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Using LinkedIn to Boost Your Company’s Search Result Reputation
When I am helping clients manage their online reputation there is nothing that makes me happier than seeing a brand new and positive natured Google search result for their company name. Fathom works hard to help influence our clients’ search results in a manner that will accurately reflect their online properties. Yet, when we see a brand new, positive, and highly relevant search result ranking favorably, we want to leverage it as best as we can for our client.
Recently I have noticed LinkedIn rolling out more and more company profile pages. These profile pages rank high for searches on a company name, are neutral-to-positive in nature, and the content on the page can be controlled by company employees.
The Fathom SEO company profile page was created soon after LinkedIn company profile pages were announced. We found the company profile page creation process was automatically done by LinkedIn. Many of our employees had complete profiles in place, so that helped get our foot in the door. We recently discovered we can now edit the profile to ensure its accuracy!
If your company does not yet have a profile page on LinkedIn, here are steps to getting one created:
- Encourage all employees to join LinkedIn and complete their profiles
- Remind employees to use a consistent company name and job titles
- Establish connections with other coworkers
- Add a link to the company website from your profile (up to 3 links can be added)
- Go to the Companies page and select “Add a Company”
Once the company profile page is created by LinkedIn, employees have the option to edit the profile fields to ensure it is complete and accurate:
- Website URL / Blog URL / RSS feed
- Company logo
- Company description
- Industry tags
- # of employees
- Headquarters location info
- Financial information and related companies
Your profile page is now established and accurately reflects your company and employees. You are seeing the profile rank in Google for a search on your company name. Now what?
It’s time to start promoting your profile to get it ranked even higher in search results with cross-linking:
- Link to the profile from your company website “About Us” page or “Newsroom”
- Link to the profile from your Facebook Business Page, Squidoo Lens, YouTube Channel or other social media properties
- Link to the profile from an online press release
- Place your company name or variations of the name within the anchor text of the link
- Don’t be afraid to get creative!
After linking to your LinkedIn company profile from other websites, pay close attention to the ranking position of the page. With a little creative linking, time and patience, you can leverage this page to rank higher than negative search results about your company.
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Comments
1 Comment so farOne Response to “Using LinkedIn to Boost Your Company’s Search Result Reputation”
Kurt, I think it’s great that you are beating the pulpit for a LinkedIn presence as a good SEO force. If your business is not in LinkedIn, you are asking for some dodgy result to take its place in a Top 10 Google search for your company name or one of your most identifiable products.
For SEO and online branding purposes, I can’t think of better reasons for a business to have as many of its employees as possible on LinkedIn. LinkedIn, already popular, was given a huge cash infusion earlier this year, and as DJ Francis pointed out in my recent interview post, its traffic has more than tripled in the last year.
http://www.fathomseo.com/blog/index.php/2008/11/10/interview-dj-francis-of-online-marketer-blog/
Also, they are improving the user experience by recently rolling out new features that allow people to share article links, documents, and other media with those in their network.
Bottom line: it’s a place to be, and it’s here to stay.