There is enough info available about how and why to use LinkedIn and how you can add links to your profile. But why would you neglect optimizing your profile links, by leaving out the anchor text?

Recently, I came across two profiles with links that didn’t have one of the standard LinkedIn anchor texts, but also dind’t have a “polluted” anchor text. This means no company names, high competitive keywords or common anchor texts. In both cases it were links with a (pretty) unique anchortext.

Here’s Michael Gray’s profile. There are three links listed in his profile. Two of Graywolf’s links aren’t anchor text optimized (the ‘My Company’ and ‘My Blog’ links) and one has a customized anchor text (Central Hub Website). Now check out Google’s search results.

Example number two is Peter vd Graaf’s profile. Peter has also optimized one of his three links; the link to his SEO workshop page has an optimized anchor text (not anymore; see comments). If you check the Google search results, you’ll notice that this page also ranking quite high (please note that the page’s language is Dutch, so I had to adjust the query language a bit).

In both cases, the anchor text used has no occurances on the page. I guess this is LinkedIn Google Bombing

Want to use these powerful links more efficiently? Edit the links in your profile.

In stead of filing your links under “My Blog” or “My Company”, you can file them under “Other”. Other means anchor text.

Fill in the anchor text of your choice and save the settings. Link back to your LinkedIn profile to get the links indexed (if it isn’t indexed yet) and you just received three powerful links.

16 Comments »

1. Thanks for the tip on optimizing my other two links from LinkedIn as well. Normally I don’t really care for my own websites to score. Just the IDMK workshop needed some help. But you might want to edit your post, because, now all my anchors are optimized. Again, thanks for the tip!

   Comment by Peter van der Graaf — August 24, 2007 @ 5:21 pm

2. Awesome.

   Too bad that will lead to likely even more spam in Linkedin.

   Comment by David — August 24, 2007 @ 8:55 pm

3. Thanks alot, was already busy with linkedIn for a while, but didnt notice the option for direct linking.

   Comment by Hypotheek — August 26, 2007 @ 8:38 am

4. @Peter: No problem, glad I could help
   @David: I certainly hope not…

   Comment by Wiep — August 26, 2007 @ 12:20 pm

5. Think it’s too spammy to also change your personal URL too?

   Comment by Todd Garland — August 26, 2007 @ 11:00 pm

6. @ David, Spammers have been using Linkedin for quite a while.
   @ Todd, Profile Spamming is all about using keyword rich domains. If the main domain doesn’t have it people sometimes create subdomains e.g. keyword-rich.mydomain.com — This is Forum Profile Spamming 101.

   Comment by GotanRaider — August 27, 2007 @ 3:32 am

7. Thank you for this helpful info. I an new at this stuff but I am going to try what you have reccomended

   Comment by Ginger — August 27, 2007 @ 3:59 am

8. @Todd: I wouldn’t use a /keyword-rich-profile-name/ for your personal LinkedIn profile

   Comment by Wiep — August 27, 2007 @ 8:37 am

9. Excellent, thanks for the tip. Any cases known of profile spamming on linkedin, like creating multiple profiles?

   Comment by Nico — August 27, 2007 @ 12:54 pm

10. @weip, true true, that’s why I thought i would toss up the question first before I looked like too much of a scum-bag… lol

    Comment by todd garland — August 27, 2007 @ 4:22 pm

11. […] è probabile che non avrete difficoltà a valutare l’interesse verso l’articolo Why you should optimize your LinkedIn profile links, scritto da Wiep […]

    Pingback by rubriche » Blog Archive » LinkedIn: SEO e buone abitudini [Simone Carletti’s Blog] — September 3, 2007 @ 10:41 am

12. i did it a while ago

    Comment by microdesign webdesign — September 6, 2007 @ 4:39 pm

13. […] http://wiep.net/talk/link-building/why-you-should-optimize-your-linkedin-profile-links/ […]

    Pingback by How can LinkedIn help promote my website? - Web Site Promotion For The Small Business — January 11, 2008 @ 2:38 am

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    Pingback by 10 tips om je LinkedIn Profiel te optimaliseren | Tribal Internet Marketing - Weblog — February 12, 2008 @ 5:31 pm

16. I just costed me a minute to update my L-profile. Thanks a lot.

    Comment by Marnik DHoore — February 27, 2008 @ 11:01 pm

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