How to Optimize Your LinkedIn Profile for Google Search

[00:10] Google Yourself Before Someone Else Does

Karen: Hello, and welcome back to the Good Girls Get Rich podcast. I’m your host, Karen Yankovich, and today I want you to do something with me right now.

Karen: If you’re driving, just listen for now and come back to this later, because this is an episode you’re actually going to do.

Karen: Open an incognito window on your browser – the one where the internet doesn’t know it’s you – and Google your own name. Not because we’re vain, but because somebody else already did.

Karen: Remember the person you finally messaged last week, the one from your old job I talked you into reaching out to in episode 387? She read your message, and within about 90 seconds, she did exactly what every one of us does: she Googled you. Whatever came up on that page was your interview. You didn’t get to prepare for it. You weren’t in the room. Nobody told you the score. That’s what people are seeing.

Karen: Here’s what I want you to understand today: you have a digital presence whether you like it or not. You just didn’t write it. Somebody else did – a conference bio from 2014, a company directory from a job you don’t have anymore, a listing with an address you don’t live at. You can’t delete any of that. I know you wish you could, but you can’t delete the internet.

Karen: But you can outrank it. Rank is the only delete button you’re ever going to get. And the single best tool you have for that is sitting there right now – free, half filled out, with a lot of its settings turned off. We’re going to turn it on.

Karen: So I did this with you. I opened an incognito browser and typed my own name. Number one was my website – thank God, after all the SEO work we do. Number two was LinkedIn. Hello, number two! Those are the two places where I get to tell people what I want them to know about me.

Karen: After that: a bunch of my own images, my Instagram, some videos, my Facebook page, Apple Podcasts, and then Donna Cravotta of Cravotta Media Group, creator of The Real 50 Over 50. If you haven’t checked that out, you need to – we’ll link to her in the show notes. Donna’s a publicist, and she knows what she’s doing, which is exactly why she shows up.

Karen: Then came my podcast, a bunch of Facebook posts, my YouTube channel, and then page two: some talks I’ve given, like Small Business Expo, and podcasts I’ve guested on, like PodMatch.

Karen: I had to go all the way to page seven before I found something under my name that wasn’t actually me – and even then, it turned out to be an old auto-draft page from my own website that I clearly need to clean up. So yes, we all need to do this every now and then.

[03:46] Borrowed Stages Build Your Digital Footprint

Karen: Most of what came up was about me, but I’m telling you this story because it’s why I’m such a big fan of borrowed stages. Every stage you get to borrow contributes to your digital footprint – even the weird stuff.

Karen: Here’s the thing: this is what buys you into the room. If you message someone you met at a conference, and they search you, and they have to go to page seven to find something that isn’t you – that’s credibility, my friend. That’s why I’m so hot on using LinkedIn and PR together.

Karen: Almost none of what shows up when you search my name is an accident. I asked for nearly all of it. You have to ask for these things. I even found videos on Periscope from eleven years ago in there. This stuff lives forever.

Karen: So here’s the thing about your LinkedIn headline: it’s not just for LinkedIn. It’s the blue link a stranger reads on Google before deciding whether you’re worth five more seconds of their time. LinkedIn gives you about 220 characters for a headline, but Google only shows about a third of that – and your name eats some of it. So realistically, the first 30 to 40 characters of your headline are your entire billboard on the busiest street on the internet.

Karen: And what do most people put there? Founder. Speaker. CEO. Coach. Consultant. Lifelong learner. Those are resumes for robots, not headlines for someone who wants to get business. I want you to get business from this – that’s why I do this show, and why I’m so passionate about these small tweaks that make your profile do the heavy lifting for you.

Karen: Think about it this way: maybe you spent all day Tuesday writing a post, which I hope you didn’t, but a lot of people do. A post has a shelf life of about a day. Your profile has a shelf life of forever. It’s the second thing that came up when I searched my own name, and I’d bet it’s the same for you. One of those two things is still working for you at 11 o’clock on a Sunday night in 2035. It’s not the post.

Karen: So let’s talk about LinkedIn as a borrowed stage – the biggest one on the internet. LinkedIn has authority on Google that you cannot buy, cannot build, and cannot out-blog. You don’t have to earn it. You just have to claim it. That’s what borrowing a stage means, and this stage happens to be the entire internet’s front door. You get to rent the most valuable real estate on the internet for free. Let’s not leave it blank.

[07:48] The Two Settings That Change Everything

Karen: Let’s go step by step. First, open an incognito window and type your name the way someone else would – Karen Yankovich, Karen Yankovich New York, Karen Yankovich LinkedIn. Try it a few different ways.

Karen: Incognito matters because when you’re signed in, Google is a little like ChatGPT flattering you – “Karen, that’s wonderful.” This isn’t that. This is research. I don’t need to be stroked. I want to see this the way somebody else sees it.

Karen: Take a screenshot. This is your “before” picture. Set a calendar reminder for 60 days from now and attach the image, so you can compare and see if you’ve actually done the work.

Karen: Now, here’s what I want you to do with the most powerful piece of free real estate on the internet. Go to your LinkedIn profile, click “Edit public profile & URL” in the top right, and make sure your profile’s public visibility toggle is switched on. Your privacy setting is a revenue setting. There is no reason in the world to keep this hidden.

Karen: I hope it’s already public for you, but you’d be surprised how many people have it switched off – maybe you were job hunting once, or dealing with an ex, or read a scary article a couple of years ago. It was a reasonable decision then. It’s been costing you ever since. Don’t skip this.

Karen: And here’s the part most people miss: it’s not one switch, it’s a whole stack of them. Under that same panel, every section has its own toggle – headline, about, experience, education, skills, recommendations. Turn every single one on, especially recommendations. That’s other people’s praise, indexed, working for you while you’re at the beach.

Karen: That’s move number two. Move number three is that blue link people click when they search your name. Write the front of your headline for the person deciding whether to click – not for a recruiter’s keyword filter, not for LinkedIn’s algorithm. We’ll use keywords, but the very first 40 characters need to hook a real human. Who are you there for?

Karen: On my profile, my headline opens with: “I want smart, successful women to become wealthy, visible, and unforgettable.” I don’t say what I do or how I do it. I use that prime real estate to make you want to read more. A pipe or two after that is fine, but you don’t need a wall of keywords – you want people to connect with something first.

[11:39] Your About Section, Custom URL, and One Name Everywhere

Karen: Now let’s talk about your About section. Google treats it a lot like a page description – the first couple of lines are what people read next.

Karen: If your first sentence is “I’m a passionate, results-driven professional with over 25 years of experience,” nobody is reading further. Nobody. But if you open with something people connect with, they’ll click for more. Mine starts: “I’m here to help midlife women step boldly into their next chapter of influence, impact, and income.” It’s about them, not about me. Think of your About section as a doorway to the next step, not a dedication page to everything you’ve ever done. Who you are, what you want, how you help people.

Karen: Next: your custom URL. If your profile still shows something like linkedin.com/in/karenyankovich4327962, nobody is typing that. Fix it – it’s in that same panel, under “Edit custom URL.” Click the pencil icon, type your name, and save it.

Karen: I wouldn’t use something like “CoachKaren” – you want it unique to you, so use your first and last name. If that’s taken, add a middle initial, or a last initial, and get as close to your real name as you can. You might not be a coach in a couple of years. Keep your LinkedIn URL consistent with the name you use across every other social platform.

Karen: If you’ve been married, divorced, or gone by different names over the years, you might have multiple internet identities splitting your vote. Pick the name you do business under, and use it everywhere – LinkedIn, your website, your speaker bio, your byline, your email signature. You are not findable under three different names. Choose the one you’re going to get paid under.

Karen: Here are a couple of examples straight from my own LinkedIn recommendations. Kara Gubbins wrote that as she beefed up her profile, her LinkedIn kept moving up in Google searches, until it landed at number two, just below her main website – so now, if someone searches her name, they get the most accurate, complete information about her.

Karen: Jerry Eddington wrote something similar: after rebuilding her profile, her LinkedIn moved to the number one position on a Google search of her name. She’s since been asked to join retreats, workshops, and events, and two people who found her that way are now her affiliates in a joint venture. Jerry didn’t get “visibility.” She got retreats, workshops, business partners, and calls on her calendar – which is the only scoreboard that matters. This is a woman who got found by people who were already looking for someone exactly like her.

[15:20] Why This Work Pays Off Later

Karen: Understand this doesn’t happen overnight. LinkedIn says it plainly: after you change your public profile settings, it can take search engines weeks or months to catch up. LinkedIn doesn’t control when Google recrawls, and neither do I. I can’t promise this happens by Tuesday. But I can promise that next spring, when someone looks you up, they’ll find you – if you do this work now.

Karen: This is tiny work. The lag is long. That’s exactly why you start today instead of waiting until you feel ready. And every place your name links back to your LinkedIn – a podcast guest bio, a panel page, a byline, a summit landing page – is another vote Google is counting.

Karen: This is why I talk so much about borrowed stages. You can’t delete the internet, but you can outrank it, and the strongest tool you have is a page you already own, sitting on somebody else’s very powerful stage – free, half-finished, and for some of you, still switched off.

Karen: So, two things, both under five minutes. One: go turn that switch on. Edit public profile and URL, flip public visibility on, and turn on every section you want strangers to read. Two: rewrite the first 40 characters of your headline for the actual person you want to hire you – not the algorithm, not a recruiter. Write it for them.

Karen: That’s it. Not a full rebrand. Two little settings.

Karen: I want you to notice one thing about today’s episode: everything that worked here worked because you were standing on someone else’s authority instead of building it from zero. That’s Google. That’s LinkedIn. That’s a podcast. That’s a stage. It’s the same move every time, and it’s the whole thing I teach in the Borrow the Stage Masterclass. It’s completely free, about an hour long, and on demand – you can watch it right now at sheslinkedUp.com/masterclass. It’ll show you how to get seen by audiences that already have your people in them, and turn that into work you actually get paid for.

Karen: Now that your perfect people can actually find you, next week we’ll talk about what happens after somebody puts you on that stage – and why so many women walk away with a nice screenshot and nothing else. Don’t miss it. I’ll see you there.