I believe the greatest secret and value to using LinkedIn like Google is Visibility. At the Lion Group, we teach and believe there are four levels of growing the visibility of your LinkedIn personal profile. The first level is optimizing your LinkedIn profile. You do this by choosing and inserting key words into specific places on your LinkedIn profile.
Click here to learn what key words you should be using.
(See the two bonuses below for Optimizing Your LinkedIn Profile)

Here’s the 10 LinkedIn Profile Sections You should Strategically Place Your Key Words to Get First Page Search Results.

 

#1 The Professional Headline and #2 the Summary

The professional headline should have all 2-4 key words. I typically recommend my customers not to include their company name in the professional headline except when the company name includes key words. Think of it like this way. Each of the 10 sections are precious key word real estate. Maximize the given space with tastefully placing your primary key words and secondary key words.
I recommend writing the summary in first person as if someone is hearing you speak. The summary should give the reader a taste for your personality, abilities and accomplishments. Don’t make it stale like a resume. I don’t know about you but I do not enjoy reading resumes. They give me no notion of who this person is except that it tells me a little about what they have done. Let your summary make the person invited to read more of your LinkedIn profile or tell them a true summary as if they do not need to read any more. I also counsel my customers to maximize their profile character restraints; meaning put as much content in the summary as allowed.
The overall goal when writing your new content for your LinkedIn profile is to “tastefully” saturate each section with key words. The more the better for first page search results.
 
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#3 Employment Title, #4 Your Employer and #5 Employment Description

For these LinkedIn profile sections as before, place your primary key words first.
Notice the highlighted litigation? This is what happens when you search for people on LinkedIn using the word “Litigation”. The search results produce a list and pages of LinkedIn profiles who are weighted with that key word. When you click on a profile after the search the key word you typed and searched for is highlighted as noted on this blog post.
This is why its so important to “tastefully” saturate your profile in the 10 locations I am listing with your chosen key words.
Notice how the Employment Title below has the key word highlighted “Litigation” and the several times they are highlighted in the Employment Description. Repeating these key words and increasing the saturation of the key word real estate locations will increase your chances of getting first page search results.
My rule of thumb for Employment Descriptions is two paragraphs and bullet points. There are lots of subjects you can write and include in this description. I give you permission to cut and paste from your Employer’s website. Whatever it takes to add content and saturate it with key words. Also consider adding your secondary key words in this location and all the rest.
 
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#6 Education and #7 Organizations

For both of these sections in the edit function of your LinkedIn profile, you are given the option to insert content into a simple description box. This is free key word real estate. This attorney did not take advantage of this.  What content should you insert here? Anything that relates to your key words. You could have had a particular interest in a certain area of law during law school or undergrad. Talk about your internships, work or study experience, your school projects or papers. Anything that would allow you to insert key words. There are no rules on this as long as you do it tastefully.
 
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 #8 Interests, #9 Publications and #10 Advice for contacting you

These last three sections all get key word credit “if you” insert the repeating key words and leverage this real estate. Not taking advantage of this only means someone else is seen first before you, and you will less likely be on the first page of search results. Notice how you have the choice to insert any text you want when editing these sections. This is your opportunity to be clever and add relevant tasteful key word content to these sections and text boxes. Be creative. Be informative. Be consistent with your key words.

You will not be penalized for doing this also. Below I will show you how people do get penalized for using key words inappropriately. You will definitely get what I mean but over usage of key words.
In the mean time do not hold back. Insert key words as often and as tastefully as you can and then repeat.
Don’t forget my two bonuses below. Keep on reading.
 
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Bonus #1 – #11 Recommendations & #12 Honors and Awards

Recommendations by people who know you at specific employers are an incredible way for giving you credibility. I recommend to our customers that you should have at least two for each place of employment. But also recommendations give you key word credit in the LinkedIn search results. When you search for key words highlighted on someone’s profile or yours, you will want to go the bottom of your profile where the recommendations are listed and you will see the key words highlighted in the text. What is amazing is that numerous places have key word credit such as the 1) Recommending person’s title 2) Their place of employment and 3) The recommendation itself.
If you want to make sure you get key word saturation in a recommendation, you can (depending on the relationship) pre-write the recommendation as an example of what to write. Many people will simply cut and paste this.
Finally as you can see the pattern, your LinkedIn profile has sections where you can add key words such as Honors and Awards. It would not be surprised if LinkedIn adds more sections to the LinkedIn profile over time.
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Bonus #2 – What Not to do with Key Words

How can you get penalized for key word usage? Do this all over your LinkedIn profile and LinkedIn will shut you down within 24 hours or less. Yes, it really works. It will get you on the first page of search results, but you also will stick out like a sore thumb. This is the anti-thesis of being tasteful. I am sure you get the point. The not-so discerning rashly do and get shut down fast.
 
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Related Pages

4 Steps to Increasing Visibility on LinkedIn

5 Steps to Selecting your LinkedIn Profile Key Words

How to Create LinkedIn Company Pages 

Sourcing Attorneys through LinkedIn Groups

3 Steps to Sourcing Attorneys on Twitter

Using Job Boards to Source Attorney Candidates

5 Tips: Getting the Most from the Legal Recruiter Relationship

Legal Recruiting and the Search Agreement

Ethics, Legal Recruiting & Accountability

How to Select the Right Legal Recruiter


For more information on our legal recruiting services, contact us.

Follows us on Twitter @FindtheLions and @ChrisBatz On LinkedIn Chris Batz and The Lion Group