How to Avoid an Instagram Shadowban, keep appearing in search results, and continue to grow in Instagram
Updated January 5, 2023
In Instagram, if you use the same hashtags and many of them, on all/most posts, you will very likely get shadow-banned. Instagram will stop letting your posts get found through search, so you’ll get less likes, less follows and less desired actions. Counter this by using the Hashtag Suggestions option to get hashtags for each of your image uploads. The hashtags are for the specific image so they're always different.
This works in Later, Buffer, Hootsuite (search Instagram in our help; your web-to-Instagram solution is probably one of our integrations) and all of the over 30 social media publishing tools that do web-to-phone notification scheduling.
The hashtags for image solution also works with all web to Instagram direct publishing and scheduling solutions, including Socialflow, Hootsuite, Tailwind, Falcon.io, and all the others, too! Just follow the instructions for desktop-to-phone Instagram scheduling.
RiteTag Pro comes with the browser extension and also includes the RiteTag mobile app, which also streamlines getting hashtags specific to an image, so your hashtags are different per Instagram upload and the app makes it easy to get hashtags, paste into the caption field (or as a comment - hashtags works there, too) in an Instagram upload.
Install the RiteTag extension for Chrome or Firefox if you haven't already. Search your browser in our help directory if you use another browser and need instructions.
Also, you can do research with RiteTag and create Hashtag Sets based on your research on the site. Use the interactive analytics, with a sphere of hashtags in which when you click outside the center, you get analytics (Twitter-based, but there’s overlap of results in Instagram for most of them) on the hashtag in the center. Click the bookmark icon to send the tag to the bottom if the numbers look good (high engagement and shares vs. uniques, which are your competition). Try with this analytics page: 30 growthhacking hashtags popular on Twitter (https://ritetag.com/best-hashtags-for/growthhacking).
Remember to make a Hashtag Set for each topic you tend to share posts on or, variations of the topic. If you continually add the same hashtags to many posts, you will probably get shadow-banned, and thus, your posts will not come up in search. This is death to likes, comments, shares - all the interaction we need in Instagram. Prevent this by doing the RiteTag research once, make Hashtag Sets on many topics, use them with appropriate posts.
Since there’s so much overlap of hashtag engagement between Twitter and Instagram (but not as much with Facebook), RiteTag is what you need. When you've done the research, though, save it, per topic, in a Hashtag Set, for access in the RiteForge Android app and the mobile-friendly RiteTag site. Your Hashtag Sets are right on the RiteTag Dashboard, when you're signed in.
Remember, it’s all about relevancy and engagement potential, and this changes for hashtags in active use. You’ll need to check how a hashtag is doing, but there are shortcuts.
Also see:
Generate hashtags for Instagram with RiteTag Mobile
Use up to thirty hashtags/post, but do not over-use the same set of thirty.
In Instagram, if you use the same hashtags and many of them, on all/most posts, you will very likely get shadow-banned. Instagram will stop letting your posts get found through search, so you’ll get less likes, less follows and less desired actions. Counter this by using the Hashtag Suggestions option to get hashtags for each of your image uploads. The hashtags are for the specific image so they're always different.
This works in Later, Buffer, Hootsuite (search Instagram in our help; your web-to-Instagram solution is probably one of our integrations) and all of the over 30 social media publishing tools that do web-to-phone notification scheduling.
The hashtags for image solution also works with all web to Instagram direct publishing and scheduling solutions, including Socialflow, Hootsuite, Tailwind, Falcon.io, and all the others, too! Just follow the instructions for desktop-to-phone Instagram scheduling.
The quick video below shows using the updated RiteTag Pro extension with both Hootsuite and Buffer. It works with all social networks and publishing sites.
See the full tutorial on the RiteTag Android app here.
If you already have a group of hashtags that you are thinking to use, test them in our Banned Instagram Hashtags tool.
Getting even more out of RiteTag
RiteTag Pro comes with the browser extension and also includes the RiteTag mobile app, which also streamlines getting hashtags specific to an image, so your hashtags are different per Instagram upload and the app makes it easy to get hashtags, paste into the caption field (or as a comment - hashtags works there, too) in an Instagram upload.
Install the RiteTag extension for Chrome or Firefox if you haven't already. Search your browser in our help directory if you use another browser and need instructions.
See the full RiteTag Extension tutorial for more.
Also, you can do research with RiteTag and create Hashtag Sets based on your research on the site. Use the interactive analytics, with a sphere of hashtags in which when you click outside the center, you get analytics (Twitter-based, but there’s overlap of results in Instagram for most of them) on the hashtag in the center. Click the bookmark icon to send the tag to the bottom if the numbers look good (high engagement and shares vs. uniques, which are your competition). Try with this analytics page: 30 growthhacking hashtags popular on Twitter (https://ritetag.com/best-hashtags-for/growthhacking).
Remember to make a Hashtag Set for each topic you tend to share posts on or, variations of the topic. If you continually add the same hashtags to many posts, you will probably get shadow-banned, and thus, your posts will not come up in search. This is death to likes, comments, shares - all the interaction we need in Instagram. Prevent this by doing the RiteTag research once, make Hashtag Sets on many topics, use them with appropriate posts.
Since there’s so much overlap of hashtag engagement between Twitter and Instagram (but not as much with Facebook), RiteTag is what you need. When you've done the research, though, save it, per topic, in a Hashtag Set, for access in the RiteForge Android app and the mobile-friendly RiteTag site. Your Hashtag Sets are right on the RiteTag Dashboard, when you're signed in.
Remember, it’s all about relevancy and engagement potential, and this changes for hashtags in active use. You’ll need to check how a hashtag is doing, but there are shortcuts.
Also see:
Generate hashtags for Instagram with RiteTag Mobile
Updated on: 04/01/2023
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