RMN'S Blog

Optimizing Your Profile on LinkedIn

Keywords are one of the main elements that helps people to find you online. Making sure your LinkedIn profile is optimized to be searched may not be at the top of your list of priorities, but it does help you to build your network and potential clients to find/learn about you as an attorney. In addition, a number of people use social media and Google to find out about attorneys before they decide to seek them for legal counsel. It’s a good idea to make sure your profile is up to par and impressive in this technology savvy age.

When updating your profile, start by brainstorming keywords related to the field or work and practice area you work. For example, an intellectual property lawyer would use words like:

• Intellectual property
• Patent law
• Trademark law
• Atlanta
• Copyright law

These are all words that describe the line of work and areas you do as an intellectual property lawyer attorney. You should also add in the words “lawyer” and “attorney” onto your page also so the search engines pick up on them.

After brainstorming, test out your keywords in the search bar. This will help you to see what the competition and other fellow attorneys have on their pages. You also get a chance to see the popularity of the words among your career network. The higher the number of results, the larger the competition. You can also get an idea of how many people are ahead of you in the search. To get to the top of the search page, make sure to use the keywords more than once on your profile.

The best thing to do is to choose 2 to 4 keywords to focus on from your brainstormed list. Usually, adding in your location is helpful for people using narrow search words. For example, the intellectual property attorney would add, “Atlanta Intellectual Property Attorney” on their LinkedIn profile to draw in clients in the metro area.

When describing yourself and your legal career on your LinkedIn profile, use other words related to your practice area. This is when you can add in secondary keywords. These words would include words such as, “litigation”, “trade secret law”, “class action”, “licensing”, and other words to describe what you are able to do for clients. Sprinkle these keywords throughout your profile. The search engine bots will be able to pick them out even if they are within a paragraph or bullet points on your profile.
Making sure your LinkedIn profile is adequately optimized is an easy way to expand your legal network, and gain more clients. The combination of major and minor key words will help to move your LinkedIn profile up to the first page and gain more traffic. As the world turns toward internet searches to find their legal needs, keeping your profile up to date with the right keywords will make this process easier for you in the future.

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