Optimize Your LinkedIn Profile - Get Yourself Out There
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Making your LinkedIn profile public is easy, and you can control how much of it you want to make public. I won’t deny that there are risks to this, and if you’re really worried about identity theft and privacy-related issues you’ll want to think carefully. To do it, though, you simply log in to LinkedIn and go to your profile. To the right of the “Edit My Profile” and “View My Profile” tabs you will see a link that says “Edit Public Profile Settings.” That will take you to a page that looks like this:
Change your URL to something easy to remember – your own name if possible. I emphasize “if possible;” mine was already taken. Of course, that gave me the opportunity to add the word “writer” to the URL (though I couldn’t separate it with dashes); we’ll see if this helps my SEO at all. Anyway, the full view is clicked by default, but you get to choose which parts of it are shown by checking the appropriate boxes.
I have no websites in my profile, and it’s about time I add them. As a writer and editor, what I put in as websites can also serve as my portfolio. If I was a web designer or owned my own business, I’d put in links to examples of my design work or my web site. In fact, when you put in a URL, you get to choose from the following options from a drop-down for describing the link: My Website, My Company, My Blog, My RSS Feed, My Portfolio and Other. Guess what? I’m clicking Other.
When you click “Other” you can include a specific name for the website. I’ve just linked my LinkedIn profile to my bio page on SEO Chat – which links to all of the articles I’ve written for this site. I could actually be doing better here; my bio on SEO Chat does not include any kind of description of myself or my background. I may improve that later.
While I’m on the topic of links, as you can see, you can include up to three links on your LinkedIn profile. For some people that won’t be enough, but others will be at a loss. There are lots of options though. You can link to bios you have elsewhere, as I have done here. You can link to profiles you have on other sites. You can link to a friend’s business website; why not give them a boost? You can link to charitable organizations about which you feel very strongly. Every part of a LinkedIn profile is designed to give other networkers a vision of who you are; why skimp here?
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