5 SEO Tips for your LinkedIn Profile
Websites are always changing and when it comes to the leading Social Networks such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn they are constantly tweaking their sites to generate the best financial results, drive visitors and increase engagement.
As a small business myself, one of the most important tools for generating new business, finding contacts and industry discussion is done on LinkedIn. I use LinkedIn on a daily basis.
Today I wanted to touch base on some SEO tips you can use on your own LinkedIn profile. Before you do anything – run a web search and find your LinkedIn profile (eg, I typed “NAME LinkedIn” into Google and Bing). It’s important we analyse how the search engines interpret your LinkedIn profile data.
Here is how my profile looks on the Google search results page:
LINKEDIN IMAGE
Note the following:
1. You name is obviously the title of the page
2. Your Location is pulled and displayed in the search results
3. Your “Professional Headline” is displayed in the search results
Bing
Here is how my profile looks on the Bing search results page:
LINKEDIN IMAGE
Note the following:
1. Again your name is the title of the page
2. Bing will show your Job Title and One of your current companies (not necessarily your “Professional Headline”.
3. Bing will show how many connections you have in the search results
4. Bing will show how many recommendations you have
5. Your Location is also displayed in the search results page
LinkedIn Profile SEO Tips
Now that we understand how the search engines display your LinkedIn profile data. Here are some tips to make the most of your profile:
1. Your Professional Headline is displayed in the search results, particularly Google. Many people simply put in one of their Job Titles, however you can use this field to pick up Keyword rich job titles and phrases such as SEO Consultant, PHP Developer, PR Consultant etc.
HEADLINE
2. Website Fields - many people simply display their company websites like this:
LinkedIn only lets you add 3 websites to your profile, but describing each website as ‘Company Website’ really isn’t making full use of this field.
You are able to edit the display name to match your website name. This will give people who visit your profile a much clearer understanding of your websites!
This is how I edited mine:
ADDITIONAL
And when you view my profile this is how it displays:
DISPLAY
Much better!
But how does this improve your website SEO? All of these links are NOT nofollow. They are actually 302 redirects (LinkedIn generally uses 302 redirects for external links). Now technically a 302 redirect many not pass any pagerank, but if the 302 redirect has been there for a long time I think Google may pass a little pagerank through to your site. It’s certainly worth having.
3. Custom LinkedIn Profile URL – generally people go for their name. However some people go for a keyword rich URL if available.
4. Summary Field is generally used to briefly describe what you do and your line of business. Google keeps hitting this information over and over and it does get indexed in Google search. So in this field use relevant information and also include your contact details if you wish – all of this will get pick up in Google search.
5. The File name of your Profile Picture is used by LinkedIn (Twitter also do this).
What does this mean? If you view your profile when logged out and goto save your profile picture it will save the file with the exact file name you used to upload the image to LinkedIn.
This is important for Google and Bing image search. When you upload your picture to LinkedIn make sure the filename of the image is your name. Don’t use some random number your digital camera used to save the image.
This means if anyone runs a Google or Bing image search on your name – your LinkedIn profile picture will show – and there will be a link back to your LinkedIn profile.
We hope this tips help you optimise your LinkedIn profile that little bit more. You can add me on LinkedIn. (Please note I don’t accept connections from totally random people overseas in an unrelated industry).
