LinkedIn & Viadeo: Got Key Words?? Spruce up your professional profiles to get found
Posted on Thu, Jun 09, 2011 @ 08:40 AM
In the second post for the series on personal branding we are going to explore SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and how to utilize Key Words within your professional profiles to get found. You can see the first post here.
What are key words?
Key words are simply words or phrases that are inserted in your professional profiles that enable the site to categorize and return your results within a search. Or to explain in another way, when someone does a search for "senior strategist" within LinkedIn or Viadeo they will be able to find your profile if you have included these words either once or numerous times within your text.
This begs the question....what words or phrases are the best for me to include? This post will walk you through a process to help you define those key words based on job descriptions and do all of it with a free tool!
Word Cloud your professional profiles:
First we are going to generate a word cloud from your Linkedin or Viadeo profile. A word cloud takes a look at the different words within your profile and ranks them by size based upon their significance within the text. Here’s an example of mine:
You can also generate one for the recommendations others have provided for you. This is super helpful because it helps you to understand how others view you in comparison to how you view yourself. Here's an example of mine:
This is incredibly important information to know because when someone is reading your profile these are the terms that are being drilled into their memory of you. It is also very useful because you may not be emphasizing something that you feel is part of your personal brand.
Here’s the how to:
- Go to your linkedin profile and highlight all of your profile (I recommend excluding your recommendations and use only summary and previous job descriptions. You can generate a separate word cloud for your recommendations). Hit copy (ctrl C on your key board or right click your mouse on the highlighted text and choose copy)
- Open a new browser window and go to: Wordle.net
- Click Create your own
- Paste the text from your linkedin profile into the text box
- Hit go!
Wordle will automatically generate a word cloud for you. As an FYI….you can also right click on a word to remove it and the word cloud will recalculate for you. If you are happy with the results…great! If you suspect that you could do better keep reading.
Optimizing your word cloud:
If you are on a job search or want to become more established as an expert in your field:
- Search for job descriptions for roles that you would like to have. Try to aim to have between 5-10 job descriptions.
- Copy the content into a text document
- Paste into Wordle.net
For this exercise you will most likely have to remove repeated terms like ‘experience required’ that are typical on job descriptions. Remember you can right click on the word you want to remove to have the word cloud regenerate itself. Once you have these removed you will be left with a word cloud that shows you what terms are significant to employers you are targeting. You can then modify your professional profiles (and resume for that matter) so you have these terms embedded.
If you want to establish yourself with your peers, or understand your company’s competition:
- Search for profiles or websites of peers/competitors
- Use either the copy/paste process as described above OR you can use Wordle’s RSS reader for websites
- Generate your word cloud
Again, be sure to remove repeated generic terms to focus on those that your competitors are using to generate interest or business. You will then need to modify your professional profiles (or site content) to reflect the key words that are significant.
The last step is to make sure that you regenerate your profile word cloud again to check that your efforts have emphasized your new key words.
All of the above is Search Engine Optimization….basically inserting key words into your profile to increase the likelihood of being found for terms you consider important. Have fun sitting back and watching the number of profile views climb!
You can see the first post in this series here.
About the author: Celeste Paradise is an award-winning Silicon Valley Professional with 10+ years IT experience in media, advertising, operations management/optimization, social media & marketing. You can connect with her via: 
