One More Way To Get Traffic To Your Website

Earning inbound links to one’s website has always been a sturdy task for SEOs. Every inbound or incoming link to a website represents a “vote of confidence” from one site to another. If a site can earn a large number of quality backlinks, search engines understand that your content is worth linking to, and therefore place your web page on the Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs). SEOs also backlink their websites from social media platforms as people spend more time scrolling through the news feed and stories. 

A surprising fact is that Instagram experienced a 114% increase in web referrals in the year 2019. With the outbreak of COVID-19, the percentage of people engaged in social media platforms like Youtube, Instagram, and Facebook also increased in 2020. So, these social media platforms have become super-powerful tools for SEOs to boost organic traffic to their website. One can add the link of their website or youtube channel directly on their Whatsapp status. As they are easily clickable, higher traffic can be driven from that platform. The concern with Instagram is that one cannot add their site/page link on their stories. We can create backlinks from Instagram stories by adding our link to our website with the Swipe-up option. 

One of the drawbacks of using this swipe-up option is that the outgoing links can be placed only at the bottom of the stories screen. Also, this ‘swipe up to know more’ feature is available only for users with more than 10,000 followers or verified profiles. Users may not find the link easily when placed at the bottom and may procrastinate to swipe and visit the website. With these disadvantages, Instagram has not highly helped everyone to drive traffic to their website. Users having fewer followers and socially inactive users found it hard to create backlinks to their websites. It made them collaborate with or pay for influencers or affiliate marketers to backlink to their site. 

Instagram has confirmed it will roll out a ‘Link’ sticker option in their stories on August 23, 2021. This update has been made to improve stories interaction, increase the engagement rate of users, and have a higher CTR to the linked websites. The upcoming feature has the following advantages:

• Users can place their links using the link sticker anywhere on their stories screen. The complete control of adding the link is in the hands of the creators by resizing it, changing the color, style, etcetera. 
• In the “swipe-up” option, the viewers cannot send quick reactions (emojis) to creators. Whereas, with the link stickers, viewers can send quick reactions resulting in a better engagement rate. This feature also allows one to know the feedback on their website from the audience. 
• With the prominent placement of the links, there is a chance for higher CTR to the website.
• Instagram Head of Product Vishal Shah said that they are aiming to provide the ‘link sticker’ option to all users. So, even people with fewer followers can also use this feature to backlink their website. 

Instagram has confirmed that the link sticker option will be made available soon to all the users irrespective of the number of followers they have. Now, anyone can use this link sticker on their stories and show their support to other’s businesses and content on another platform. We can soon expect the link sticker option on all our stories if they could figure out a proper way to increase the engagement without spreading illegal/misinformation. 

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