Why is Your LinkedIn Profile so Important

Google your name. Is your LinkedIn profile one of the first results that pops up? I'll bet it is.

If anyone does not know you, they will see your LinkedIn profile first before anything else. That reason alone makes it worthwhile to spend some extra time to optimize your LinkedIn profile.

There is another very important reason, and that has to do with LinkedIn search. There is a hierarchy of factors that LinkedIn uses to determine search results. On each level, members will more easily be found if their profile is complete. In other words, in comparison to other members, those who have more complete profiles will rank higher in the search results than members whose profile is less complete.

LinkedIn is the only social network that uses profile completeness as a search ranking factor. This is why your LinkedIn profile is like no other profile that you have filled out across the social networking sphere. It is worth spending a couple of hours to fill out your profile as completely as possible.

This is something that many LinkedIn users do not know. Fortunately, LinkedIn helps you to flesh out your profile. Just click on your picture, and you will see a pie chart that tells you how you have done. LinkedIn will also periodically ask you questions about information that is left incomplete on your profile, so that you can supply that missing information to help geared toward people who want to do business on LinkedIn.

The network can also be used as a very effective job seeking site, or conversely as a recruiting tool. But LinkedIn can be an outstanding place to network and find new prospects and customers as well. It just requires you to spend some time to "learn the ropes" and figure out the best practices and strategies on this business-to-business network.