I previously wrote about the death of the verb and the rise of the noun, so I won’t explain that here. But if you haven’t read that post, I suggest you do so.
I’m often asked, “Well, if I need nouns, how do I know what nouns to use?” Here is a simple list of some great places to begin growing your keyword list for your personal brand.
Use Your Brain
I’m not being cheeky by saying that. I think we often overlook our own common sense because the online tools are so convenient.
Sit down with a blank paper and come up with as many industry specific nouns as you can. Don’t judge what happens, now is the time to get as big a list as possible. Later, we’ll hone it down.
Use Related Job Descriptions
I always tell people job boards are good for at least one thing…finding job descriptions to mine for keywords. Companies will often (not always) include the keywords they look for when screening resumes in the descriptions.
Find 5-10 related job descriptions (doesn’t matter what location) and pick out the nouns that seem to be recurring. Add them to your list.
Read the Book!
The United States Bureau of Labor Statistics publishes a book every year called the, “Occupational Outlook Handbook” which you can download for FREE. It lists out job descriptions for each category of job.
Find your job description and mine for nouns to add to your list.
Use Google’s Keyword Tools
Another great place to brainstorm for keywords is Google’s keyword tool. Now that you have a longer list of possible keywords, begin to plug them into Google’s Keyword tool. It will produce a list of keyword terms being searched. This indicates the current popularity of the term and possibly it’s viability in your social media profiles.
Make Your Top 10
Now that you have a long list of words, and you have a sense of how popular those words are it’s time to cross off the ones that wont work and keep the ones that will. I like to have a top 10 list.
10 is an easy number to manage and to keep in mind while writing your profiles.
Good luck and please let me know how your keyword research is going in the comments below!
[This article was originally posted on an earlier date]
Joshua Waldman helps frustrated job seekers leverage social media to find work FAST! He is the founder of CareerEnlightenment.com and the author of the new book, “Job Searching with Social Media for Dummies.” Sign-up for his newsletter today and get access to his exclusive training videos for FREE.
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9 Comments
this is really great I never thought of it this way before
Joshua, this is great advice! It’s crucial that employers can find information about you online- particularly the right information. Also, having consistent keywords on multiple profiles will make it easier for employers to find you too. I think few people outside of the tech world understand the importance of SEO for their own personal brand.
Joshua, thanks for the tips on picking keywords for your personal brand. Though many job seekers regard personal branding highly, it seems as though they don’t grasp the importance of using keywords to add the proverbial cherry on top of your online brand. Here at Vizibility, we put job seekers in control of their search results. Our clients can reach the next level if they are able to connect their brand with the keywords in your post.
I’m a huge fan of keyword optimization on resumes and LinkedIn profiles, I just encourage people to balance it against being readable and honest. Here’s why…
I recently came across a profile where the person had added a fake job description, buried deep at the bottom of the profile. In it, he filled a paragraph of keywords. No sentences, no accomplishments, just a long string of keywords. I showed it to a recruiter friend who said people were doing this to show up in their searches. I asked her if she’d call this person…her response, “No way! If you have to be tricky to get the job – what will you do on the job?” was her response.
very interesting post. Thanks a lot for sharing it.
very interesting post. Thanks a lot for sharing it.
very interesting post. Thanks a lot for sharing it.
There's a great tool for keywords research on http://www.ispionage.com. This keyword research tool searches for related keywords on the Internet and displays a full list of them,
including long tail keywords, for you to select. It uses an Internet daily updated keywords database, based on actual search volume, so everytime a user searches for a certain keyword, the results are added to the existing database, so it gets bigger and bigger by the search and you are sure you stay up-to-date with any new keyword idea appearance. It is very useful because:
- generates keywords ideas
- clean the keywords lists
- groups the keywords
- displays the search volume over the last month
- displays competitors' interest for the keywords
- builds PPC campaigns
It is really time-saving and a do-it-all service tool. You should give it a try on http://www.ispionage.com, they have free versions for testing.
Thanks everyone for passing this on. We sometimes loose sight of our audience, and these days, that audience is both robot and human. It's the first time in history we are writing for both and it takes time to figure out. Of course the key is a balance of keywords (to feed the robots) and verbs (to feed the humans).
-J