SEO for LinkedIn, but Black Hat?
There is a new SEO method (For those that aren’t familiar that is Search Engine Optimization – a method for being found in organic searches.) for LinkedIn that is being promoted. Before you try this you should think about the following.
In the title of this post I put “Black Hat?” as I will let you the reader decide (Black Hat SEO techniques are things that the search engine find objectionable as they are “gaming” the system.) if this is the case. One such SEO method is stuffing keywords on the site by including them on the page in the same color as the background – so they can’t be seen. This allows one to put them on the page many times without the challenge of putting them in context.
Here’s the deal…
Let me start by saying that this technique appears to work fairly well.
Apparently the search algorithm on LinkedIn uses as a high priority the number of times you have the key word in your profile.
The proponents of this technique have discovered that by listing the keywords in the job title and then repeating that listing many times they can get more instances of the term. They are also stuffing their header headline with extra copies of the specific key word.
I visited one profile of someone using this technique who had no less than 40 listings of the same job. The listings are blank all you see is the title in the following format.
Title, Company | Keyword or words
This listing also appears in the “past” employment in the header.
In my opinion.
The Good
The good part about this technique is that it appears to work. If you don’t have a very competitive keyword you can pretty easily put yourself in a high if not first position for that search.
The Bad
This method in the SEO world is called “keyword stuffing” and doesn’t work when dealing with the search engines as their sophisticated algorithms pick it up and actually will penalize you for doing this.
The LinkedIn search is far more random and not based on such sophisticated methods thus the technique works.
The first concern I have to the technique is it makes your profile a mess. Who wants to scroll through a profile with dozens of useless listings? Do you?
If you believe as I, that your profile is a “marketing” piece; then this is obviously a serious deterioration of content with the objective of “engaging” the reader using value.
Based on the above the technique destroys not only the look and feel of the profile but the content quality as well.
My second concern is probably far more serious. This technique “games” the system – in other words the technique has only one purpose – to beat the search algorithm on LinkedIn. That purpose is completely outside the purpose of LinkedIn.
The big question here is how will LinkedIn react to this methodology when they become aware of it? The search engines reaction was to slap those who did so.
Summary
What will LinkedIn do? No one knows; but personally I can tell you I’m not going to test them to find out.
By the way the tactics and strategies I teach will get you great results without breaking or testing the rules – there are other ways to be seen and get business. Grab my free course and get started – LinkedIn Power Networking Mini Course
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