After teaching at CSULB Business School, I was writing a blog and needed to reference the teacher. Their public LinkedIn Profile seemed fitting, but as I was amazed to discover that the hyperlink is not optimal for search engines. In fact the LinkedIn site is very, very flawed with respect to SEO. It upset me; much of the reason that I link is for referral value; LinkedIn, I thought, would have recognized and embraced that. However, I do realize that SEO is like Brain Surgery.
Don't get me wrong, I LOVE LinkedIn, but it has a long way to go. LinkedIn is getting just a fraction of the traction that they could. I hope that they recognize several aspects to improve upon, especially in light of their recent capitalization of 12.8MM by Bessemer. However Reid Hoffman, Chairman, stated that the funds would fuel new products and international growth. I'm sure that there will be great strategies and territories to cover; but LinkedIn, before venturing off too far, please make your U.S. property look good so we can come there more often. LinkedIn current and past success is monumental, a testament to the value of their community application and unique tools; however they are seriously leaving a lot on the table as far as exposure and user contributed content go.
Top 5 way to improve LinkedIn
1) Faulty SEO internal linking strategy. The site is a mess in terms of linking. Permalinks are attempted, but not published or redirect to. For example the custom profile URL option is great, but each and every link to my public profile should be either changed or at least redirect to my custom URL. The long URL (querystring) kills much of the SEO. There are other aspect to the ontology and internal linking that are too lengthy to elaborate in on this. NOTE: I can't even find my own LinkedIn profile in the top 10 pages SERPs. They are missing out on the honey pot of search.
2) Deepen Value through Recommendations. LinkedIn does not provide a benefit for regularly using the site, nor do they encourage repeat visits. The site provides a nice search and browsing opportunities, but most of the linking in actually happens outside via email. Over a year ago, I proposed a mechanism for LinkedIn auto-connection. Alternatively, let me be a match maker (mensch); putting two together has a way of making three, four and more... Indeed, there are several ways that the site could breath in a much bigger way rather than being speechless. The system would be much more meaningful if it triggered an email upon detecting a new opportunity. Give me a reason to come back!
3) Leverage Structured Information. They obviously have a large and rich information repository. I know because I've browser it. To bad I can't effectively search it outside their tool. I discuss more about data publishing here.
4) LinkedIn Email Alias. For example, I attempted to sending a note to Dan Nye on this webform (btw- another horrible, useless for SEO, URL) instead of my comfortable Outlook (or Gmail, etc). Instead - Create alias addresses for each user (i.e. dannye@linkedin.com). The LI service could rule route the message based upon connections, approval/authorization and forward, retain a webmail backup copy. At the very least, it would effectively allow for a perma-email address. That way, even if Dan moves companies, his Linked connections can keep an consistent email address. It might even be a better spam controlled email address than any others, because messages would be "from" valid connections. Moreover though, it could be a great way to track and monitor offsite usage.
5) Open the hood. Several of the social networking hubs have opened APIs. The internet community of technology companies and software developers breeds creative usage. Having an API would allow for innovative mashups that I can only begin to ponder such as with Google Maps, Pay-per-call/Lead generation, widgets and blogging. This alone might be enough to provide an overnight viral growth in usage.
While LinkedIn is currently leading the pack in professional social networking, it has not fortified itself as a brand. While they have a considerable registration rate, they are leaving a lot on the table due to lack-luster recurring usage. I truly hope that the change in leadership and funding will supply LinkedIn not only fantastic growth opportunities, but amazing social value.
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3 comments:
You could improve your seo for your LinkedIn public profile by
changing it to linkedin.com/in/davidrodecker
You might also want to link back to your linkedin profile from your
site, by grabbing a button:
http://www.linkedin.com/profile?promoteProfile
Better yet is to create a post with your name, and a link back to
your LinkedIn profile.
As far as the faulty SEO internal linking goes, the majority of the
pages aren't crawlable by search engines anyways since the pages
aren't accessable unless you're logged in.
You might also try browsing around LinkedIn Answers. By answer
questions, and having your answers selected as 'best answer' you can
earn expertise, so lots of incentive for answering.
http://www.linkedin.com/answers
Hi Mike,
I actually do link to my profile http://linkedin.com/in/drodecker, the irony is that LI doesn't! At least not very much. Instead the majority of links to my profile are like:
http://www.linkedin.com/profile?viewProfile=&key=916720
There are two major places which LI links to my profile: 1) in search results, 2) from my other linked connections. The search results won't becrawled, as you point out, but many of my connections will be crawled and should increase my exposure too.
Most social networks grow your individual page-rank as you grow in valuable connections; but that simply isn't the case with LI, primarily due to this flaw.
At the very least, it should (301) redirect to the permalink URL, that way anyone who wanted to copy the browser URL use the right address.
When someone types your name in a search engine, they are probably going to be querying for 'David Rodecker' instead of 'drodecker', so best to change your vanity url to your full name.
There are 2 types of profiles available on LinkedIn, public and private.
The public profile is the one that you can create a personalized URL for, and you can also control the type of content that appears.
The private profile is only viewable to other LinkedIn users, and has a different URL.
The private profiles have a link to your public profile, so people that are looking for that kind of thing, should hopefully be able to grab the correct URL.
If you log out of LinkedIn and look at this, you should get a better idea:
http://www.linkedin.com/profile?viewProfile=&key=916
The best way to get your LinkedIn public profile higher in the search listings is to change your vanity URL to your full name, and to start linking to it.
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