LinkedIn has become a very powerful personal marketing tool, but unfortunately, there is a high percentage of users who do not know how to maximize all the opportunities offered by the social network of the world’s largest professional. Here too are many of the basics of SEO (Search Engine Optimization), which when applied to our profile, will give a higher level of exposure and as a result, better possibilities to expand our network of contacts or get a job.
1. Use keywords
Using keywords is one of the key elements to enhance your positioning. Where is it vital to put keywords?
- Where you indicate your name and qualifications
- In your current job
- In the Interest Groups and Sections of education
A great way to know which keywords of your niche or where you should put it in your profile is to do a little detective work. Search for a reference you know who works in your sector or activity, Press CTRL+F and look for some terms that you think are most important. Surely you can see how these terms are highlighted in many sectors of the page. This should give you an idea of what keywords are most used and its best location.
The idea is that your profile should be written to be read by other people, not just for search engines. If it is full of keywords, with no consistency, it’ll just be going to damage your professional image.
2.Use friendly URLs
LinkedIn allows you to modify the URL of your public profile. To make the most of this resource, we should place at least our name, and if possible, any keyword. If you can put your name as is in the URL, your chances of appearing in Google when someone searches your name will increase.
How do I change my URL? It’s easy, go to “Profile” and click on “Edit My Profile” once in this section, see the “Edit” next to where it says “Public Profile”. This will lead to the editing of the profile seen by other users of the network, if we look at the bottom right, we can find a box with the URL of the profile, when clicking on the edit option, we can change it.
3. Optimize the anchor text of links
For those not very familiar with the SEO language, anchor text is the text of a link. A link is much more useful for positioning when your anchor text comprises keywords. By default, LinkedIn brings anchor texts such as “My Website”, “My Blog” or “My Company”, the idea is to replace them more representative sentences, consisting of keywords.
4. Joining groups
Actively participate in groups as it is also a great way to expand the network with relevant contacts and also as a means to answer questions.
5. Link Profile
The more backlinks your profile receives, the better. Where you can get backlinks? From your Twitter account, your Facebook profile, your blog, your corporate website, your email signature and if we go a little further up from your cards (if they have added the URL of your LinkedIn profile).
6. Enable Full View
Again, we go to “Edit Public Profile” and on the right, tick all checkboxes. Thus, the search engines like Google, Yahoo or Bing will index a larger content of our profile, increasing the exposure in the search results.
7. Use the Answers
Join LinkedIn Answers section, which has the mechanics similiar to Yahoo Answers. Here we can put our knowledge and experience available to those most in need. This not only positions us as experts in our field, but also improves our visibility within the network and if we answer many questions, we can appear on the main pages of the sections in which we participated. Answers are on the menu “More”, you can select categories to search or even answer questions in other languages.
8. Expanding the network of contacts
The more contacts, the more likely that when someone makes a search within LinkedIn, to appear as contact 2nd or even 1st order for that person. This will allow us to be at the top of search results and therefore receive more visitors to our profile, because the results are displayed in a hierarchy of order of contact.
9. Complete your profile to 100%
Finally, one of the most important tips you may have: Complete your profile to 100%.
