Use Your LinkedIn Profile to its Full Potential by Incorporating SEO Practices

LinkedIn is a powerful search engine that can drive targeted, high volume to your profile. But most people neglect to utilize its full potential and gain better conversions for your profile.

When you think of LinkedIn, you probably assume it is just a social media platform for your resume. But it’s more than that.

How can you optimize your profile to be more SEO-friendly and gain better traffic on LinkedIn?

LinkedIn Optimization

LinkedIn’s optimization allows connections to be built with those who are at the top of your industry. Your ideal clients are attracted to your profile and potentially send messages regarding your services.

By implementing SEO practices, like keywords and copywriting, you could generate more leads and build your brand.

How would this work?

Well, like any site, marketing is dependent on not only traffic but optimizing that traffic to create the best possible conversions. It’s important to make the most of each person that visits your profile.

Building Up Your Profile

Here are several practices in order to bring your LinkedIn profile up to the best it could possibly be.

1. The Look

Most people would say not to judge a book by its cover. But on LinkedIn you have limited space on your profile, so why not make the most of it?

Knowing your target audience, will help you tailor the profile’s aesthetics to them. If it is a very corporate job, you should wear professional attire in your profile photo. If you want to seem more casual, then don’t “suit up”. It’s all up to the audience and what they expect of you.

Take advantage of all the aspects you can expand on your brand’s look, be that the profile photo or the cover photo.

Your profile photo should have:

• High quality image
• Close up of your face (good practice is approximately 60% of the canvas)
• Plain and simple background
• Appropriate attire for your business
  

Your cover photo should have:

• Unique imagery that attracts attention
• A tagline that relates to what you do or who you do work for
• Call to Actions (CTAs) with your contact information
  

Since about 65% of people are visual learners, making the visual aspects of your profile
optimized will help give a good first impression. It will also allow people to have a quick
cue to get in touch and get to know you.

2. Finding Keywords

What users type into Google are likely not the same as what they type in LinkedIn. Therefore, you need to tailor your keyword research to how people search on LinkedIn.

Here are some questions to consider when researching your keywords on LinkedIn:

• What do you want to be known for?
• Do these terms get good traffic but with low competition?
• Do these terms fall into your target audience?

Based on these answers, take the shortest and broadest terms associated with you.
Good practice would be to consider the different results based on the degree filter of
your connections.

3. The Content

There are tons of opportunities to incorporate copywrite conversions within the content of your profile. Similar to your profile photos, keep in mind the target audience when writing.

Headline

Your headline should be a combination of copy and LinkedIn keywords. Users quickly understand what you do and more importantly, what you can for them.

Be clear. Don’t include catchy slogans or plays on words as it may leave the viewer confused as to what you do.

Fill the entire space. You have 120 characters for your headline so why not use them!

The main takeaway for your headline should be to appeal to people who are looking for specific qualities that you provide. Include keywords, but don’t make them the focus. For example, “Driving Digital Business Success with Best-In-Class Technology Partnerships.”

Summary

Your summary is the place where you have the most space, a whole 100 words!

This is where users hope to learn more about you, what services you provide and anything else about your industry.

What you shouldn’t do is to just endlessly list everything you’ve ever accomplished. No one needs to know you won the 3 rd grade spelling bee. Make the information relevant.

Think of this section as the About Page on your website. What would people want to know about what you can do for them?

Experience

You may be wondering how you could make the experience section of your profile SEO optimized. While it may be tempting to make this exactly like you resume, there are tons of SEO opportunities here!

Take those keywords and incorporate them within the skills you have. Mention things like how you increased the traffic of a site by a major percentage, or how you developed an uptick in conversions.

Step away from the boring bullet points of everything you did. Try writing naturally and conversationally. Those who seek your services may not know all the complex terms the industry uses. Instead of “CTR” or “KPI”, use the layman’s terms.

Use your experience section to compel your viewers in trusting you are the right fit for what they are looking for.

4. Connections and Recommendations

LinkedIn prioritizes the degree (1st , 2nd , and 3rd ) of connections based on what is searched.

When you connect with people, you are connected to their network as well as your own. This means you should try and keep your connections within your industry for best results. If they search for one of your keywords, you’re more likely to popup with them.

Simple connections are easy to accomplish. Creating meaningful and memorable connections is more difficult. We recommend starting a conversation.

Conversations make people feel important and valued. When composing a message, don’t ever pitch in the first message. It is an extreme turn-off for most people and often feels spammy.

Let the conversation naturally flow. They will almost always bring up what they are looking for from you, rather than you are presenting what you can do for them. Leads will find you and they are more likely to turn into a conversion.

When you work with people sometimes, they will provide you with a recommendation.

A recommendation is akin to a review of your services. They prove that you have the skills! It shows you know what you’re doing, and the results other people can expect of you. Naturally, keywords will be important here.

The goal of your profile is to create leads. Overall, by adapting your LinkedIn profile to a more SEO optimized profile, you’ll get more meaningful traffic. Not only that, but according to LinkedIn, companies who complete their profiles get 30% more views.

If you’re not making the most of your profile, why not start now?