One of the most powerful, yet most overlooked, methods to improve the value of LinkedIn is to "Search Engine Optimize" (SEO) Your LinkedIn Profile so you can be found.

While LinkedIn is really a Profile database, and not a Search Engine, being on the first page of search results does, indeed, improve Traffic to Your Profile.

Think of your Profile as a Page on the Internet which you want to get as much traffic as possible whenever someone is searching for someone "like you".

How would you do this?

Step 1: Determine who you want to read you profile.
Step 2: List the searches they would most likely use to find "someone like you"
Step 3: Use these searches yourself to see if you rank on the first page or not of the LinkedIn Search Results
Step 4: Adjust the text on your profile to rank on the first page of each of the searches you identified in step #2.
Step 5: Repeat Steps 3 and 4 until you rank on the first page (or, even better, within the first three listings on the first pages) for each search you determined in Step 2.

TIP: More text in Your LinkedIn Profile is ALWAYS better as there are more opportunities to match somone's search query that way.

Your done!

Now you will get Profile Traffic in proportion to how common those searches are -- not the much less likely proportion of traffic which performs those searches AND bothers to check past the first page.

REMEMBER: In 90% plus of Google searches, the searcher only checks the first page)

FYI
The reason this works well with LinkedIn is that LinkedIn is a Database whose results are reflected IMMEDIATELY with changes to your profile ... so you can improve you LinkedIn Ranking in a few minutes -- as opposed to Google where you would make changes, then wait a few days for Google to re-spider your page, re-rank your page, etc. before seeing whether or not you have improved in the search results.

A Little Anecdote:
I was visiting a colleague of mine who asked me about LinkedIn and he said that he never got ANY requests from LinkedIn. I basically went through the above method with him and suddenly he ranked #1 in all of the searches he cared about AND he suddenly got Lots of Contacts for New Business. All for about 30 minutes of work adjusting his profile.

Post edited by: admin, at: 2007/05/13 08:12

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Christian,

Unfortunately when I do the searches LI puts me most of time at the top, in the "Featured Premium Member" box! Nice to see, but then I cannot tune my searches... what have I done?

Giorgio

Thanks ! that's a very useful post!
Live refresh of the querries enable indeed to work efficiently on ranking!
Julien

Search engine optimization is the key to success for many reasons on the WWW. Great tip for linkedin users as well!

Thanks for the heads up!

-Steven Burda
www.linkedin.com/in/burda

Hi Giorgio,

There's the question of the default ordering of the results. I believe that it still works this way :
First, they are ordered by proximity in the network. This is why you're always the first in your search (you'll have to create a second account to check your requests)
Second, they are orderd by the number of connections.
Third, they are ordered by the relevance of the request.

So, you also need to have many connections and to be as near as possible the network's backbone. Well, good news, as a LION, you are part of the backbone of the network.

Olivier

I'm not sure I understand this correctly. HOW do we optimize our profile for a particular search?

Ex: I would like to optimize my profile so I am on page 1 of any search for "Business Analyst Washington DC". What changes do I make?