If you want to know how to rank on LinkedIn, get more views to your profile and even rank
on Google, then you are in the right place.
My name is Cindy Makita-Dodd, and in today's video, we are going to be talking all things
about LinkedIn SEO.
How do you ensure that your profile stands out, appears first in search results and even
shows up on Google like this, whether you are searching for a new job or trying to get
more potential prospects into your business, it is essential that your profile ranks on
LinkedIn and in today's video, I'm going to show you exactly how, but before we dive in,
make sure that you like this video and subscribe to my channel for more videos like these on
how to leverage LinkedIn for your career, first things first, you want to remember that
everything on LinkedIn is searchable by keywords.
So if I want to get my profile to rank, it is important that I first ask myself this
golden question.
What do I want to be found for?
You have to begin with the end in mind.
Do you want to be found as a marketing technologist or an app developer or even an international
finance professional?
You have to know exactly what it is that you want to be found for so that you can then
better tailor your LinkedIn profile to match that goal.
So once I know that goal, I now want to research the best search term or keyword that I can
use to appear in search results.
For example, for a very long time, I had the headline founder of Hired Institute, and now
this was not the best way to go because nobody is searching for the founder of Hired Institute.
Instead they are searching on LinkedIn for keywords like career coach, resume writer
and LinkedIn expert.
So I had to keep in mind the relevant keywords that I wanted to be found for and optimize
my profile in such a way that I could be found for those specific key terms.
And this is pretty much how you SEO your profile making it search engine-optimized.
So since I know the goal of what I want to be found for, my next step is to do research
on LinkedIn to find relevant keywords or search terms that people are looking for that are
relevant to this goal.
You have to have a look at the type of keywords that people are using to find profiles like
yours and I want you to write down a full list of the keywords that come up.
Let's take a look at an example.
If I specialize in social media management, I might go onto LinkedIn and simply type in
the search bar, social media.
I'm going to see a list of different people's profiles that come up that have the key term
social media in there.
And what I want to do is write down a full list of the type of keywords that come up
on other people's profiles.
So some keywords might be social media manager, social media strategist, content marketing,
content creator, and social media specialist.
Come up with a full list of about 10 to 20 of those relevant keywords that are related
to what you want to be found for, for job seekers.
This list can also include relevant job functions, as well as key skills for your industry or
career of interest.
You can have a look at relevant job postings on LinkedIn and pull out the keywords that
you see that come up very often in the jobs that you want to apply for.
Write down a list again of 10 to 20 of those relevant keywords, because we are going to
use them strategically in your profile.
Once I have a list of 10 to 20 of those keywords or search terms, I now want to go in and optimize
my profile.
There are four places that you want to include these relevant keywords in your profile, and
they are your headline, your about, or summary section, work experience and skills.
Let's first start off with your headline.
Your headline is one of the most highly searchable areas on your LinkedIn profile so it's super
important that you use relevant keywords in this section.
You want to put the most relevant keyword that you want to be found for at the beginning
of your headline, because what I put in the front of my headline will rank more highly
than what goes at the end of my headline.
So it's an example of a headline that I might use for a social media strategist might look
like this social media strategist, content creator, digital marketing, copywriting specialist.
I want you to watch my full video on how to build a crazy effective headline, right after
this video, click the link in the description.
The second place you want to optimize is your summary section.
This is a great place for you to use as keywords as possible that we pulled in step two, where
we wrote them all out, use these keywords in your about or summary section and repetition
here is key so the more times I can use a search term or something, that's similar to
that search term, you are simply notifying LinkedIn that my profile is about this topic.
So the more repetition I can use around a keyword, the more highly I will rank.
With over 2000 characters of prime real estate, use your summary section to your advantage.
Now we want to optimize the work experience section.
In this section, the part that's the most important is the job title.
So here, I want to use that relevant keyword or search term that I found in my previous
research as my job title.
It's important to note that this doesn't have to be an HR assigned title because different
companies assign different titles based on the role.
What you want to include here is a keyword that is highly searchable.
For example, if the job title that was given to me by my employer is a growth marketer.
And I, that the work that I'm doing is related to a social media manager.
I would rather put social media manager in my job title, because this is a highly searchable
keyword.
So make sure that you have a highly searchable job title.
And the last section I want to optimize is the skills section of my profile.
The more relevant skills you have in this section of your profile, and the more endorsements
you have for those skills, the more highly you will rank in search results.
Now it's not just enough to add any random skills, your skills have to be hyper-targeted
to that goal that we said in step one, making sure that I'm adding relevant keywords related
to what I want to be found for.
So if my goal is to land a job as a software developer, I want to make sure that the key
skills that I insert in this section of my profile demonstrate that I'm skilled as a
software developer.
And of course, the more endorsements you have for your skills, the more highly you will
rank in search results so you want to be endorsed for the skills that you want to be found for.
I'm endorsed for skills like resume writing and career coaching, because these are the
search terms I want to be found for on LinkedIn.
I now want to post relevant content on LinkedIn using the hashtags that I found earlier simply
puts the more relevant content you post that is related to your target audience using the
hashtags that we found in our earlier steps, you will actually appear in more search results,
you'll get more views to your posts, and of course, more views equals more opportunities.
So if my goal is to land a new job, I want to post relevant content to show my expertise
and knowledge in a certain industry or career, and I want to use relevant hashtags to bring
visibility to my posts.
If people are viewing my posts, they will also be viewing my profile, and that's why
we optimize the profile in the earlier steps so when you are posting relevant contents
on LinkedIn using the right hashtags, you actually open yourself up to more opportunities
by simply having the right hashtags.
And last but not least, if you want your LinkedIn profile to show up when people Google your
name to be one of the first results that show up on Google, you simply have to set your
LinkedIn profile to public.
So you want to go to settings and privacy, edit your public profile and make sure that
it is toggled on because by making it open and public, you'll actually allow yourself
to be found on Google when people search your name, and that is really good.
So make sure that your public profile is enabled.
I hope that you found this video useful on how to SEO your LinkedIn profile to get more
views.
And of course, more opportunities are coming your way.
If you did find this video useful, please give it a like.
Let me know any comments you have on the process that I laid out in the comments as usual,
because you stayed right until the end.
I want you to download my free guide, LinkedIn for job seekers starter kit.
In this starter kit, I lay out over 10 pages of hyper-relevant information to help you
not only boost your LinkedIn profile, spruce it up and make sure that you get found for
opportunity and I also lay out some key tips to ensure that your profile is well optimized.
Click the link right below this video to download your free guide.
If you found this video useful, please give it a like, make sure that you subscribe to
my channel for more videos like these on how to use LinkedIn to supercharge your career.
I will see you very soon.
Bye for now.