With over 3 million company pages and 225 million users, LinkedIn has grown to be one of the largest social media websites online. It’s also become the number one website where professionals network and do business online. With all of that in mind, LinkedIn is truly growing beyond just a search and social media platform. The content marketing explosion means influencers are sharing and engaging more rather than just looking for jobs. Below I’m going to explain some simple ways you can optimize your LinkedIn company pages for better SEO rankings and more overall traffic.
1. Optimize For The User & Search – Your LinkedIn presence is what represents your brand. With that in mind, you should consider these three principles before you even begin optimizing a profile or company page. Consistency – Be sure and describe what your company offers in a way that is consistent with your positioning across all channels, including your website. Think about how you describe yourself to customers, prospects, employees, and any other relevant audience. Accuracy – Accuracy is something else you should be considering when optimizing your LinkedIn company page. Remember that the LinkedIn audience is huge and not like most other audiences. They’re highly educated, technically savvy and influential. Be sure to always update any numbers and facts that describe your company and are liable to change. These would include the number of employees, customers, locations, new products/services, awards, and so on. Semantics – What you post on LinkedIn will show up in search results – both via the web and directly inside LinkedIn. Luckily, you’ve likely already done some keyword research when optimizing your website. Now it’s time to re-use some of that research for optimizing content on LinkedIn. Just remember to leave some room for any keywords that might be more relevant specifically for users on LinkedIn.
2. Where to Focus – When optimizing your LinkedIn company page it’s important to put lots of focus into your Products & Services and Careers pages. Pay attention to titles, subtitles and body content so that these are consistent, accurate and describe you in keywords that matter to you the most. Keep in mind, LinkedIn favors high quality content just like search engines do. Targeted Pages – Utilize targeted pages because these allow you to create variations of Products & Services that are targeted towards different audiences. Videos – Everyone loves a video, and short videos can go a long way with keeping your users engaged. Make liberal use of video on both the “Products & Services” and “Careers” pages.
3. Create & Share Content – Great content will show up on the site and in search engines for the keywords which matter most to you. Your content should engage users and you should invest time and effort into growing your network. How is this done? Share Updates Often – The ability to post status updates on LinkedIn means you can constantly maintain interest in your company while also engaging with followers and influencers. Tailor these updates for your target audience and customize your messages for each update. You may also want to test various updating frequencies in order to determine what works best with your followers. Link Social Profiles – Doing this is a pretty obvious best practice, regardless of which social networks you use most often. Believe it or not, only about one-third of the Top 100 brands actually link to their other social media profiles on LinkedIn. That’s a clear missed opportunity to get more followers across all of your social media profiles!
