How to Make Your LinkedIn Profile Headline SEO-Friendly

If you want your LinkedIn profile headline to draw people to you like a magnet . . .

Maximize it by making it Search Engine Optimization (SEO)-friendly.

That is, include the most important relevant keywords recruiters and your target employers will be searching for, when they’re sourcing top talent.

What does SEO-friendly mean?

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) means increasing online content’s visibility in search results by including relevant keywords and phrases.

In this case, it means including the most important keywords in your LinkedIn profile headline to increase its visibility in search results when recruiters and other hiring professionals search LinkedIn using those keywords to identify candidates.

The more visibility in LinkedIn search that your headline and the rest of your profile have, the more likely your profile (and you) will be found by the very people you want to be found by when you’re job hunting.

How SEO works with your LinkedIn profile headline

Your LinkedIn profile headline sits up high on the web page. Any relevant keywords you place there will be more readily found by search engines than the content below it.

Having the right keywords in the headline can quickly and easily lead the people you want to find you right to your profile.

But don’t overlook stoking the rest of your profile content with relevant keywords, while avoiding keyword-stuffing and still making it an interesting read to human beings.

Once you’ve built out your LinkedIn profile, fully populating applicable sections with keyword-rich content, your profile will likely land higher in search results for those keywords.

How to make your LinkedIn profile headline more SEO-friendly

If you haven’t customized the default headline, LinkedIn automatically populates that spot with your most recent job title from the Experience section, such as:

Vice President Human Resources at [Current Company]

Let’s take a look at how to best build your LinkedIn profile headline. Special thanks to Donna Svei for her excellent suggestions.

Power up the first part of the headline

Although LinkedIn allows 220 characters and spaces for the headline, pay special attention to the first third or so (say, 75 characters) because that’s where there’s more SEO juice.

And that’s about how much of your headline will show up in search results, and when your headline follows you around on LinkedIn, when you post updates and comments.

Lead with the job you want

People searching LinkedIn for candidates like you will use the job title they’re trying to fill as a search term.

For instance, if they’re filling a “Vice President of Human Resources” role, that is a keyword phrase they’ll search on LinkedIn.

Add area(s) of expertise or relevant skill(s)

Depending on how much space you have left for the all-important 75 or so initial characters, add one or more of your most important areas of expertise.

If you’re working from a job description, you’ll find several expertise-oriented keywords and phrases to use. If you have relevant certifications, you could list one or two here.

Get some personal branding (that is, differentiation and personality) in there

Now, still within the initial 75 or so characters (if possible), add a juicy achievement or contribution that hits on the unique value you offer. If you can include one or two metrics, so much the better.

Finish up with a tagline and/or value statement

The last part of your headline (beyond the initial 75 characters) is the least visible in search, but it WILL be noticed once people land on your profile itself.

Why not use that left over space to better engage people and maybe get them to read your whole profile?

Add a tagline or something you’re known for saying or doing.

An example of an SEO-friendly LinkedIn profile headline

Here’s how the headline comes together for a VP Human Resources, in 212 characters. based on content from an actual profile I came across:

Vice President Human Resources | Employee Engagement | Retained 90% of Employees and Grew Team by 50%. I am committed to creating an inclusive and equitable experience for all. Our employees’ success is my success.

Get the idea? The formula is:

Job Title + Expertise + Differentiation + Tagline or Value Statement

Things to avoid in your LinkedIn profile headline

Here are some things to make sure you don’t have in your headline:

Typos and misspellings
Grammatical errors, like not including a space after commas or between pipes (|), if you use them instead of commas
Anemic phrases like “Experienced”, “Detail-oriented”, “Results-oriented”, “Hands-on” or “Forward-thinking”
Things that belong elsewhere in your profile, like “Willing to Relocate” (which belongs in the About section) or “Open to Work” (which belongs in the #OpenToWork” badge that can be added to your photo)

What happens once your LinkedIn profile headline is SEO-friendly?

Your new LinkedIn profile headline will immediately be indexed in LinkedIn’s search engine, available to searches for those keywords.

Once your LinkedIn profile is picked up by Google (and the other search engines), searches for “your name” should include your LinkedIn profile on the first page or two of results.

And your profile headline will show up in the search result itself.

Keep in mind that your LinkedIn profile, along with containing all those good keywords, needs to be a good read.

Merely loading it with a string of keywords and neglecting to create vibrant, brand-evident content may sabotage your chances to be noticed and considered for the jobs you want.

Don’t know what keywords and phrases are the right ones for you? You probably didn’t do your industry and target company research.

Something to keep in mind.

Savvy people review and update the content in their LinkedIn profiles at least once a year.

One of the simplest, quickest and perhaps most powerful places to update the content is the profile headline.

If you don’t have much time to update your entire profile, at least zero in on your headline . . . and your name field, where you can add certifications.

Comments

Chris Morton says
April 28, 2020 at 4:32 pm
Also understand that every time you post in the fed or comment on someone else’s post, the first 79 characters of your headline appear every time, right below your name.
This means you should get the most important bits of your headline right up front (the lest-most position).
It also means that, by being active on the platform, you’re gaining more and more exposure and are informing all of those eyeballs what it is you do.
Those in the know try to get some personality aspect in there, too, so as to entice people to have a look at your profile. Here’s my headline as an example:
Editor/author fixes web/print content: accuracy, readability, continuity, and integrity for marketing and high tech
BTW, getting the extra characters only works on iPhone, near as I can tell.
- Meg Guiseppi says
  April 29, 2020 at 8:15 am
  Thank you for sharing your tips, Chris.
Rasmus Fri says
June 6, 2013 at 3:03 pm
Hi,
Very interesting and good tips! But I am wondering if you have any further advice. I am now graduating from my undergraduate studies (Management of Business & Technology) and will now head into the job market. I have no “relevant”(3 years as a waiter and event manager at a restaurant) previous work experience in Finance and Consultancy, which are the industries where I want to find a job.
I am wondering if you have any tips on what to write in my headline to improve my “SEO”? my current headline is: “Student at the University of La Salle, Ramon Llull, Barcelona”
Thank you!
- Meg Guiseppi says
  June 7, 2013 at 7:26 am
  Thanks for commenting, Rasmus.
  I’m glad you found my post helpful. To develop a headline that will capture the attention of your target employers, you’ll need to first do the hard work of researching their needs and what makes you a good fit for them. In doing that research, you’ll uncover the relevant keywords you’ll need to use in your LinkedIn headline, elsewhere in your LI profile, and in all your career marketing materials.
Stephen "Steve" Q Shannon says
October 10, 2012 at 6:44 am
Meg, Another tip I have learned is display you CPA, MD, PhD, or other widely recognized designation following you name and a comma, is, contrary to some LI advisers, totally okay with LinkedIn. Result: Your name, your certification, your intensely optimized headline, as you have eloquently recommended, “will tag-a-long with you” everywhere you go on LinkedIn. Next time you see activity from your network members note how many do not intensely optimize their name and headline not to mention their image, another highly neglected profile element. I am having my avatar changed (after too many years) as we “speak.” Thanks Meg for the excellent post. I will share it, with attribution, with my “tribe” members. Your advocate, Stephen “Steve” Q
- Meg Guiseppi says
  October 10, 2012 at 8:47 am
  Nice to hear from you, Steve, with another excellent tip!
  Wish I had thought to include your suggestion in the post, especially since I’ve used it myself. In my own LinkedIn profile, I tagged “my name” with “Executive Resume Branding”, which is an additional important search term for me.
  Thanks for your valuable advice!