This is the third in a series of posts I have published on improving the SEO around your personal brand. In this post I wanted to share some tips on improving the SEO of your LinkedIn Profile.

Before I start, I want to be clear that even if you follow these tips it is unlikely you will be screaming to the top of the Google search results. Having a blog that you update regularly is by far and away a more effective medium for improving your personal search rankings. However, if you are not that way inclined, or are already blogging, these things will not do you any harm and are worth trying out – even if it is just so you will have a completed LinkeIn profile.

Tips for improving the SEO of your LinkedIn Profile:

1. Complete your LinkedIn profile. Before doing anything else, make sure your LinkedIn profile is complete and up to date. There is absolutely no point in improving your search engine rank if the end destination does not represent you accurately. I wouldn’t go too overboard trying to game the system, but search engines do scan the information in your profile, so make sure you are including the keywords you want associated with your name.
2. Customise your URL. You can customise the URL associated with your profile to include your name, rather than the random sequence of numbers LinkedIn generates for you. URLs are incredibly important component of SEO, so this is a no brainer. (learn how to do this by watching the video below tip 7).
3. Pay special attention to your job title and location. Your location and job title are the only personalised pieces of information provided on a generic search for your name on LinkedIn. There is not often a lot of flexibility in job roles, but perhaps think about how you can present your title in the most effective way to include desired keywords.
   

   Search result showing job title

4. Include your entire job history. People may be looking for you by searching for previous companies you have worked for. If these are not included in your profile then you may not be found. This is particularly important for people with more common names.
   

   The result when you search Matthew Gain Howorth (an old employer)

5. Specialities. Make sure you fill out all the sections. A particularly good section for including keywords is the Specialities section. Google does index this section, so make good use of it.
6. Join related groups. There is an enormous value in joining LinkedIn groups beyond SEO. From an SEO perspective they help by associating the name of the group with your search profile. Search for Groups that are aligned with your professional interests. The Group names will typically include relevant keywords for you.
7. Customise your links. Rather than the generic, blog, company website or Twitter links that LinkedIn generates you can customise your personal URLs to generate more potential Google Juice. This is a little bit involved, so check out this handy video created by Mike Volpe of HubSpot.
8. Answer questions. I have heard it suggested that you can improve your search rankings by responding to questions on LinkedIn, thus creating link backs to your profile. I would imagine Google is clever enough to ignore this, but perhaps I am wrong? Irrespective, answering questions does raise your profile generally and is a good idea, so I have included.

As I stated above by following these you are unlikely to dramatically shift your search engine rankings, but they won’t hurt. Well worth an hour or so of your time in my opinion.

Are there any suggestions that I have missed? Do you disagree with any of the above? I am no SEO expert, so would love to update this post with additional suggestions or improvements.

This post of a series of posts I am making on SEO tips to improve your personal search brands. Other posts you can view are:

• Tips to improve your search engine footprint
• SEO your Twitter profile

If you enjoyed this post why don’t you subscribe to my blog via RSS or email by following this link. Follow me on Twitter or connect on LinkedIn.

Full disclosure, LinkedIn is a client of my future employer Edelman, but they have had no involvement with this post.

I wrote the following post for Media Asia.

The ten blue links displayed when you type your company name into a search engine, not your company’s homepage, is where most people first interact with your brand. What they see on that results page, be it positive or negative, will have a lasting impact.

In the same vein, what is displayed when someone types your name into a search engine should be compared with the front page of your CV. If nothing comes up, what does that say about you? Or even worse, if the only things that come up are photos of your drunken exploits from five years ago, then your search engine footprint needs some serious attention.

Below I have outlined seven quick tips to help improve your search persona and ensure your search engine CV presents the right image.

1. Blog. Having a good blog habit is one of the simplest ways to ensure you control your personal online brand, but simply setting up a free account on Wordpress.com is not enough. You need to generate content, ideally lots of content. The more posts you write the more content a search engine will have to index, and the more content others will be able to link to; both of which positively impact what appears when your name is searched.

2. Tweet. A step down in effort from blogging is Twitter. The major search engines rank Twitter high in their results and are now including Tweets as part of their real-time results. Aided by the 140 character limit, there is an incredibly low barrier for entry into the world of Twitter, so set up an account and add your Tweets to the 50 million odd tweets that are created each day.

3. Use your name. If you want to be found on the web, make sure you are optimising for how people are most likely to search for you, with your name. If available, purchase the URL for your name. Also, ensure your Twitter handle is your name and customise your Facebook and LinkedIn URLs to include your name. Of course this will be more effective for people with a unique name as opposed to all the Bob Smiths or Li Chens out there.

4. Understand how people search. Use the Google AdWords Keyword tool to understand how people search for your skill set. Put in the word that you think best represents what you want to be known for. For example a search on ‘PR’ shows that ‘communications’ is also a highly searched word. Armed with the knowledge of what people are searching for, use the terms in the content you create for your blog and also use them in your online profiles or bios to help align you with your chosen industry.

5. Be everywhere. When it comes to optimising for search engines, the more online presences you have the better. The popular social networks such as Facebook and LinkedIn, like Twitter, are featured high in searches for peoples’ name. As such, make sure you have a presence in the social networks that are most important in your market and to your industry. Also make sure you have personalised your URL. Learn how to do it for Facebook here and LinkedIn here.

6. Tag your images. Ensure that images you want to be found of you, perhaps the one of you accepting an award at the Cannes PR Lions ceremony, are tagged with your name and industry and uploaded on a photo sharing site like Flickr, so search engines can easily index your picture.

7. Remove the bad stuff. Just as easily as search engines find the good stuff, they will also return the bad stuff. If there are images of you that you wouldn’t want people to see, delete them. Also think very carefully before you post content to the web. Simply think, “Am I happy with this piece of content representing me to potential employers or clients?” and if you aren’t comfortable, don’t post it.

These are but a small sample of tips for improving your personal search rankings. If you have any others, why not add them in the comment box?

This post of a series of posts I am making on SEO tips to improve your personal search brands. Other posts you can view are:

• SEO your Twitter profile
• SEO your LinkedIn Profile

If you enjoyed this post why don’t you subscribe to my blog via RSS or email by following this link. Or alternatively follow me on Twitter.

As you will see from the above, Twitter is the number two result when you search my name in Google, so is an incredibly important channel for my personal brand.

For those who are interested in growing their results in Google, I believe Twitter is one of the easiest ways along with Facebook and LinkedIn that you can start owning the front page of Google.

Why? Because, Google indexes Twitter highly, it is the easiest way to start creating content and even if you do not Tweet regularly your profile and URL inclusion provides another means to direct people to your LinkedIn or Facebook profile.

For those that already have a Twitter account the good people at Twittip have created a list of tips on  more advanced techniques on how to increase the SEO of your Twitter profile.

Some are obvious:

• Ensure you Twitter handle includes relevant keywords (I have gone for my name)
• Ensure your bio also includes relevant keywords – mine has PR and my company name Weber Shandwick
• List your profile in relevant directories such as WeFollow
• Follow relevant people in the hope they find your feed of relevance and link back to you

But two were less obvious (at least to me, but I am no SEO expert) and are currently on my to do list:

You can even SEO your Twitter pic (avatar)…

Yes, you can even SEO your profile picture! You can’t add tags but, you can rename the photo before you upload it that way when it shows up in the URL it will have the keywords that you named. Be careful not to add spaces. Doing that will not translate the link very well. I don’t recommend changing your profile picture but, I would recommend changing the name of the profile picture and re-uploading it. You can do this by clicking on “Settings” and then “Picture”.

Burn Baby Burn…

Burn Your Twitter feed: Why would you want to use an RSS feed for Twitter? Well, by using RSS, people can subscribe to your posts (and in this case Tweets) and get instant feeds sent to them. Just like a blogger would use RSS feeds to increase their popularity with search engines and help draw traffic to their blogs, you can use RSS feeds to do the same for your Twitter account. So, how do you go about doing this you say? I will show you how to set this up in Google FeedBurner.

First you go to FeedBurner. If you have a gmail account you can sign in with this. Otherwise, sign up for a new account.

Next, in a different window open up your Twitter account and scroll down to the middle of your Twitter page and click on the RSS feed icon. Next go to the top of the page and copy the URL. (It should look similar to this: http://twitter.com/statuses/friends_timeline/104933666)

Next, paste it into FeedBurner. Then make sure that you add your user name and password so that it won’t be locked when people try and look at the feeds (Use the same format as the highlighted text: http://username:password@twitter.com/statuses/user_timeline/15473972.rss). Click next and you have just RSS’d your twitter profile!

Last, go through the dashboard and choose important options for your chosen use of your feed. You can share widgets, add pictures, set up a title for the feed and make sure that it pings (connects) with search engines.

Some interesting stuff hey? Do you have any other tips? I would love to hear them in the comment box.

This post of a series of posts I am making on SEO tips to improve your personal search brands. Other posts you can view are:

• Tips to improve your search engine footprint
• SEO your LinkedIn Profile

If you enjoyed this post why don’t you subscribe to my blog via RSS or email by following this link. Or alternatively follow me on Twitter.