Straight answer: a good LinkedIn profile is written for the person deciding whether to message you, not for a recruiter scanning keywords, and it leads with the outcome you deliver in the first two lines someone sees. Fix your photo, headline, About section and Featured section in that order and you will out-perform 90 percent of the profiles in your industry within a month. Everything else, from skills to recommendations, is polish on top of that.
Your profile is a sales page, not a CV
I have rewritten my own LinkedIn profile more times than I can count over the last five years while I rebuilt my business from scratch, and every single rewrite improved things the moment I stopped writing it like a CV and started writing it like a landing page. A CV lists what you did. A landing page tells a stranger, in seconds, what changes for them if they work with you.
Most people get this backwards. They open with "Marketing professional with 15 years experience in B2B lead generation and digital strategy" and wonder why nobody messages them. Nobody buys "experience." They buy a result. Say the result.
The photo (this one number matters)
LinkedIn's own data says profiles with a photo get up to 21 times more profile views and 9 times more connection requests than those without one. That is not a small edge, that is the difference between being invisible and being found. Use a recent headshot, plain background, good light, shoulders up, looking at the camera, not a cropped wedding photo or a five-year-old conference badge shot. If you would not recognise the person from the photo if you met them at a networking event next week, change it.
The banner image behind it matters far less than most guides pretend. Nobody has ever messaged me because of my banner. Use it to state your one-line value proposition or leave it a clean brand colour and move on. Do not spend three hours in Canva on this while your About section still says "passionate about connecting people."
The headline: 220 characters, use every one that earns its place
LinkedIn gives you 220 characters for your headline and most people waste it on their job title and company name, which LinkedIn already shows underneath your name anyway. That is duplication, not information.
Here is a real before and after from my own profile. My old headline read "CEO at Lilach Bullock | Forbes Contributor | Keynote Speaker." True, but flat. It told people what I am, not what I do for them. I changed it to something closer to "I help small businesses use AI to win back the time and leads they lost to bad marketing | Speaker | Forbes-listed." My inbound messages roughly tripled within about a week of that change, and I have kept variations of it ever since. Same person, same experience, completely different response because the second version answers "what's in it for me" in the first breath.
Structure that works for almost any industry:
- What you help people do or achieve, in plain language
- Who you help (be specific: "coaches" not "professionals")
- One credibility marker (award, publication, years, client number)
The About section: write it in first person, structure it in three parts
LinkedIn gives you 2,600 characters for the About section and most people fill it with a paragraph of vague adjectives. "Results-driven leader with a passion for innovation" tells me nothing. I could write that about a toaster.
I write mine in three chunks and tell clients to do the same:
- Line one: the specific problem you solve, in the reader's words, not yours.
- Middle: proof, in numbers where you have them. Clients helped, revenue generated, years doing it, a stat from a project.
- Close: a direct call to action. Tell people exactly what to do next, whether that is "send me a message" or "book a call" or "download the guide."
Write it in first person, "I" and "you," not third person "Lilach Bullock is a marketing expert who." Third person on your own profile reads like a press release nobody asked for, and it puts distance between you and the reader at the exact moment you want to close that distance.
Featured section: this is where you send the traffic
This is the section people skip and it is quietly the most useful real estate on the whole profile. It sits right under your About section and lets you pin articles, videos, PDFs and links. Use it to point people at your best proof, not your homepage. A case study, a specific blog post, a video testimonial. If you have written something like a piece on website growth strategies, that is exactly the kind of content that belongs here, because it does double duty: it proves you know what you are talking about and it sends warm traffic straight to your site rather than leaving people to hunt for it.
If part of your growth plan involves getting found locally, the same logic applies to how you frame your Featured links and your About section. A quick look at how local SEO works will show you that the same "be specific about who you serve and where" thinking that gets a business found on Google also gets a person found on LinkedIn search.
Experience: outcomes, not job duties
This is where I see the most wasted words on the whole platform. People list responsibilities: "Managed social media accounts, oversaw content calendar, liaised with stakeholders." That is a job description, not evidence you were good at the job.
Rewrite each role around what changed because you were there. Grew an Instagram account from 4,000 to 60,000 followers in 14 months. Cut customer response time from 48 hours to 4. Closed three enterprise contracts worth £120,000 combined in one quarter. Numbers do the convincing that adjectives cannot.
If you do not have hard numbers for a role, use a before and after instead. "The team had no consistent posting schedule and inconsistent branding. I built a content calendar and brand guide that the company still uses." That still shows change, which is what employers and clients are screening for.
Skills, endorsements and the recommendations most people never ask for
Pick eight to ten skills that reflect what you want to be hired or contacted for, not every skill you have ever touched. LinkedIn lets you pin your top three so they show first, and those three should be the ones a stranger would search for if they were looking for someone exactly like you.
Recommendations do more heavy lifting than endorsements ever will, and they are the section people are most nervous about asking for. Here is the exact script I use, because a vague request gets a vague answer or no answer at all: "Would you be up for writing a couple of lines about the [specific project] we worked on together, particularly [specific result]? Happy to send over a few bullet points to jog your memory if that helps." Give people an easy way to say yes with minimal effort and you will get far more responses than a generic "could you recommend me?" message ever produces.
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Aim for at least five to eight recommendations spread across different roles or clients so it does not look like one enthusiastic friend wrote all of them.
Post something, even if it is uncomfortable at first
Here is the part most LinkedIn advice avoids because it is inconvenient rather than because it is untrue: a beautifully optimised profile that nobody visits does nothing for you. LinkedIn's algorithm and human behaviour both reward activity. People check your profile after they have already seen you post, comment or show up in a conversation, not the other way round. So the profile is the foundation, but the posting is what gets people to the foundation in the first place.
You do not need to post daily. I have gone through stretches of posting three times a week and stretches of once a fortnight, and consistency mattered far more than frequency. Video in particular performs disproportionately well on LinkedIn right now compared with static text, and if you are building out a wider content plan it is worth reading how video marketing turns views into actual leads rather than treating it as a vanity metric.
The uncomfortable bit nobody puts in these guides
Here is the thing I tell every client and most of them do not want to hear it: your headline and About section can be perfect and it still will not save a profile with no activity, no recommendations and no proof behind it. A polished profile with zero substance behind it is like a beautifully designed shop window with an empty shop. People click through once, see nothing recent, and leave. Optimising your profile is not a one-off task you tick off a list. It is a living document you should revisit every few months as your work, your results and your positioning shift. I update mine roughly every quarter, sometimes more, because what I was proud of achieving a year ago is not always the sharpest thing to lead with today.
Keywords: use them like seasoning, not like the whole meal
LinkedIn's search does reward keyword relevance in your headline, About section and job titles, so if you want to be found for "AI consultant" or "bookkeeper" or "wedding photographer," that phrase should appear naturally somewhere in your profile, ideally more than once. But do not stuff your headline with a string of keywords separated by pipes until it reads like a spam filter test. "Marketing | SEO | Content | Social Media | Branding | Growth" tells a reader nothing about you and search algorithms have got good at spotting the difference between relevant language and keyword stuffing.
If you are doing this alongside freelance or part-time work
A well-optimised LinkedIn profile is not just a job-hunting tool, it is one of the cheapest client-acquisition tools available if you are freelancing, consulting or picking up extra work on the side. If you are exploring flexible or part-time income alongside a main job, it is worth pairing your profile work with a look at some of the weekend jobs and what they pay, because several of them, from bookkeeping to social media management to tutoring, rely almost entirely on a decent LinkedIn presence to bring in the first few clients before word of mouth takes over.
My seven-step edit order
When I sit down to redo a profile, mine or a client's, I go in this order because each step feeds the next:
- Photo and banner first, because everything else sits underneath them visually
- Headline, rewritten around outcome and audience, not title
- About section, written in first person with the three-part structure
- Featured section, updated with the strongest current proof
- Experience section, rewritten around results and numbers
- Skills, trimmed and reordered around the top three
- Recommendations, requested from two or three recent clients or colleagues that week, not "someday"
Do all seven in one sitting if you can. It takes about two hours and the difference in how the profile reads afterwards is not subtle.
Frequently asked questions
How often should I update my LinkedIn profile?
Review it every three to four months, or immediately after a big result, new role, or shift in what you offer. A profile that still describes work you stopped doing two years ago actively works against you.
Does LinkedIn Premium help with profile optimisation?
It gives you search insights and shows who viewed your profile, which is useful data, but it does not rewrite a weak headline or About section for you. Get the free elements right first. Premium is an add-on, not a fix.
How long should a LinkedIn About section be?
LinkedIn allows up to 2,600 characters, but the first two or three lines matter most because that is all that shows before someone clicks "see more." Front-load the specific problem you solve and the proof, and use the rest of the space for supporting detail.
Do I need a custom LinkedIn URL?
Yes, it takes two minutes to edit in your profile settings and it looks far more professional on a CV, email signature or business card than the default string of numbers LinkedIn assigns. Use your name or business name if it is available.
Sources worth reading
Related reading: How Do You Research a New Software Tool Before Signing Up? and Should You Hire an AI Consultant? What They Do (And When It's a Waste of Money).
