How to Use LinkedIn for SEO to Drive More Leads for Your Business
You want to use LinkedIn to find more business for your firm. Makes sense.
But if you’re messaging prospects from your LinkedIn profile on behalf of your company brand, then your company LinkedIn page better have a strong online presence.
Making your company page more discoverable with Linked SEO enables prospects to better assess your company’s reputation when you reach out to them (and provides more brand awareness to support your company’s overall LinkedIn success).
There’s a good chance you already know about SEO to drive more visits to your website with content.
But does SEO work for LinkedIn pages?
In short, yes. LinkedIn has its own search algorithm, and following the right SEO principles will help you get discovered more through LinkedIn search.
Understanding the algorithm for LinkedIn SEO, improving your page to increase your company’s reach and supporting your brand’s online reputation are impactful for a successful LinkedIn sales strategy.
So in this article, we’ll talk about why a LinkedIn SEO strategy benefits your company, how the LinkedIn algorithm works for SEO and how to use LinkedIn for SEO.
Why You Should Optimize LinkedIn for SEO
Optimizing your LinkedIn page for SEO directs more visits to your company page. Your primary goal is to rank from the LinkedIn search algorithm, capturing traffic from people searching for topics and services related to your business.
Plus, Google also indexes LinkedIn pages and posts so optimizing your page can lead to traffic from Google searches as well by getting your LinkedIn page to rank on search engines and writing LinkedIn articles.
By optimizing your LinkedIn page for SEO, you’re helping your outbound LinkedIn sales strategy by generating more inbound traffic, improving brand awareness and helping prospects assess your company.
How the LinkedIn Search Algorithm Works for LinkedIn SEO
To boost your LinkedIn SEO and your company’s growth, knowing how the LinkedIn algorithm works to take advantage of it is essential. LinkedIn’s internal algorithm determines not only what content you see on your feed but also what persons and companies you can more easily find.
But can you just add keywords about your business on your LinkedIn page and see sales go through the roof?
LinkedIn’s documentation about search relevance says that the algorithm for LinkedIn SEO determines relevance uniquely from a variety of factors.
In other words, keyword-matching alone won’t cut it. Your activity, your network and the strength of your LinkedIn presence also influence LinkedIn SEO.
What Factors Impact the LinkedIn Search Algorithm?
Lots of research has gone into dissecting the LinkedIn algorithm. What we know is that there is no one-size-fits-all solution.
Here are some factors that influence the LinkedIn search algorithm:
- How strong your page is. The more you complete your page with helpful details, the more searchable fields LinkedIn has to work with (and the more valuable information you provide to prospects).
- Lots of high-quality connections and followers. The strength of your page’s network and of employees’ networks makes a positive difference in LinkedIn exposure.
- Stay on top of company LinkedIn activity. Make sure to post lots of content, share & interact with other pages & people’s profiles and remain visibly active on LinkedIn.
- Publish content regularly. Having activity is great, but sharing and networking frequently also affects LinkedIn SEO, with even recency rates impacting results.
- Helpful written content on pages. Well-written and descriptive overviews and organizational information benefits LinkedIn SEO and helps get more LinkedIn followers.
So the LinkedIn search algorithm is clearly multifaceted and complex. Can we eliminate this complexity to improve your company’s LinkedIn presence and generate more leads for your business?
Below we’ll share tips on how to use LinkedIn for SEO purposes.
6 Ways to Improve Your LinkedIn SEO Strategy
These are six key areas to focus on to boost SEO for LinkedIn company pages.
- Keywords
- Tagline
- Overview Section
- Complete Page
- Publish Content
- Backlink to your profile
Bonus! Scroll down for an extra tip :)
1. Keywords
It’s no surprise that a strong LinkedIn SEO strategy starts with keyword research.
To get started, become familiar with what phrases people might use when discussing the services you offer or problems you solve.
Remember, prospects may not be familiar with your industry-specific terms. You’ll need to consider how an average person might talk about your business and services, not just fellow experts.
You’ll also want to get specific with your keywords. Consider your industry, location, speciality and company size to help narrow down some words and phrases to start with.
Research terms for different stages of the buyer journey. For example, if you’re a B2B company that sells procurement software, make your LinkedIn page discoverable for “procurement software” and also serve content that targets the top of the funnel, like, say, “organizing purchase requisitions.”
Once you’ve drafted some words and phrases for research, use tools like Ahrefs, Semrush or Moz to explore and identify keyword lists. You can compare how often a term is searched relative to how often it is used on other search engines for a good indication of how people would search on LinkedIn.
2. Tagline
Consider your tagline the LinkedIn equivalent to capturing someone’s interest in seven seconds (or losing them completely). It’s the first information potential clients see and it’s a factor in the LinkedIn search algorithm.
Your tagline should clearly explain what you offer to make you easy to search.
Business Development University does a great job of using keywords in their tagline for LinkedIn SEO. You can immediately identify the services they offer in sales and business consulting.
Note that they’ve included “consulting,” “training” and “coaching” in both the tagline and industry fields. These are three different ways people may search for the same service, and Business Development University has positioned themselves to show up regardless of the exact term used.
As a best practice, you place your keywords towards the beginning of your tagline.
3. Overview Section
The overview section is a great place to elaborate more on what you do while sprinkling in relevant information and keywords to help draw in more traffic and assert your brand positioning to win over prospects.
The overview section on your LinkedIn profile is where you provide your company’s description and also your industry & category type and keyword-based options to describe your services—all essential for LinkedIn SEO.
For a strong overview section on your LinkedIn profile, create a brand platform that covers what your company represents and use it as a guideline. Refer to your vision, mission, values and positioning to write your overview, being sure to incorporate your keywords.
Boston Financial Advisory Group does an excellent job of balancing keywords and their platform in their description.
The first two lines are keyword-rich, clearly outlining to both customers and LinkedIn search what, exactly, they offer.
The company then elaborates on who they are, why you should work with them, how they work.
You should apply similar strategies for LinkedIn summaries of employees’ profiles to help with LinkedIn SEO for your company’s brand on LinkedIn.
4. Complete Page
Filling out the rest of your page may seem like a quick task, but it’s an important one.
Adding information LinkedIn requests like your company size, logo and call-to-action button helps their algorithm match you with the right audience.
For example, Baystate Financial has done an excellent job completing their page. As you can see, they’ve listed out several specialties to help clarify what, in particular, they offer.
Similarly for employees, since they’ll link to your page from their profiles and strong profiles help a company's LinkedIn presence, one underutilized section is the portfolio. Adding a portfolio to LinkedIn showcases not only what people do but what they’ve achieved.
Although more time-consuming than selecting your industry, these small details will help build trust with prospects.
5. Publish Content
Staying active is good for your (SEO) health.
Don’t worry, we’re not suggesting any burpees. Actively posting to your LinkedIn page is a twofold way to bring in more traffic.
LinkedIn’s search algorithm gives preference to active pages. Since you wouldn’t update your overview section every week, semi-regular posts are your best bet to keep traffic flowing.
Implementing a LinkedIn content strategy by, for example, publishing long-form content like slideshow documents, articles and newsletters helps get your posts (and therefore your page) discovered through search and boosts LinkedIn social selling to impress prospects during outbound campaigns.
And whether you’re writing a post directly on LinkedIn or a caption to share a company blog post, always include relevant keywords.
More content also means more opportunities to be discovered. Although not technically an SEO strategy, the end result is still more traffic. Every post is an opportunity to show up in a search or land on people’s feeds.
6. Backlink to Profile
SEO is a bit of a popularity contest—the more people engage with you, the better you perform.
That’s why you should backlink to your LinkedIn page on your website, blog posts, email footers, etc.
Encouraging people to click on your LinkedIn page signals to LinkedIn that your page has value, increasing your rankings in their search.
To complement this LinkedIn SEO strategy, treat your LinkedIn articles like posts to optimize them on other search engines too—this is a helpful tactic for LinkedIn backlinks.
Bonus: Images
One of the golden rules of SEO is to always create for the customer first, and imagery is no exception.
Captivating graphics keep people on your page longer. And longer profile visits show LinkedIn that your profile is valuable to help with LinkedIn SEO.
Add an eye-catching logo (300 x 300 pixels) and banner (1128 x 191 pixels) to your profile to keep prospective clients engaged when they visit your page.
Life Happens does a great job of combining captivating colors with an impactful slogan to quickly grab your attention on their page.
While the slogan won’t count towards SEO, the graphics as a whole are much more credible and engaging than the generic images LinkedIn shows if you don’t fill out your profile.
How LinkedIn SEO Contributes to Your Sales Strategy
So you’ve optimized your LinkedIn page for SEO and your LinkedIn activity is going up. How, exactly, does that help you with LinkedIn lead generation?
A little bit of SEO work could mean a lot more inbound leads.
Optimizing your LinkedIn page has two main benefits:
- You’ll increase overall brand recognition by showing up in relevant searches to give your outbound efforts more credibility. People are more likely to work with a company they’ve seen before.
- You create a new inbound strategy. Every day people search for services just like yours—improving your SEO helps them come to you.
A robust sales strategy is important—but it can get time-consuming.
If staying active on LinkedIn feels like yet another task to add to your already-overflowing to-do list, we understand.
Sales outreach, LinkedIn content, blog articles, follow-ups…it can add up fast.
There are plenty of ways to optimize your efforts. Try using ChatGPT to help draft articles and LinkedIn marketing software to support your prospecting & outreach efforts so technology can help you do more with less time.
