5 SEO Tips for your LinkedIn Profile

David Cowling

Websites are always changing and when it comes to the leading Social Networks such as Facebook, Twitter andLinkedIn 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 “David Cowling LinkedIn” into Google and Bing). It’s important we analyse how the search engines interpret your LinkedIn profile data.

Google

Here is how my profile looks on the Google search results page:

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:

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.

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:

And when you view my profile this is how it displays:

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.

Tips 3 - 5 and complete SocialMediaNews article