#5: Show your Public Profile

Manage how your profile appears when found in search outside LinkedIn.

“I can't find you on Google...”

Make sure your LinkedIn Profile is doing the heavy lifting for you on search engine results pages.

If nobody can find you in an online search, do you really exist? For many people, a search for their name is likely to surface their LinkedIn profile as one of the first results.As you can see from the screenshot of a search for my name on Google, my LinkedIn Profile is the fifth entry down.I only have all the other entries in the Top 10 because —

I have a relatively uncommon name.

I've been online for donkeys years.

I know how search engines work.

Results of a search for 'David Petherick' on Google

There are two important things here —

I appear in these results.

You can see what's on my profile without LinkedIn membership.

I get positive branding from the results page. But it's what behind that click that really counts.

View of a LinkedIn Profile when not logged in to LinkedIn

The key here is that I control what appears here from within my own LinkedIn Public Profile settings. I decide exactly what people can see online outside LinkedIn.There are some big advantages to having a well defined public profile. One of the most useful is the prominence of your contact website(s). I cover how to optimise these links here.

Website links are very prominent on the page. Another reason to optimise these.

So, how do you control what appears here in search engines?Just to go to your settings page — start at https://www.linkedin.com/public-profile/settings

Editing how your public LinkedIn profile appears

From this page, the settings are self-explanatory. There are simple on/off options for different sections of your profile.

Tip: It's worth noting that you can also customise your LinkedIn URL from this page, by using the link at top right. This can give you a more professional URL. One without the random junk characters that LinkedIn adds as default.

Think of your public profile settings as your way of showing the world at large who you are. You choose how much you are happy to share.