Search Engine Optimization
An important part of using LinkedIn for marketing purposes— whether you want to build your business, brand, or your career—is search engine optimization (SEO). Both the use of keywords and links can help make your LinkedIn efforts more successful.
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I’ve mentioned a number of SEO tips for LinkedIn throughout this book, but it’s important to offer a list of suggestions in one place so you can start implementing these useful tactics right away. The following sections help you better understand how to use SEO techniques as you go about your daily LinkedIn activities.
As people search for individuals, businesses, products, services, groups, companies, and so on, through search engines, LinkedIn profiles and Company Pages often appear within the results. At the same time, people conduct these types of searches using the search tools built into LinkedIn. It’s imperative that your profile, Company Page, groups, questions, and answers appear in relevant searches.
The first step to using keywords within your LinkedIn content is identifying the types of keywords people use to find profiles, businesses, groups, and so on, like yours. Conduct some searches to try to find profiles, companies, and groups like yours. Use the keywords you would type in to find someone with your skills and experience. Do you appear in the results? Does your company?
You need to use the keywords related to you and your business within your profile, in your Company Page, in your LinkedIn Answers, and in your updates. Make sure your profile heading includes those keywords. A heading that simply says “author” says very little and is unlikely to appear in many searches. It’s too broad. Instead, identify your areas of expertise so your profile attracts the right type of audience.
The LinkedIn search tools are far from perfect. You need to feed them with as much information as possible, and using keywords is an essential part of creating useful information. You could have the most useful LinkedIn profile and content in the world, but if no one can find it, it doesn’t do you or anyone else any good. Keywords are very important to enabling people to find you and your useful content.
The Power of Link Building
Google and other search engines deliver search results using proprietary algorithms. It is generally accepted that these algorithms take incoming links into account when ranking search results under the assumption that pages with a lot of incoming links must have great content or no one would link to them.
You can use your LinkedIn profile and activities as a way to increase incoming links to your online content on your blog, website, and other online destinations by sharing links to your great content and inviting your LinkedIn connections to further share your content with their own audiences. This tactic also works in reverse. You can share your LinkedIn content on your other online profiles, website, and blog to increase links to it.
Here are five simple examples of how this tactic can work:
• When you answer questions using LinkedIn Answers, include links to your related blog posts to further support and explain your answer.
• Share links to your blog posts in your LinkedIn profile updates and related group updates.
• On your website, include links so visitors can easily recommend your products and services on your LinkedIn Company Page.
• Feed your LinkedIn updates to your Twitter profile so they automatically publish on your Twitter timeline in addition to your LinkedIn activity stream.
• Include Share on LinkedIn and Recommend on LinkedIn buttons and plugins on your blog posts.
As you cross-promote your online activities and integrate your online marketing efforts, link building will happen organically. I call this the compounding effect of social media and it’s a powerful thing. The more quality content you publish and quality connections you make online, the more your content will spread and your search results and traffic will increase. Every effort you make to increase those links helps even more!