Many small businesses use their LinkedIn company profiles in order to post jobs and learn more about potential employees, but the truth is that LinkedIn can be used for much more than just job hunting and posting. If used correctly, your LinkedIn profile could start coming up in searches, your content could start bringing people to your website, and your visibility could help you create relationships and establish your business as an authority in the industry. Posting jobs and connecting with candidates is only one small piece of the puzzle.
Being able to take advantage of all that LinkedIn has to offer means optimizing your LinkedIn account. LinkedIn is a search engine, after all, and it offers unique features that you can take advantage of if you where to look.
How to Optimize Your LinkedIn Account for the LinkedIn Search Engine
As discussed above, LinkedIn is continually updating their platform and making it easier for brands and readers to connect. They are trying to expand their reach and become a place for publishers as opposed to only a place for professional connections. Below are a few ways you can take advantage and “SEO” your LinkedIn account:
Publish content frequently.
The publisher option from LinkedIn was just introduced in about one year ago and allows anyone, brands or individuals, to publish an article. This can be an article preview that was already published on your blog or an entire article that you’ve already published on your blog, and videos and infographics are welcomed. In other words, it works very similarly to an actual blog. When you publish content, it will help give your company visibility on the News Feeds of those who follow you, but it also makes it easier for LinkedIn users to discover your page if they search for content on a certain subject in the LinkedIn search. You should use this feature as if it were a blog, so try and publish content here at least once per week.
Getting started with this feature is as simple as clicking a small pencil icon below the section that says “Posts Published By.” Once you publish a post, LinkedIn will send you emails about the popularity of the post using metrics such as engagement and clicks. You can learn more about how to write for LinkedIn and how to get started here.
Always promote your LinkedIn profile.
Your SEO strategy for your website undoubtedly has something to do with trying to earn backlinks and visibility on authoritative sources. You’re probably promoting your blog and website on social media, trying to mention relevant articles when possible, and more. What many companies forget is that you can do this same type of promotion for your LinkedIn account. If you have published something relevant on LinkedIn and you’re writing a guest article for another website on the web, link back! Consider sending viewers to your LinkedIn profile sometimes instead of your landing pages if it’s relevant.
Come up with a great cover photo.
This works the same way it works for Facebook and Twitter. LinkedIn hasn’t always used the cover photo, but now that they do it’s important that you have something that really pops off the page and shows who you are as a company. Use a high resolution, professional image, and the more color the better!
Fill out all of your information with keywords.
It should go without saying, but you have to make sure that all of your information is filled out and ready to go. As a company profile, you have two sections that you can fill out: Home and Careers. On your homepage you have a space for a description and then links to your company website. Fill this out using keywords you would want to rank for if people are searching on LinkedIn for information about your industry.
For the careers section, this is a great time to use video about working with your company and have an interactive image to send people to your actual website and earn some traction that way. I recommend visiting the HubSpot LinkedIn page to check out a great example.
Extra for individuals: Endorsements and recommendations matter.
It has never actually been announced by LinkedIn that endorsements will affect your rankings, but I think of them the same way I think of reviews on the web. The more you can get real people to testify to your success, the more credible you will seem in the eyes of whoever visits your page. If LinkedIn isn’t taking this into consideration when ranking pages, it’s a good idea to at least anticipate that they may in the future. Make sure that your employees aren’t forgetting this on their individual pages. After all, they come up on your company page as people who work for you!
For even more ideas about optimizing your LinkedIn account, visit Inc. Magazine. Let us know in the comment section below if you have any more ideas that you would add to the list.