LinkedIn’s popularity and relevance as a social networking site has increased dramatically since its inception. The site provides a great way to network with other professionals, and is a great resource to form and enhance business relationships. However, few people realize that there is an SEO benefit to LinkedIn as well. In the SEO world, keyword text links are king. Below are instructions for how to adjust your LinkedIn profile to include three text links with keyword rich anchor text (good for SEO) pointing back to your website. Once you login, it will only take a minute of your time.
To get started you first need to assemble a list of three URL’s and three keywords you would like to optimize for. For our example we will use our client Gould Cooksey Fennell, a law firm in Vero Beach Florida. Here is our list:
Keyphrase URL
Vero Beach Lawyer http://www.gouldcooksey.com
Vero Beach Attorney http://www.gouldcooskey.com
Vero Beach Corporate Law http://www.gouldcooksey.com/site/corporate_law/
1. Go to http://www.linkedin.com/ and log in using your personal log in information
2. Once logged in, click on “Profile” in the left hand navigation bar
3. Click the tab at the top of your Profile page titled “Edit My Profile”
4. About halfway down there is a section called “Websites”- in this section you can include 3 links of your choice.
5. Click “Edit” next to the first URL, or “Add” if you have yet to place any links in the profile. Doing this will take you to a new page titled “Additional Information”
6. In the “Websites” section, click the arrow for the first drop down menu and select “Other”. This allows you to enter the text of your choice for the link
7. In the text box next to that, add the first key phrase you would like to target. Ours was “Vero Beach Attorneys”
8. In the text box just beneath, add in your homepage URL. We used http://www.gouldcooksey.com
9. Repeat steps 6-8 for the remaining 2 links, using the your second and third key phrase and URL pair. Ours were “Vero Beach Attorney” with the URL http://www.gouldcooksey.com, and “Vero Beach Corporate Law” with the URL http://www.gouldcooksey.com/site/corporate_law/
10. Now simply scroll down to the bottom of the page and hit the blue “Save Changes” button.
11. This will take you back to the “Profile” page. Click the “View My Profile” tab at the top.
12. Look down in the “Websites” section to confirm your three new text links.
For those that do not already have a Linked In profile, now is a great time to start one. We have certainly seen SEO benefit from making these small, quick adjustments, especially for Linked In users who have large networks and powerful profiles.
Reid Fenlaw
reid@seoverflow.com
www.seoverflow.com – SEO and PPC Outsourcing Specialists
USA – 303-905-1504
Dr. Scott's Business Blog 
Great tips, Scott. Thanks.
Now if LinkedIn would fix their problem with their pages being taken over by and replaced with their own full page ads that occlude the content (Firefox 3.0.5) then I could actually implement your suggestions 🙂
– – Tim
Reid,
I ran into a problem when I tried to give my new blog a link to its actual name in LinkedIn. What happened is that the BlogLink application didn’t pick up my posts. What I found was that BlogLink would only recognize my posts when I labeled the blog as “My Blog” on the profile. Since it was important for me to show my posts on my profile, I had no choice but to pass on the SEO benefits described in the article.
Thanks Scott. I’m surprised I never thought to use “other” from the drop down to use my own website description (key words). Very helpful tip. Thanks again.
Mark Bullock
Partner / Practice Marketing Advisors
http://www.PracticeMarketingBLOG.com
mark@mbullock.com
Mark and Tim thanks for feedback . . I can’t take credit. . this post was all Reid Fenlaw at Seoverflow He wrote it . .I just posted it!
I am an SEO as well. The problem is that this creates links that will not pass page rank or increase your rankings on keywords. The link that is created is redirected through the LinkedIn Server. To see this just right click on the link in your FireFox browser and look at properties. You will see the destination URL is something like this:
http://www.linkedin.com/redirect?url=http%3A%2F%2Finteractivelimited%2Ecom&urlhash=2d39
Links of this sort do not boost search rankings. Only direct links count as far as I know.
Dave,
I believe you are incorrect. When you are logged into Linkedin the links are redirected. They are not on your public profile which is indexed by the search engines.
Dave,
Actually this is confirmed. Here is my profile and how it is indexed in Google http://www.linkedin.com/in/miketheinternetguy
David,
I used the WordPress application on my profile with no such problem. At least you still have two other links to utilize!
I stand corrected. The links are good. You are correct. Its only when logged in that links are redirected. Great Tip!
Its rare to see a site this powerful with links that are valid for passing search engine pagerank.
So let me get this straight…Google passes on the PageRank from MY LinkedIn account page (the public one) to the pages I link to?
But if my LinkedIn profile page has a PageRank of zero, what do I care? Should I spend my time trying to boost the PageRank of my LinkedIn page to THEN have that PR passed onto my site? I can think of better things to do with my time. Anchor text is fine, but unless you have a good PR on you LI page, it’s not a big deal.
Most of the people I know on LinkedIn have low public-profile PageRank. Me included.
thanks for the great trip, I will give it a go!
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