Linkedin Profile
Well, there you are with your new state of the art best practice Linkedin Profile which is extremely well worded and your picture taken by a professional photographer. You are ready to land a fantastic new job through a recruiter coming across your profile, but month and month passes and nothing ever happens….
What is going on here ?
First of all there are now more than 200 Million Profiles on Linkedin and steadily growing. How should a recruiter find you ? Not every recruiter has the Linkedin Recruiter Version which allows him or her to search through all the Linkedin profiles. And even if he or she did, how would your Linkedin Profile turn up in the top 10 search results of this recruiter ?
Linkedin Connections and Network
There are a number of steps you can do:
1) Check Appearances in Search Results
2) See the number of people in your Network
3) Look at the quality of your network connections and the Linkedin Groups you have joined
4) Analyse Keywords – do you know them and do you use those in the best way ?
How to go about it ?
1. First Login into your Linkedin Account.
2. On the right pane as shown in the picture above you will see how big your network currently is and if your profile appeared in search results.
1) Check Appearances in Search Results
3. In the section Who’s Viewed Your Profile click on the “Your Profile has been viewed by x people in the past x x” Link.
4. On the right upper side of the displayed new page click on the “Appearances in Search” Tab under Trends. Study the search appearances graph over the last 90 days.
Linkedin Profile appearances in Search Results over 90 days period
Clearly if you have a low total number of search appearances you have got to do some work which will be
2) See the number of people in your Network
5. Go back to your main page and look again there at your stats. This time the stats of “YOUR LINKEDIN NETWORK” (see picture “Linkedin Connections and Network” above ) are in focus. There is a clear statistical link between the number of professionals within your Linkedin Network and Appearances in Search Results. The smaller your network the more likely your Linkedin Profile will not appear in searches. Why is that ?
If a Linkedin User does not have the Linkedin Recruiter version any search for a Linkedin Profile will be limited to the number of professionals in one’s own network. If you do not belong to this network your Profile will not show up. And this will bring you to step
3) Look at the quality of your network connections
If you have still a small professional network the first thing you need to do is to connect to more people to enlarge your network as well as join the largest groups on Linkedin and also the Linkedin Groups related to your professional area. Member of your Linkedin Groups will also appear in Searches – so you do not have to be necessarily connected with these Profiles, they do not have to be part of your professional network.
How do you identify the quality connections and the best Linkedin groups ?
There are many ways.
6. First of all connect to all the people within your existing professional network that are on Linkedin.
7. Second look through your preferred job boards and identify the names of the recruiter if displayed or the company they are working for. Start searching for these recruiters or companies on Linkedin and see if you can connect to the individual. If these people are not yet within your reach in Linkedin see in which Linkedin Groups they are a member of. Join these groups. Now you should be able to invite them into your professional network.
8. Join large external industry groups and get a member list as well and join their Linkedin group if they have one already.
9. After you have started to extend your Linkedin Network see again if your Appearances in Searches went up compared to the first time you did your analysis.
The next thing is for you to appear in the top search results. This is step No.
4) Analyse Keywords – do you know them and do you use those in the best way ?
10. I would recommend you to take this step once you have a large enough network on Linkedin. From your own job searches in job boards as well as from the description of the open positions that you would consider extract the main keywords. This should be the words that recruiters will use to find a Linkedin Profile.
11. Use one of these keywords and do a search on Linkedin in the people category – see example in the picture below.
The Search is on top right of your Linkedin Account Main Page.
Use the Linkedin Search with your keyword
12. The first result you get will be ordered by relevance. In this step you could analyse the first three top profiles and see how they used the keyword in their profiles. In Relevance mainly the people usually the first level connections will show up in the top ten results.
Better is to do one more step to find the best optimized SEO Linkedin Profile for your keyword:
13. Change the Filter (Sort by: ) of the Search Results from Relevance to Keywords (see picture below):
Linkedin Search Results Sort by Keywords
14. Now in the new result list study the top profiles that appear. See how and how often these Linkedin members used the keyword in their Linkedin Profiles.
If you do not have the premium Linkedin membership you cannot view the Profiles of your 3rd Level connection or the Linkedin Members within your Linkedin Groups. On top the premium Linkedin Membership allows you to see what keywords were used by Linkedin Users who finally came to view your profile.
Additonally with the Premium Version you can view the whole list of Linkedin Members who viewed your profile. Once you have optimised your Linkedin Profile it may be worth while to pay for the premium membership for some months to see what keywords attracted people to come to your profile.
Some more useful advise by experts:
How to Optimize Your Linkedin Profile For High SEO Ranking
One of the key advises in the post – complete your Linkedin Profile in the most optimal way.
Linkedin has these character limits per section in your Linkedin Profile:
- Headline – 120 Characters
- Status Field – 140 Characters
- Summary – 2,000 Characters
- Specialties – 500 Characters
- Company Name – 100 Characters
- Position (Job) Title – 100 Characters
- Position Description – 2,000 Characters
- Interests – 1,000 Characters
Linkedin: Why your profile never gets views, and how you can fix it (case study) at zdnet
Citation from this excellent post by a master in SEO Stephen Chapman:
“If you hope to come up in someone’s search for keywords related to your profile, you either need to essentially spam your profile with those keywords, be in a LinkedIn group related to those keywords, or you had better be connected with someone the person searching is connected to. Long story short, LinkedIn appears to favor networks of connected people, LinkedIn groups, and profiles chock-full of the same keyword(s).” Also the author Stephen Chapman – the SEO experts – shows some very good examples of his case study what I would recommend on how not do it. To be found is one thing, but to be attractive another. If it is obvious to a recruiter or a prospective client that you just optimized your Linkedin Profile to rank very high, this might turn actually your visitors to your profile away. I would advise you to study closely how to optimize but yet not loose the quality of your Linkedin Profile. To put it in other words very good products usually have also a very good marketing and so should a very good Linkedin Profile too.
Stephen summarized his expert advise in two sections for seeking an employee and seeking a job. I recommend to read it.
Linkedin SEO: How to Increase the Visibility of Your Business Profile
Some more useful advise also for company pages on Linkedin.
Optimizing Your Linkedin Profile to Improve SEO for Your Company
If you teach your employees how to create compelling Linkedin Profile it will also benefit your brand as well your employer branding. This slideshare shows you what to consider.
I was quite successful with my Linkedin Profile (www.linkedin.com/in/peterpalme) to attract Top Talents to my current employer who otherwise would not have considered us.
The 13 Sneakiest Linkedin SEO Tips to Boost Your Profile’s View
Further useful tactics to optimize your SEO Succsess on Linkedin
7 Things You Need to Know About Linkedin Search
In this excellent post you get a deeper insight on how Linkedin Search works when the search results are displayed by relevance. Worth reading.
My Part in LinkedIn’s 200 Million Member Milestone
linkedin.com
Hurray! I have one of the top 1% most viewed @LinkedIn profiles for 2012. http://www.linkedin.com/pub/profile/1/040/20b?trk=200li
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Is Linkedin helping you to find the next job or is it still a wishful thinking ?
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Linkedin Profile – Free Best Practice Course on Udemy
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