One of the best places to encounter new customers, partners, or investors for your brand is at LinkedIn. Since more and more people have started intensively using it, your profile and its activities on LinkedIn influence your brand in immense ways.
LinkedIn is a platform for job seekers, industry experts, and influencers. Hence, it is important to optimize your LinkedIn profile to achieve maximum recognition and results.
Thus, we bring to you handpicked tricks and tips that will help you optimize your profile.
Let’s take a quick read.
LinkedIn SEO Tips
Pay attention to your profile aesthetics
The first thing that catches people’s attention is the outer framework of your LinkedIn profile. Hence, the looks of it i.e. the profile photo and cover picture should be appealing and must portray the brand idea effectively.
To begin with, your profile picture must be of a high quality, clear, and non-pixelated image that throws on your brand ethics, its personality, and your business values. It is best recommended to take a close personal picture in an appropriate look that makes your brand look approachable. Choose your background, based on what will work the best for the cause.
The next aspect is the cover picture. You can employ professional software like Photoshop or Canva to create an ideal background. To enhance the effects, add a brand motto to display your company’s ethics and working principles, and back it up with an equally enticing background image. Don’t forget to incorporate your social media handles, website URLs, and call-to-action prompting your audience to contact and connect with you.
Utilize Keywords
LinkedIn SEO is distinct from the regular ones as the keywords utilized here are slightly different. To find the accurate keywords you have to engage in keyword research.
Firstly, start with the searching of the shortest, most relative, and broadest keyword that complies with the services your business caters to. Analyze the search results and make a note of the entire search volume. Using the search volume, coin out the required keywords to see its effect on the first, second, and third-degree connections. Finally, analyze and reference your keywords to draw the right amount of traffic and engagement.
Now, all you have to do is incorporate these keywords efficiently in your profile. Certain areas where you need to use keywords efficiently include the headline, the summary, the experience section, the recommendation, and the skills section.
Write a strong profile copy
Your LinkedIn profile is what compels other users to interact with you. Hence, it has to be crisp and engaging and must be successful in creating a hype towards the audience you wish to connect.
The first aspect is your Headline. It should comprise a combination of LinkedIn SEO keywords to gain traffic and have user engagement. It is recommended to overload your headline with keywords that fulfill the SEO goals, rather than vague catchy phrases.
Next up is your Summary section which offers you a large opportunity to optimize your profile, and publish an engaging copy. Here is where your audience discovers in-depth about your business and its services. Your summary section should be concise, targeted, and must be able to convey the exact idea about your business effectively.
Lastly, handpick your experiences in the experience section and write it creatively to portray your company to be super compelling.
Optimize your anchor links
In LinkedIn, under the contact information section, you are allowed to add up to 3 website links of your own on your profile. Hence, this is a massive chance to portray the kind of work you do and exhibit your brand image to a variety of audiences and possible employers.
By default, the label is used for the ‘Company Website.’ Now, instead of publishing it as ‘Company’, from the drop-down menu, choose ‘other.’ Now you can easily add keywords and phrases that you have researched to describe your links in the best light.
Collect recommendations, skills, and endorsements
At LinkedIn, the areas of recommendations, skills, and endorsements are the sections where you can effectively employ LinkedIn SEO to increase the outreach.
LinkedIn recommendations are your profile reviews, that are living proof of your service and the experience your clients have had with it. Thus, a profile with greater positive recommendations paves a major way of building stronger connections and outreaches.
To make the smart use of keywords, LinkedIn also facilitates you to add a list of skills to your profile to showcase your best font. It is highly advised that you list your skills based on the preference of how it will sell. Thus, your primary skills must be included in the top three sections.
When other users endorse you based on the skills you have on your profile, it proves to be a social proof under endorsements. Thus, you should connect with other users to endorse your skills. You can always endorse users for their skills as a return favor or as a starting move. It is important to note that the quality of endorsement over a few skills matters more than the quantity of endorsement over a variety of skills.
Post quality content and keep a check on the analytics
At LinkedIn, the posts work in a very brand-specific manner. Hence you have to experiment with different types of content like long-form posts, images, videos, shared blog posts, etc to figure out what works best for you. Along with finding the content type you have to also remain consistent in posting.
However, in LinkedIn, articles receive an algorithm push. Thus, any article/ blog post published receives an engagement that is twice, thrice, or sometimes five times the regular number of views. Also, remember to add call-to-action to your articles to make maximum use of the existing traffic.
Engagement on LinkedIn works in two ways. While posting is an effective way to increase engagement, you have to go a step further and do the same on the posts of other profiles. By doing so, you and your comment are individually recognized and you can be listed as the second or a third-degree connection to that user. An act of engagement with others enhances your presence and drives additional traffic.
Lastly, it is important to track your activity and progress in terms of real numbers. You need to check how many people viewed your posts and your profile, your newly formed connections, and the counts of you appearing in the search results. This data analysis will give you a picture of how effective your optimization strategy is.
Conclusion
LinkedIn, as a medium, works on a very professional level. It drives its energy in building your business network, brand image, and industry awareness. Thus, with accurate search engine optimization techniques, within no time you can have a large clientele network that comprises experts, influencers, and other people who wish to associate under your brand name.
To turn your profile into a lead generation system, you need to adopt basic strategies. These include LinkedIn SEO keyword research, optimizing your profile outlook and profile copy, establishing quality connections, posting original content, and finally reviewing your performance. We hope this article was insightful enough to help you build the foundations of SEO in your LinkedIn profile.
