LinkedIn® Laws of Attraction – Part 3
By Donna Schilder, PCC, Business Coach
Put the Right Keywords in the Right Places
LinkedIn is like Match.com, you put the right keywords in your profile and the right person finds you. LinkedIn has one more requirement though: you need to put the right keywords in the right places in your Profile to attract potential clients.
So what are the right places?
The areas/sections of your LinkedIn Profile that are thought to have most impact on LinkedIn’s Search Algorithm are your:
- Tagline/Headlines
- Job Titles
- Specialties Section
- Skills Section
NOTE: The Skills section is new and is still in beta testing, so it may change a bit over the next year.
I say “thought to have,” because no one really knows for sure since LinkedIn Search Algorithm is a trade secret. But I have two ways to back up what I’m saying:
- I have a friend who has friends at LinkedIn and he has confirmed this information
- My experiments with my own and my clients’ Profiles bears this out
NOTE: The LinkedIn Search Algorithm is the formula LinkedIn.com uses to return results in LinkedIn “People” Searches.
To appear as high as possible in a LinkedIn Search (and be found by potential clients), you want to place your Keywords in high SEO impact sections/areas of your LinkedIn Profile so that you appear in as many searches as possible and as high in those searches as possible.
Happily, the LinkedIn Search Algrothim is very responsive, so when you put keywords into your Profile, the effect is almost immediate.
The fact that the Search Algorithm is so responsive is great because you can do a “People” Search before you insert your keywords and then one after to see the result. This allows you to experiment identify what works best.
I want to give you a BIG CAUTION here: Do not “stuff” or “stack” keywords. This is a costly mistake in any Search Engine Optimization (SEO) effort, not just on LinkedIn. Stuffing is repeating Keywords just to optimize searches. It’s noticeable and highly annoying and in extreme cases, LinkedIn has been known to delete the Profiles of people who do it. And stuffing is viewed as an unethical practice, so you could hurt your reputation.
Here’s a real life LinkedIn Profile Example:
You can see that this might get you to the top of a “People” Search, but it wouldn’t get you a job (or a client in your case) once the reader clicked on your Profile.
One additional thought is that you want to use your chosen keywords throughout your Profile and I will discuss this in the final part of this series.
