LinkedIn SEO: Generate Powerful Leads for Free
LinkedIn SEO: Generate Powerful Leads for Free
LinkedIn is among the top sites that Google indexes quite often along with Facebook, Twitter & YouTube. This makes it a wealth of opportunities for all of us to uncover.
Most of the social media campaigns revolve around Facebook Ads. Searching for awesome Instagram post ideas & curation of content for Twitter follow soon after.What if you can get tons of job opportunities, prospect clients/leads without spending a dime on ads? Yes, LinkedIn is THAT powerful yet most campaigns spend least time & effort on LinkedIn.
See below the LinkedIn user growth from 2009 – 2019. It will give you a fair idea of why this is the next big thing in social media in times to come.
LinkedIn User Growth, 2009-2019 in millions
Today it is approx. 690 million members and the trend is exponentially growing upwards.
40% of monthly active users use LinkedIn daily according to a study by Omnicore. That’s roughly 250 million professionals daily. Imagine the possibilities it can unlock for you & your career or your business.
According to LinkedIn as of 2018, look at how these users are placed in senior positions in organisations.
LinkedIn members in various positions
The users range very well from students and recent graduates to the very top of the line decision makers.
Also, LinkedIn is a B2B Lead magnet with over 80% of social media leads coming from LinkedIn.
Leads Generated from Social Media Platforms
LinkedIn can work exceptionally well if you want to Build a Personal Brand, Attract Leads/Clients or want to land your dream job.
It is a matter of how LinkedIn is applied. This is where optimising your LinkedIn profile to organically rank for your target keywords becomes paramount. Welcome LinkedIn SEO!
Before we start please define your goal of using LinkedIn & the target audience you want to attract at LinkedIn. It can be your next big client or the HR of your dream company.
Be clear about your expectations & the target group as it will define your keyword for which you will optimise your profile.
The number of connections you have in LinkedIn is directly related to how active you are and how admired your content is. The more the number of connections, the more is your reach which is a very powerful thing on LinkedIn.
Not many people realise it though as can be seen from the below graph.
LinkedIn users by number of connections
Only 1% of the people have 10,000+ connections and these are the ones who are really winning at LinkedIn.
To be a part of this coveted 1%, let’s look at some of the essential SEO practices that you can perform to get your LinkedIn profile working for you. In order to do so, Let us break each component of your profile as below –
Headline
Summary
Experience
Education
Other Parameters
You can simply visit any of these sections to learn how to super charge that profile section for maximum effectiveness.
Eye Catching Keyword Rich HEADLINE
Your LinkedIn headline is your most seen component of the profile. It is what gets you ranked at the searches performed by recruiters or clients at LinkedIn. Your Headline should clearly say who you are & why anyone should click on your profile.
It is extremely important that you are using keywords in your Headline by which you expect prospects to be searching for your profile.
Spelling errors are a big no so please double-check before making your Headline public.
Try to proofread your content before hitting the submit button to differentiate between your profile and the rest of the 99% of the users on LinkedIn.
Buzzwords or Clichés should be avoided.
In Depth SUMMARY
Think of the summary as your first impression that you give out to recruiters, professionals & potential clients. It explains to them why you are the right fit for their job opening or their project.
Your summary should clearly state what you are looking for or are interested in so recruiters or potential clients know the kind of opportunities they should contact you with. Though the character limit is 2000, usually a summary of 200-300 words works perfectly well. It should ideally be a story of who you are & how you got to be where you are today. What you are looking for & are interested in at LinkedIn.
Another important thing here is to have a call to action towards the end of your summary so people engage with your profile which helps with your profile credibility for LinkedIn. It can be anything from your email address to a link to your website/project to boost engagement.
Relevant EXPERIENCE
People who come this far in your profile are surely interested in what they have seen till now. They just want to make sure that your credentials & accomplishments are in line with the job/project expectations they have to offer you.
Listing at least the latest 3 roles/ work experiences gives them a fair idea.
Make sure the job title is not vague for example “Android Software Developer” is much better than “Software Developer”. Clear start/end dates & job title needs to be added to further convince recruiters/clients of your credentials.
Qualifying EDUCATION
This section talks about the qualifications that often are minimum requirements for specific roles/projects. Hence it is a good practice to put down in detail the education & certifications you have gathered.
This section also helps your profile to be more holistic & increases the Network reach of your profile.
Fine Tuning OTHER PARAMETERS
Few other tweaks that you should consider to leave a lasting impression on LinkedIn are -
Profile Picture - Professional, smart, clear headshot. Pro Tip - Go to Photofeeler & get your profile picture rated on aspects of competent, likable & influence. It is a great hack to be sure about your LinkedIn profile picture.
Custom Public URL - Your LinkedIn URL should be easy to remember & memorable for prospects & recruiters. Having a profile like “www.linkedin.com/in/neilkpatel/” is much more impactful than “www.linkedin.com/u$r53”
Location - It is very important to mention your current location on LinkedIn as it helps recruiters & prospective clients find you via the filters they use while searching for prospects.
Featured Section - Not many people know this but this is a powerful feature that can make or break your LinkedIn profile. Stating your most important work/projects, your website, or your articles in the Featured section will give immense value to your profile & boost the engagement rate.
Skills Section - Again it is important that you mention a minimum of three skills as prospects filter the prospects by their skills. Syncing the skills to the target keywords you want to be found for is a great practice.
Certifications/Honours or Rewards - These add tremendous value to your profile when prospects/recruiters are screening for the ideal candidates. Also, some recruiters search for candidates with specific certifications as well.
Ultimate Hack to get your LinkedIn profile ranked
If you are serious about LinkedIn and truly understand the possibilities it can unlock for you, this ultimate Hack is pure magic. When you have decided on your target audience and hence the keywords you want to rank for, you can easily optimize your profile around that keyword. But if you want to organically growth hack the LinkedIn search results for your selected keywords, head over to Resume Worded.
Simply download the LinkedIn profile of the top-ranking profiles for your target keywords & run them through Resume Worded. It will rate the profile basis the parameters mentioned above and throw a score for you. You can then analyse the results and optimize your own profile for those target keywords.
Yes, It is that straightforward yet hardly anyone actually does it.
The graph of your profile getting ranked after the mentioned optimisations is almost always upwards. When you outthink your competitors get used to the graph as below for your profile.
Profile Rank Graph
Growth hacking the LinkedIn search results is no rocket science but a simple scientific approach to SEO for LinkedIn. It can exponentially increase the profile views & searches for you giving you immense exposure & opportunities.
There is much more that can be done at LinkedIn to absolutely master it but following above mentioned SEO practices is surely going to put your profile ahead of the pack.
Do try it out, and let the results speak for themselves.
Author Bio
Aakash Singh is a marketing professional & a content marketing specialist. He is passionate about blogging & SEO. Aakash lives in Delhi, India & writes about scaling your online presence on his blog, cupofglory.com.
