What Is the Competition Score for Hashtags, and How to Identify the Perfect Hashtags With It?
Our super-smart scoring algorithm tells you the degree to which we deem a hashtag to be competitive. How is this hashtag competitiveness calculated? What does this score have to do with Instagram SEO, and what makes a “good” hashtag competition score? How can you identify the most powerful hashtags for your profile using Competition Score? Let’s see.
What Exactly Is the Competition Score for Hashtags?
The competition score attached to a hashtag reflects to what extent the hashtag is deemed competitive on Instagram – the higher the score, the more difficult it is to rank high for that hashtag.
How to Understand the Competition Score?
A higher score indicates a higher difficulty (higher competition), and a lower score means a lower difficulty (lower competition).
Let’s see how it works in practice:
A bar like this means the hashtag is extremely competitive, and it’s likely tough to rank high for it and get to the top 9 positions.
A bar similar to this means it’s easier to rank high for that hashtag. You’re not competing with that many other creators.
This hashtag:
is going to be much easier to rank for than for this one:
Should You Analyze This Metric Every Time You Do Hashtag Research?
Absolutely, as it’s a quick indicator of how hard it is to rank for a hashtag. For the purposes of identifying the perfect keyword, we recommend analyzing the Competition Score and Potential Reach every time you look for new hashtags.
The premise behind good hashtag research is to choose hashtags that will rank high. Why does it matter so much? You can come up with the most creative post of all time, but if you use hashtags with very high competition scores, you might not see yourself on Instagram’s top 9 positions at all.
What is a “Good” Hashtag Competition Score?
As you already know, the higher the competition score, the harder the hashtag will be to rank for. But the difficulty also depends on your profile’s size and your engagement rate.
If you have a huge profile, like, let’s say, you run @nike account, you can rank for very difficult hashtags with high competition. But if you don’t, stick to these with lower competition to rank higher and boost your discoverability.
Protip: A “perfect” hashtag is one that has low competition and high potential reach.