This is a guest post from Aziz Ali, first published in 2011. Since this article is old, you may have to modify his strategy to match the current LinkedIn setup. I leave it published for you as the core idea he presents is well worth learning. — Yaro
My fourth article on this blog, and the love I have been receiving from this community is amazing. I feel really welcomed, so thanks to you all. I wish I could meet you in person and thank you personally. I hope one day I will.
Enough of the pep talk Aziz, time to get down to the meat!
Today I have something different for you. This is going to create tangible, solid results for you once you implement the steps in order. It’s fast and simple. I am really looking forward to making this post holy smokes viral, and I need your help. Make sure you tweet, like, share, email, knock on doors, email and shout out loud about this post because I know you will get the results as promised: Rank on top of the LinkedIn search within 10 minutes, guaranteed.
Why LinkedIn?
We all know that Google is the most searched website on earth, but not many of us know that YouTube is in second place followed by Yahoo and Bing. Interesting fact, right?
Google has changed the way search works and now users assume to find stuff using the search feature on any website they visit. LinkedIn, being a top 30 most visited website on earth (according to Alexa), gets millions of searches every single month. The majority of these searches are made to find people. Users look to form partnerships, find vendors, customers, employees, employers and more.
The searches are being made every day. Are you showing up there when users are in the peak state of finding someone for their needs?
In the next 15 minutes, (5 minutes reading + 10 minutes implementing) you will show up on that results page for the keyword of your choice.
Note: I am using Craig Bass, a videographer, who is also a friend of mine, as an example in this post to rank him on top of LinkedIn search.
The LinkedIn Algorithim
LinkedIn’s search algorithm is not that sophisticated. Unlike Google, LinkedIn search only displays results from within its own website.
Following are the factors that determine who ranks on top of the search results in LinkedIn:
- Job History
LinkedIn looks at a user’s current and past title at his employing company. The more times that title occurs, the ranking goes up for that keyword. - Headline
The engine also looks at the profile headline and sees if the keyword appears there. - Name
If a user has “Video Editor” or “Craig Video Editor” as his name, this person will get the highest ranking. Unfortunately, such an account has a high potential of being banned because “Craig Video Editor” is a fake name. Secondly, it’s bad practice from a usability standpoint. Definitely not recommended to put the keyword as a name. - Connections
Search results in LinkedIn are personalized to the person searching. Results are shown only of those people who are within one’s network. The broader your network, the more people will be able to see your profile in their search results.
Now I will show you a crazy way of ranking on top of LinkedIn search by optimizing your Job History.
Step 1: Keyword Preparation
You need two inputs to rank for any keyword you desire:
List A. Key phrase
Compile a list of keywords you wish to rank for:
- Ideally, these keywords should be professions that LinkedIn users are looking for
- Your list should be short and focused, 5-10 keywords
i.e.
Video Editor
Video Production
Multimedia Production
Videographer
Small Business Marketing
We see above that the the term “Video” is repetitive in the term “Video Editor” and “Video Production”, hence we will remove the term “video” from one of the spots.
Here is the new list:
Video Editor
Video Production
Multimedia Production
Videographer
Small Business Marketing
And now we see that the term “Production” is repetitive, so we will remove the term “Production” from the list.
Here is the newer list:
Video Editor
Video Production
Multimedia Production
Videographer
Small Business Marketing
This list is more focused than the original list. Although the keyword, “Video Production” has been removed from the list of keywords, Craig will still rank for this keyword since the word “Video” and “Production” are mentioned in the list. Interesting, right!
Now make the list of keywords comma separated:
Video Editor, Multimedia Production, Videographer, Small Business Marketing
List B. Clients/Projects
Compile a list of past clients, companies and projects you have worked for:
- The bigger this list, the stronger and higher your rankings
- Ideally, list 10 projects. For competitive keywords this list could be bigger
i.e. These are the list of companies Craig has worked for:
(If you do not have a huge list, you could list your project names here.)
Labelle Catering
Party Time Productions
La Grange Crane
Herigage House Florist
Little Company of Mar
The One & Only Novel
Synergy Virids
Anderson & Boback
Big Top
Home Helpers
Shelf Butler
Premier Garage
Accretive Health
A Place to Bark Animal Rescue
Dennis Cook
H Foundation
If you were not an employee of these companies, put the name of your company in front of your clients/projects list in the following fashion:
(Craig is a co-founder of Motion Source)
Motion Source | Client Labelle Catering
Motion Source | Client Party Time Productions
Motion Source | Client La Grange Crane
Motion Source | Client Herigage House Florist
Motion Source | Client Little Company of Mar
Motion Source | Client The One & Only Novel
Motion Source | Client Synergy Virids
Motion Source | Client Anderson & Boback
Motion Source | Client Big Top
Motion Source | Client Home Helpers
Motion Source | Client Shelf Butler
Motion Source | Client Premier Garage
Motion Source | Client Accretive Health
Motion Source | Client A Place to Bark Animal Rescue
Motion Source | Client Dennis Cook
Motion Source | Client H Foundation
Step 2: Enter The Projects
Now we will enter your projects in a specific fashion in your LinkedIn Profile.
On LinkedIn:
- Go to Profile> Edit Profile
- Click Add a Current Position OR Add a Past Position (Both work)
Your List A. will work as the Title, and Your List B will be the Company Name.
- Enter one of your projects from List B as “Company Name”
- Enter your key phrase from List A as your “Title”
- Enter the Time Period when you did this project (Make sure you enter some of your projects that you are CURRENTLY working on. LinkedIn will list them as current in your profile which helps in ranking)
- Description is not required
Repeat this step for all the projects from List B.
Results – Ranked #1
Here are Craig’s rankings for the keywords:
#1 Video Editor
#1 Multimedia Production
#1 Videographer
#1 Small Business Marketing
#6 Video Production
Impressive, right?
I hope this tutorial has inspired you to take action. No action no results.
Aziz Ali
Great post Aziz! This is really a big help! Thanks for sharing the tips…
Aziz – that was super – I hope after reading your post, Linkedin doesn’t consider changing their algorithim!
Secondly, is it an acceptable way to rank into search like this? I mean what I understood after going through your article was the ‘repetition’ of a phrase in your profile which will be tracked by Linkedin’s search engine and results will be displayed simply based on repeitition. Is is an acceptable way in the world of internet?
Third – this should be termed as LEO i.e. Linkedin Engine Optimization rather than an SEO technique 🙂
best regards
Malik Mirza
http://wisdomfrombooks.com
Malik,
You certainly have a point that it is LI search engine optimization. But LI its own little world, I can hardly benefit from being found through Google, but those who search on LI look for a specific reason. My keyword on LI brings me up on the fourth place, and with Google I’m not ranking anywhere. Partly, because for site optimization, I’m using very different keywords.
Dear Aziz – greetings
I just followed upon your video tutorial and now I am ‘second’ in the search for ‘finance consultant’ or ‘micro finance’. I need to spend a little more time to get to first position i.e. I need to repead these two terms more than those who are at the first position.
regards
Malik Mirza
http://wisdomfrombooks.com
Simply Awesome,
This is very much informative and useful post. I am just overviewing it right now as I have to reach somewhere which is very important at this time and I am allready late…so I am going to check it later in free time as I find it very important.
Anyway sorry for this….bye for now and thanks a lot for this.
Have a wonderful weekend…
Good information. Simply completing your profile to 100% will give you a notch up relative to most L’In users, who are not well versed with SEO/Internet marketing strategies and keyword optimization. That said, optimizing for keywords ensure you show for relevant searches. All that said, IMO: LinkedIn is not for everyone.
Aziz, I agree with the others–great post–I had never seriously considered LinkedIn before, although to be honest, if I used liked in and hiring managers saw my blog, they would think I am nuts.
Now I know why my Linkedin profile haven’t given me a positive result. I should start working on my profile now. Thanks! 🙂
I put up a profile on linkedin a year or so ago but haven’t done much with it. I might need to give that a second look. Thanks.
Dear Aziz – there is an issue here on which i need your thoughts.
As you have mentioned in the video too when you searched the words, the name of the person appearing was mutually known. This is because the search criteria was set as ‘relevant’.
If you change the search criteria from ‘relevance’ to ‘key word’ this is not the case.
Why is this happening? When you log in to linkedin and then type the key words, the linkedin searches from the ‘relevant’ contact list first and hence, based on repetition in contact list, the most ‘relevant’ contact appears first.
Click on advanced and write the criteria in key word space. You will notice totally different results. Could you please explain this?
regards
Malik Mirza
http://wisdomfrombooks.com
I never even really thought it was necessary for me to seo my linkedin profile. But I don’t need to use it for a job or anything like that.
Thanks for sharing this Aziz, LinkedIn is an excellent way to get traffic to our blog posts.
Absolutely brilliant strategy to use LinkedIn. It is better for newbies to look on places with less competition.
Aziz, I agree with the others–great post–I had never seriously considered LinkedIn before, although to be honest, if I used liked in and hiring managers saw my blog, they would think I am nuts.
I thinks everybody’s gone to facebook already..
Amazing stuff Aziz. I now rank for like 20 different keyword competitive keywords phrases as number one on linked in.
Yes-It Works.
Waaww.. It is new for me that LinkedIn has algorithm too
Great Post.. Thanks a million.
LinkedIn has introduced the concept of Project so it can be entered separately; how that would be handled in search?
Thanks a lot for this content, I had no clear view of the linkedin search algorithm yet. By the way, on this topic precisely, you mention that “Results are shown only of those people who are within one’s network.” But it seems to me that now (january 2014 !), for a simple search, results are extended by default to people outside of everyone’s network. Then you have to manually restrict the search to get only results from your different levels of network… Hope it makes sense and thank you one more time !
I noticed that most of the people who are ranked above me are professional recruiters and not my actual peers – coworkers. So if I remove the recruiters, who post a lot of articles (activity breeds good ranking), then I am well-ranked.
How old is this article? I did exactly what you suggested. The key word I am interested in is “Tenant Advisor”.
Two things happened.
1) I did not move up at all.
2) My connections were notified that I changed companies which in fact I did not. I just listed my clients at you suggested. Received tons of “Congrats”
Please check my profile out.
Thanks.
Great article, but WHEN was this published? Is this up to date? Thanks.
It’s from July 2011.
Excellent post! I added your article on LinkedIn SEO on my blog here and shared with my LI followers…
Appreciate your feedback.
All the best,
Sandy Rowley