06. Create Your Profile With SEO In Mind
Before we continue:
If you already have a LinkedIn profile - fantastic! Use this section to investigate, revise, and improve the highlighted sections.
If you don't have a LinkedIn profile - you will soon! Open up LinkedIn in another browser tab and create an account. You can expect to spend about 10 minutes going through LinkedIn's "Welcome" flow.
Keywords and SEO
As there are millions of LinkedIn users, you may be wondering how you stand out or are surfaced to recruiters. Below, we dive into the sections of your profile which are essential to SEO (search engine optimization - or optimizing your profile for searches on LinkedIn).
On your LinkedIn profile, more-so than on a resume or other application materials, it is helpful to use keywords specific to the job you are targeting. This is especially true of the words you include in your headline, summary, and current job title. Think of the words that a recruiter might type to search for candidates of your target job and check to ensure they're listed in your profile.
For example, if you were looking for a job developing mobile augmented reality apps, you might want to include words like engineer, iOS, Android, Unity, or 3D.
Pro Tip: To find keywords to add, read job descriptions of positions you are targeting.
For example, when you search "Udacity Software Engineer" on LinkedIn, you may find similar results to the image below. What do you notice about the search results?
LinkedIn search results for "Udacity software engineer" (with some redacted information)
You may have noticed that:
- All have profile pictures.
- All have the keyword "software engineer" in their Headline, Summary, and Past Experience sections.
- All are second connections with the searcher. The people you're 1st, 2nd, and 3rd connections to will be prioritized in your search results. If you want to be surfaced in search results, you'll need to connect with others in your industry to boost your visibility.
Up next, let's take a closer look at your profile picture, name, headline, and summary. We'll cover your experiences and connections later in the lesson.