I have been writing about Linkedin a lot here on this blog as well as on my career advice blog. In fact, I was originally going to write this post for my career blog but I did not want my competition to learn about it. You will see why after I explain this.
Everyone that I know who does business online or offline has a desire to rank well in Google and other search engines. A tremendous amount of time and money is spent trying to get ranked high for your keywords. I am going to share with you a trick technique that will help you rank at the top of the heap for your chosen keywords on Linkedin.
Just think about the amount of potential business you can gain from Linkedin if you were among the first profiles that were displayed when someone went searching keywords like:
- Social Media Consultant
- Business Blogging Consultant
- Freelance Writer
- Website Designer
- Logo Designer
- Resume Writer
You get the idea…and you can not use this technique with the keyword “resume writer” I already own that 
Ok, here is what you do.
- Search for the keyword(s) you want to be found by
- Adjust view to sort by keywords and expanded
- Count how many keywords you find in the top ranked profile
- You know have the knowledge you need (I bet you didn’t think it would be this easy )
- Edit your profile and make sure you exceed the amount of keywords as the top ranked profile in each section. Current and Past Experience hold a lot of weight. Be sure to include your keywords in the skills and education section as well
- Make sure you have a least a couple of recommendations for jobs that have your keywords in the title.
That is all there is to it. Seriously, this is the easiest and most powerful technique that I have discovered to optimize your profile to get you to the top of the Linkedin search results.
Take a look at who comes up first in Linkedin for the popular keyword “resume writer”
The proof is in the pudding
I would love to hear from you in the comments. Let me know if this technique worked for you?
Dear thanks for sharing tips, I've recently joined Linkedin
My professional career is in pharmaceutical marketing and sales, what would be the buzz words/key words
I welcome advises
I saw a similar tip elsewhere and changed my profile. I am on second page for targeted phrase. Time to revisit profile and upgrade on second key phrase as well. Good tip for everyone.
Rob
It works. From oblivion to 1st page at location in half an hour. Much thanks.
Dan,
Your technique really works! I wanted to be found by "PCB Designer", "CAD Librarian" and "schematic". As it turns out my profile is set up correctly and I appear in the top slot or at least on the first page. Blind luck I guess. This is, however, a stupendous verification.
Thanks for the tip!
I am a newbie on Linkedin and welcome any and all guidelines. I have very specalized skills and have struggled with how to highlight those w/o eliminating other opportunities – thanks much for the boost to my efforts.
Hi – I amended my profile (despite the fact that my keywords were extremely present in the first place – title, summary, etc! ) to include even more of my keywords: international PR, international communications and international public relations. Looks a bit strange, but never mind.
However, what I find interesting is that if I type, for example, international communications, I am first, but if I type communications, I am on page three…behind people who were behind me when I added international.
Would you have any suggestions on why that happens and how to rectify it?
Thanks for the tip btw!!
LinkedIn search now gives you unified search results – that is retrieve and displays the most relevant professionals from the entire LinkedIn community.
Great advice. Thank you so very much Dan.
You search for "Business Analyst" and I am the 5th result! whoohoo!
Best
Maruti
Dan,
Seriously…. you are the best… I took the time to implement the changes to my profile now I in the TOP 5…lol Hey thanks for taking the time to write this article of substance…
Excellent tip! This is something I will definately use for my Linkedin profile. Many thanks!
Love this advice. My name was pretty high up anyway but this gave me the extra edge I needed! Thanks so much. Will be reading your blog from now on with keen interest!
Great advice – just made a few edits as suggested and it worked! Thanks for sharing!
I use LinkedIn to search for people who have worked at a particular company, when they started, and when they left. It gives me a good idea of the attrition rate at the company.
What great advice! It totally worked. When I updated my keywords and searched again, I found myself on the second page under all locations and on the top of the first page of the area I actually live in!
Thanks!
Jessica Dearborn
Thanks for the awesome tip Dan. This reminds me of how SEO used to be back in the day. It all came down to keyword usage. I am going to try to use this tip to get more business for a service oriented site I own.
This is a nice technician, I have being looking for ways to be one of the top rank on Linkedin, I hope to apply this technician, hopeful it will work for me as well. Thank for sharing…
Dan,
I have to admit that's very clever. I haven't yet signed on with Linkedin yet, so I was unaware it even had a search function. You might even be able to rank for the term in Google if Linkedin sends a bunch of internal links to the page just because it is so relevant to such a popular query.
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This is awesome! I have my account in LinkedIn yet got few friends.This is a great news for me. I can't wait to try it. Thanks for the post…
@Laptop, I still feel like that is relevant towards the bigger sites. Example… if you are making an add on eBay or in general any website that would be considered an “authority” website, as long as you’ve got the proper keywords, you are gonna rank well. At least thats what I’ve observed, but us smaller guys gotta do alot more work, hehe.
Till then,
Jean
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