Get found on the first page of LinkedIn search

I've increased my search appearances on LinkedIn by 34%, and profile visits by 54% within one week. This article explains how.

IF YOU'RE A SALESPERSON, 54% more profile views can mean 54% more leads

IF YOU'RE A RECRUITER, 54% more profile views can mean 54% more candidates, looking to join your team

IF YOU'RE UNEMPLOYED, 54% more profile views can mean 54% more job offers

The list goes on.

I'm assuming you're not on LinkedIn to satisfy your ego - you want results. Be it just to have an online resume for future use, build your brand or promote your services. Heck, or all at once! In any case, let me borrow a few minutes of your attention and help you get these results.

Depending on the source, recruiters spend on average 2 to 6 seconds looking through your resume.

The same numbers probably apply to anyone searching for people on LinkedIn. There's so many to choose from, so if we want to increase your conversions, we HAVE to get you on top of those search results. Let's begin.

Get a benchmark

Go to your profile and write down the number of search appearances you currently have.

Also, click on profile views, and write down the number you got this week. This is important if you want to be able to compare the results the next week.

Think of a keyword you would like to be found for

If you write texts for a living, your keyword might be COPYWRITER. If you're responsible for purchases in your company, you may want to rank for PROCUREMENT. You get the drill.

I, for one, would like to be found by anyone looking for help with their Instagram communication and advertising, so a plain INSTAGRAM works for me. If you come up with a two word string, you'll have to do the following steps twice - more hassle, but you'll rank for both of them.

How LinkedIn determines your rank in the results

If you're familiar with SEO (Search Engine Optimization), you might know that it's not enough to just cram your keyword to every corner of your page and expect to pop up as the first search result on Google. It's also not that simple on LinkedIn. Yet, I'd argue, LinkedIn's search engine is way less advanced than Google's. Yes, LinkedIn probably takes into account whether you have many connections, are active and other factors, before displaying you as the top search result. That's not what we're after today. We're after optimizing your profile for specific keywords.

So, where is it most important to have your keywords populated? I did a research, simply searching for INSTAGRAM, my keyword, and to make the sample size manageable, I chose only first connections. Got 752 results. Then I've checked where does the keyword appear in the profiles that came up on the first page of the search results, and compared them to the ones on the last page. Like this:

This provides us with a few good data points to draw a conclusion about which profile areas have the most weight in search. For example, I would have guessed that the more a keyword is used in a profile, the higher up on search results it should appear. Or, maybe, that if it's used in an article that person has written, it should be a very important factor. Not really.

Here's what I've deducted, in order of importance:

If you have your keyword in the first seven profile areas, I'm pretty sure you'll rank very well.

Note that I've left out 8 to 10 - that's because I'm pretty sure Skills or Recommendations would not be important enough to rank directly after Description of previous title. So skills, recommendations, courses, certificates, companies you follow - they probably matter as well, but definitely not as much. So don't pay much attention to them, at least for now.

The method

I'll continue to go through my own profile as an example. It didn't take much to see I don't have the keywords in some important areas of my profile. They're emphasized in red.

Headline (No. 2 in the list) is a whole different topic, maybe for another article, so I'm leaving that out of the equation for now.

Ok, how does one get the word INSTAGRAM as the current employer AND job title, without looking ridiculous (and a straight-up liar, for that matter)? Well, I used a workaround.

In my case, before starting Caption, I was a social media freelancer. I don't need to enter an "end date" for this title, since I kind of do the same thing right now, just on another level. Also, CEO at Caption is still on top of the list in my experience section, which is my most current title. Thus, by keeping Freelancer as one of my current positions still "present", I can easily play around with the Employer and Title sections. Here's what I did (in red outlines):

The keyword INSTAGRAM is now in both my "current" Title and Employer. For those stumbling upon my profile from news feed, INSTAGRAM | FACEBOOK | LINKEDIN will simply appear to be platforms I'm good at, though for LinkedIn algorithm, all of them are entered as my employers. Ha!

Why stop there? I've also updated my previous experience with eCommerce, adding the keywords OBERLO and SHOPIFY to the Employer section.

It took about an hour, and the results are, well - here's the slide once again:

That's it. Really, it's that easy. If you want, you can even skip the research part, take my word for it, and go straight to choosing your keywords and populating them in the important areas of your profile.

Of course, right now I'm drawing conclusions only from my own experience but I'd love it if you, dear reader, would try this method on your own profile, and measure the results, thus increasing the sample size and (hopefully) the validity of these findings. If you do recreate this experiment, let us all in on the results in the comments' section. I'd highly appreciate it!

If you'd like your profile (or company page) to be pimped like this, but without the hassle of doing it all yourself - holla at your boy [email protected]