LinkedIn SEO Benefits

For the benefit of those who have lived under a rock for the last few years, LinkedIn is a networking site for professional working people, or professional people seeking work. It is in fact the third most popular social networking site after Facebook and Twitter. Because of some of the high level profiles on LinkedIn, it is an ideal medium for SEO leverage.

There are some very simple and straightforward ways in which to optimise your LinkedIn profile to improve the SEO of your website:

Complete your profile

Sounds easy? But an incomplete profile says one of two things, either “I can’t be bothered” or “I don’t have anything relevant to put in these boxes.” Always complete as much of your profile information (genuinely) as possible and be honest about any gaps in your personal and/or business history. Another must is to include a good quality photo of you, make sure it is a professional one, not just a random shot.

Customise your LinkedIn URL

This is the URL which leads to your LinkedIn profile and by default looks something like this:

http://uk.linkedin.com/pub/your-name/21/556/89a

This can be customised, via the profile editor, so that it reads:

http://uk.linkedin.com/in/your-name/your-company/your-website (or anything else you like).

For such a simple tweak, your profile will not only look more professional, it will be much more visible to both people and search engines.

Anchor Text

Pay close attention to the ‘Websites’ section where you get the opportunity to enter three websites you like. Naturally at least one of them will be your own. Once the URL has been entered, replace the default ‘My Website’ with ‘Other’ and then add your target keyword(s) as anchor text.

Search engines most surely scrutinise anchor text when they rank websites. This means that if you have website specific keywords as your anchor text, your SEO will be vastly improved.

Groups

People do not just randomly connect on LinkedIn but a good way to network is by joining relevant groups. This places you in a social setting, potentially with key people and gives you a prime opportunity to participate by providing the group with useful, relevant information. Make sure you contribute regularly and always reply to any contact from group members.

Alternatively, you could start a group of your own. This will involve slightly more work on your part, but in the long term will give you a lot of credibility.

Add Connections

Post a link to your profile on LinkedIn on your website and on any other social networks you may use and get as many connections as possible. The importance of using LinkedIn for adding connections cannot be stressed enough, particularly if your goal is to improve the SEO of your website. The more connections you have, the more visible your website will be on the Internet, as well as on LinkedIn.

LinkedIn has great authority with Google due to some of the high level profiles it contains. With a little bit of management, your profile can become an excellent source of increased traffic to your website.