The reason why Linkedin doesn’t play well with SEO is that all of\u00a0LinkedIn\u2019s outbound links are intentionally stripped of all their TrustRank. So when you place a link back to your own website in your LinkedIn profile, it has as much value in Google\u2019s eyes as no link at all. This is called a \u201cnofollow\u201d link. Here\u2019s how you can see this phenomenon in action:<\/p>\n
Try going to a link on LinkedIn that points to an outside website. Roll your mouse over it, then look at the bottom of your browser, where the URL of the link is displayed. You\u2019ll find that rather than seeing the website\u2019s address displayed normally, the link has been changed to a URL at linkedin.com\/redir<\/strong>. This means that Google is sending visitors who wish to visit the website to a page on LinkedIn for a micro-second, THEN sending them to the website. Doing so washes the outbound website of all TrustRank, making the \u201cvote\u201d useless.<\/p>\n Linkedin uses redirects to remove all of the voting power from outbound links, rendering Linkedin useless for the purposes of SEO.<\/strong><\/p>\n Google has asked all the major social networks \u2013 not just LinkedIn \u2013 to make all of their outbound links \u201cnofollow.\u201d The reason is that Google feels that any website that allows you to link to your own website (on your profile for instance) is cheating its system. In Google\u2019s view, votes should only be allowed from objective third parties. Linking to your own website from\u00a0 your Linkedin profile is like voting for yourself in an election (which, ironically, is allowed in the U.S. but never mind that).<\/p>\n Now Linkedin may have no value in the world of SEO, but there are some oblique ways in which it can contribute to your search engine visibility. First of all, when you publish articles on Linkedin, they\u2019re probably more likely to rank on Google than if you published them on your own website, given that Linkedin itself has tons of \u201cvotes\u201d pointing to it and therefore is highly regarded by Google. In other words, even though it can\u2019t help you with your own website\u2019s SEO, its<\/strong> own personal SEO is phenomenally good. So, when you publish posts on Linkedin, make sure to include some of the keywords you\u2019d like people to find you for, because they might stumble across one of your articles while doing research on Google.<\/p>\n Another indirect way that Linkedin can help you with your SEO is that, since it\u2019s such a widely-viewed website, publishing articles on it can cause other bloggers and thought leaders to notice your company and link to it on their own blogs (which DO pass TrustRank).<\/p>\n Finally, let\u2019s not forget that SEO is not the only value that you can get from a website. Most notably, you can also get relevant traffic from it. And sure, it would be lovely to receive TrustRank from a social media site while also receiving relevant traffic, but the traffic alone can be very valuable.<\/p>\n![\"figure-1\"](\"https:\/\/firstpagesage.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/figure-1-1.png\")
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