Today Instagram announced website badges for accounts on the site. Very much like Twitter or Facebook’s multiple widgets to integrate social with your existing web presence, Instagram now adds that simple step for anyone to call out their presence online.

Getting a badge is simple.

1. Visit this link

2. Log in

3. Pick your badge style and copy the code

4. Install it on your website, blog, or other.

While it may not seem like much, this is a big step for the evolution of brands on the platform. Consider this, 5 million photos are uploaded per day, with 575 Likes and 81 Comments per second (and that rate has probably increased by the time you read this). That’s a lot of content.

I just finished writing an eBook on Instagram for Social Fresh and have talked to some of the top Instagram brands out there today; they all agree that there is no real brand structure on the platform now.

That simple act of including the icon on a site can exponentially increase a brand’s Instagram followers. Coupled with web profiles announced last week, it’s clear that Instagram has realized that they are a powerful tool for brands to create conversation.

Begs the question: will they add ads?