Optimizing LinkedIn for Search Engines

Optimizing LinkedIn for Search Engines by Rick Stoneking Sr

Many people have asked me some important questions about my LinkedIn profile.

• First. They want to know why I have so drastically changed the format of my LinkedIn profile from the original version. The answer: Search Engines.
• Second. They want to know why I have so much seemingly personal information in my profile. The Answer: Search Engines.
• Third. They want to know why I have listed 50 skills instead of just listing a few important ones. The answer: Search Engines.
• Fourth. They want to know why I use hashtags in my summary. Answer: Search Engines
• Fifth. They want to know why I list so many Groups. Answer: Search Engines

I think by now you can see a pattern here. Whether your LinkedIn profile is for personal use, professional use, or to promote your company or both, you need to recognize the enormous value it has for getting you listed in search engines. If you do it correctly.

Everyone should have a thorough and a fully optimized profile on LinkedIn. The question is how do you go about that optimization, and who or what should be the focus of your optimization. I submit to you that there are two primary groups you need to focus on when optimizing your LinkedIn Profile. They are both important. But I will tell you why I think one is most important.

1. LinkedIn Users

2. Search Engines

In case you aren't aware of it, your LinkedIn profile is a dossier of sorts. It is your CV, your Resume, your personal profile all rolled into one. Did you know you can convert your profile to a pdf file to send to prospective employers, or convert it to a CV? You can.

LinkedIn Users

Have you ever wondered why you have so many "anonymous" viewers of your profile? Believe it or not, LinkedIn will tell you and it is good to see "anonymous" views of your profile.

It is true that some anonymous views come from anti-social types who don't want to share their own information while seeing what you are about. Forget them. They are on all sites. They are part of what I call the "users" group but they are not the helpful kind. Here is a live example of someone I just unfollowed on Twitter. Never mind that this is for someone in the top five of their category in the world. They are all about using others, not helping anyone. I think it is sad that companies like this succeed.

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The positive side of "anonymous" profile views can be described in one word: RECRUITERS. That's right! LinkedIn is like a giant recruiting database. It is for professional people and businesses. It is not a dating service, or a game/gossip site like Facebook.

Search Engines

Most people get on LinkedIn to promote themselves, and or their businesses. The more successful businesses recognize that they need to have both a personal and a professional profile. That is why when viewing someone's profile you also see on the right side, an entire list of people who are from the same company.

For every Company profile, there should be as many optimized employee profiles as possible. Why? SEARCH ENGINES! And don't even think of overlooking your custodial engineer.

In my younger years, we called them janitors. Nothing will destroy a brick and mortar business reputation quicker than a dirty facility (or an unruly, difficult to read, or understand, website).

Perhaps we should have Custodial Engineers for websites. Oh right, we do. They are called webmasters. But as with any profession, some are better and more dedicated than others.

Do not overlook accessibility. Just as you want your brick and mortar store to be accessible to the public, so also you want your website to be accessible. Is your website #WebAccessible? Why Should it be? Well, for four reasons.

1. It's the Law in almost all civilized countries: For the U.S. read the US DOJ Opinion on Web Accessibility https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/w3c-wai-ig/1997OctDec/0099.html

2. It's the right thing to do from a business standpoint considering you would be eliminating not just a few, but potentially tens of millions of customers by not doing it.

3. It is a simple thing to do. Here are some tools you might use to check your website. https://www.w3.org/WAI/ER/tools/ There is a tool here for every need. Personally, we are using a 5-in-1 validation tool by Total Validator https://www.totalvalidator.com/ simply because it checks for web accessibility and other needed checks.

4. Search Engines! Google is the world’s largest search engine and it is critical to your success as a professional or as a business. Google algorithms check for accessibility using their search bots. It is also easier for a search bot to log the contents of an accessible page because they are made to read the text.

Here are some simple ways to make sure Google finds, and properly indexes, your LinkedIn profile.

• Always customize your URL
• Always Have a Personal Contact
• Listing ALL Your Skills
• Hashtags Are Not Dead - Use Them ( Including them as article keywords is a must)
• Crosslinking Your Articles
• Always Use a Signature Block
• Always Use an About Paragraph

Always customize your URL

It never ceases to amaze me to see people with un-customized URLs on LinkedIn. Your profile URL may not be that long, but it is an extremely valuable piece of real estate when it comes to your profile. Search engines recognize your keywords inside a URL so use them. For example instead of simply letting your URL end in "12345678998765432", customize it so it ends in "MyCompanyName" for example https://www.dhirubhai.net/in/internationaltravelreviews

Always have a personal contact

One of my pet peeves is not being able to write to an individual because there are no individuals listed in business pages. Dear Country Travel Agency just does not cut it. Always list at least the owner or contact person's name on your page.

List ALL Your Skills

Most people’s skills section usually has three glaring errors.

1. Not all their skills are listed
2. Skills are not optimized
3. Skills are not relevant

Not all their skills are listed

You can list 50 skills. So, use each one! And make them count. Why? SEARCH ENGINES! Every single time you put any text online, always use hashtags with your skills. Search engines all look for keywords but today, their focus is on "Key" keywords. How do the robots know which keyword is more import than any other word in a sentence? Hashtags! Your skills should all be keywords.

Keep your skills up to date. I'm constantly tweaking and modifying my skills based on many factors including endorsements.

Skills are not optimized

It is critically important that you optimize your entire LinkedIn profile, but especially your skills. As I said, your skills are your keywords. There are three important things to consider when optimizing your skills.

1. Your skills should be prioritized. List your skills in accordance with their priority to what you are doing now, as it relates to your current position/business.
2. Your skills should be relevant. Your skills should be relevant. Keep your skills relevant. Your skills should be "related" to your current position and not based upon what you did in the past. Let me give you an example from my own profile. You will not find Special Agent, Federal Agent, Criminal Investigator, Realtor, or Minister in my skills section even though those positions have greatly impacted who I am today. Those positions gave me skills that I use in everyday life and work. So why not add them as skills? Because they are not related to what I am doing now as the Founder/Owner of ITR(TM). Yes, those skills are an integral part of why I can be successful at ITR(TM)., but they are not related to the work ITR(TM). does. If they are related to your ability to do your current job, list them in experience. Only list them as a skill if they are "relevant" to your current position.
3. Your skills Should be high on your profile. This is especially true if you are looking for work. You should not make a prospective employer have to search for your skills. Personally, I put mine directly below my Summary. And of course the other reason to list them high up on the page is search engines. The closer to the top of the page your Skills (keywords) appear, the more value they receive by the search engines. That is also another reason to intersperse your top skills in your Summary. I also list my primary skills keywords at the top as you can see on my profile. https://www.dhirubhai.net/in/internationaltravelreviews

Hashtags Are Not Dead - Use Them ( including them as article keywords is a must)

Never write anything online without using your keyword hashtags and at the very least your top three keywords in your signature block. And that goes for anyone writing for you or about you.

There are basic rules for using hashtags successfully. A word of caution about hashtags. Search bots recognize individual words whether you capitalize them or not. But people often do not. Use these basic guidelines when using Hashtags.

1. Capitalize the first letter of each word in a multi-word hashtag,
2. Do not use Spaces or hyphens to separate multiple words within your Hashtags. This breaks up the hashtag so that if you put #Travel Reviews or #Travel-Reviews the resulting hashtag recognized by search engines will only be Travel. If you want both, leave out the space or hyphen like this: #TravelReviews or use an underscore like this #Travel_Reviews

Do not use punctuation immediately after the hashtag. Google usually ignores punctuation after a hashtag but many other SE's and many sites do not. So, either add a space after the hashtag and then add the punctuation, such as a comma or period. In a row of Hashtags, simply leave out the punctuation altogether like this: #Business #SmallBusiness #Entrepreneur #Leadership

Crosslinking Your Articles

LinkedIn lists your articles and links to them. I would suggest adding a hyperlink in your profile summary or elsewhere that links to the page with all of your articles. After all, Google is all about content. By doing so, Google will follow the link to the page with all your articles, and then to each article on the page. So, crosslinking your articles is critical.

Even if you did not originally do so, go back and edit your articles that relate to each other, or which are in a series, to include links to each other. If you look at my multi-part articles you will see I always try to do this. Check out my LinkedIn Pulse Articles https://www.dhirubhai.net/today/author/0_1iuvI0FNlyGr13195e8kW2?trk=prof-sm

It is for Two Reasons

1. First, it makes it easier for readers to know about your other article(s) which serves to encourage them to read the others.
2. Second, SEARCH ENGINES! You want your articles to be linked to each other in search results. Therefore, linking to each article in the series and having a sitemap is as critically important to your website as your robots.txt file.

When you write articles, you should include two different types of keywords

1. Article Keywords - Limit your article keywords to the top three keywords that directly relate to your article such as #LinkedIn #LinkedInMarketing #LinkedInProfiles
2. Related Keywords - These are keywords that are indirectly related to your article such as #Business #SmallBusiness #Entrepreneur #Leadership #Management #BusinessManagement #HumanResources #Handicapped #Accessibility

These go at the bottom of your page after your About section. Always list them as hashtags!

Always Use a Signature Block

Always hashtag your company in any web document where you use a signature block. A hashtag is treated like a UrL. It opens up your website. But it also is picked up as a major keyword by search engines. Here is a sample (Click on my company name) These are the minimum entries you must use for a signature block.

• 2 Your Success (TM) - Develop and trademark a closing slogan. This is mine.
• Rick Stoneking Sr - Always include your name
• Owner/Founder - Always show your position within the company
• #InternationalTravelReviews (TM) - Always make your company name a hashtag.

Always Use an About Section

The About paragraph(s) should be brief. Here are some basic guidelines.

1. You should try not to use more than three short paragraphs.
2. Use a hyperlink to your full profile.
3. Try to limit the About section to no more than 450 characters without spaces or 550 characters with spaces not counting characters in the hyperlink

Using these suggestions will help you to have a more successful profile and attract more of the people you want to connect with. Remember that you can and should tweak your profile regularly. This is especially true of your skills section.

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2 Your Success

Rick Stoneking Sr

Owner/Founder

#InternationalTravelReviews(TM)

Follow us on Twitter @IntlReviews

About Rick Stoneking Sr.

Rick Stoneking Sr, is a retired, disabled, veteran, minister and formal federal agent. He is now the Founder/Owner of International Travel Reviews ITR(TM). - World Travel Writers and Photographers Group(TM)., and a #DisabilityAdvocate for #AccessibleTravel. 

Rick has been writing for over forty-five years. He is published in multiple genres in both Christian and secular circles including articles and columns in well recognized state and international magazines.

Rick has now been awarded twenty Expert Rankings by Klout.com Do you have Klout? https://klout.com/#/IntlReviews

Article Keywords: #LinkedIn #LinkedInMarketing #LinkedInProfiles

Related Keywords: #Business #SmallBusiness #Entrepreneur #Leadership #Management #BusinessManagement #HumanResources #Handicapped #Accessibility

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