Have you ever Googled your name or your business name and found your LinkedIn profile? Here’s how and why you should be using LinkedIn to get found by Google more often.

LinkedIn is growing fast

LinkedIn is in a rapid growth phase, bringing more and more search engine optimisation (SEO) power to the table. In early 2011 there were 90 million global users, 1.3 million of whom were Australian. It’s size in Australia doubled from 500,000 to 1 million users during 2009-2010, and it continues to grow at this pace.

LinkedIn is very SEO-friendly

LinkedIn is the single most powerful SEO tool for getting found on line that we have as individuals and as businesses. The more connections you have on LinkedIn, the more often you’ll be found within LinkedIn and by search engines like Google too. For example:

• When you view another user’s profile, you’ll see a list of connections you share with them down the right hand side of the page. The person with the highest number of mutual connections will be listed first.
• When reviewing a group to check whether you want to join it, you’ll look at the list of existing group members. Those members are listed from highest to lowest number of connections and degrees away from you. If a group has hundreds or thousands of members you’ll probably only bother to check the first or second page (just like do when performing an internet search). Again, having more contacts helps you get found more often here.
• LinkedIn works on keywords, SEO and numbers of connections. So, if you do a search for people geographically or in a certain business industry, the person with the highest number of connections plus key word relevancy will again determine the results.

Making LinkedIn work for you

Have a complete profile

Your LinkedIn profile is less likely to turn up on Google if it’s not 100 percent complete. That means you need at least two recommendations, some work history and a professional photo.

Create your profile with SEO in mind

Your profile can be an excellent source of SEO-friendly links because LinkedIn has great authority in Google. That means that the more frequently your profile is searched on LinkedIn the more likely Google is to spider it.

Your website links can be customised to your actual website address, adding valuable inbound links. Also, your LinkedIn profile can be written to ensure it has highly relevant, SEO-friendly, keyword-rich content.

Want more articles like this? Check out the SEO techniques section.

Customise your profile URL

To maximise the SEO of your profile, ensure you create a unique profile URL so that when people search for your name, it’s easy for them to find it. For example my profile URL is: http://au.linkedin.com/in/jenniferleebishop

Be an active participant

Google loves fresh content, so make sure you integrate fresh profile status updates, content updates, and other social media tools to ensure Google’s spider keeps coming back to your profile. Give Google what it wants – relevance, value, recency and frequency.

LinkedIn can now interface with Twitter, WordPress blogs and SlideShare content (including video), all of which again helps you get found more easily on Google. More recently they’ve announced the launch of Open Groups, groups that have chosen to make all their discussions and individuals’ contributions searchable via search engines.

Do you love using LinkedIn too? Please share your tips for using it effectively.