.”
Can social posts show up in AI answers?
Google’s guidance on AI features in Search says that to appear as a supporting link in AI Overviews or AI Mode, a page “must be indexed and eligible to be shown in Google Search with a snippet,” and that there are no additional requirements or special optimizations. An indexed Instagram post or YouTube video meets that bar the same way a web page does. Being eligible is not the same as being chosen, and Google does not publish how often social posts are picked as links.
OpenAI’s Help Center says ChatGPT search sometimes partners with other search providers and rewrites a question into targeted queries. Its own example turns “What are some good restaurants near me?” from someone in the San Francisco area into “top restaurants San Francisco.” Answers that use search may include citations you can click to open the source.
That rewrite is the useful detail. AI tools tend to reduce a casual question to a category plus a place. Profiles and captions that say “tacos” and “Ferndale” in plain words match that kind of query. A slogan such as “Taco Tuesday vibes” has no category or place in it.
Social media SEO checklist for a restaurant and an apartment building
Start with the profile fields. The examples use placeholders for the business name.
| Field | Restaurant example | Apartment building example |
|---|---|---|
| Instagram profile name | [Name] | Tacos in Ferndale | [Name] | Apartments in Royal Oak |
| Bio, first line | Birria tacos and mezcal on Nine Mile in Ferndale | Studio, 1- and 2-bedroom apartments in downtown Royal Oak |
| Bio, second line | Walk-ins welcome. Order online below. | Tours Monday through Saturday. Book below. |
| Instagram location tag | The restaurant’s own place listing | The building’s own place listing |
| YouTube Short title | Birria tacos in Ferndale, Michigan | 2-bedroom apartment tour, downtown Royal Oak |
Then work through the steps.
- List the searches. Write down ten phrases a customer would type, such as “tacos Ferndale” or “Royal Oak apartments with parking.” Check them against the suggestions Instagram shows as you type and against Creator Search Insights on TikTok.
- Fix the Instagram name field. Add the category and the city after the business name.
- Rewrite the bio. First line says what and where. Use the same city name you use on your website and Google Business Profile.
- Confirm the account settings. A public professional Instagram account, with the search engine setting left on, is eligible for Google and Bing indexing.
- Check Account Status. Make sure the account is eligible to be recommended to non-followers.
- Lead each caption with the search words. Restaurant: “Birria tacos are back at [Name] in Ferndale, Thursday through Sunday until we sell out.” Apartment: “Tour a 2-bedroom corner unit at [Name] in downtown Royal Oak, with in-unit laundry and a balcony over Main Street.”
- Say it out loud and on screen. For TikTok especially, the voiceover and on-screen text should repeat the main words from the caption, without stuffing extra terms.
- Keep hashtags few and accurate. A city tag and a category tag are enough. Never use unrelated tags.
- Tag the location on every Instagram post filmed at the business, since Instagram matches searches against places.
- Write real alt text. Describe the photo for screen reader users: “Three birria tacos with consommé on a blue plate” or “Living room with two windows facing Main Street.”
- Post clean, original files. No other app’s watermark, and no reposting a reel that is already on Instagram.
- Give every Short a unique title and description that repeats one or two main words.
- Connect the profiles. Google Business Profile lets you add links to social profiles, including Instagram, TikTok and YouTube, in select regions. Link the same profiles from your website, and embed tour or menu videos on pages built around a single video.
How we handle this at Full On Social
Full On Social is a marketing agency in Metro Detroit, and social media SEO is one part of our AI-Powered Growth service, alongside AI search optimization, content performance strategy and platform ranking optimization. Our focus industries are restaurants and hospitality, and real estate and developers, the two kinds of accounts this guide is written for.
The work starts with the searches your customers type. From there we rewrite profile names, bios and captions on Instagram, TikTok and YouTube to match them, and we plan photo and short-form video so the words in the caption, the voiceover and the on-screen text agree. Our social media management service covers strategy, posting and community. To connect your social profiles with your website, Google Business Profile and listings, see AI search optimization. Restaurants can read about our restaurant marketing work, and property teams can start with real estate marketing. To have us review your profiles, contact us.
Updates
- October 7, 2026: Guide published, facts checked against the Instagram Help Center, Instagram Creators, the Meta Transparency Center, TikTok Creator Academy and Newsroom, YouTube Help, Google Search Central, the Google Business Profile Help Center and the OpenAI Help Center.
