Your name should just be your name. This isn’t a place for credentials or any extras.
Your photo should always be about “business”. This isn’t the place for logos, couples photos, photos with kids or photos with animals. This is you, at work. A traditional headshot is best. If you just can’t go get a headshot made by a professional, Find a friend in the office, get them to take a photo with a mobile device with a clean background – walls are good – and upload it.
Use industry keywords in your headline.
Affiliate yourself with your company.
Write all of your descriptions in 1st person. This is about you, written by you to a potential client or business connection. Think about the benefits of doing business with you and write about it. Example: “I was able to help ABC client meet their clients’ delivery schedules by providing them with an inventory solution that guaranteed availability based on sales data.” – Talk about your successes, not your responsibilities.
Use keywords in your summary, in your skills and expertise, current and past work history and your experience. Google likes to index successful sites and LinkedIn is one of them. Make your data useful.
Provide all the necessary contact info. Prepare to succeed. What if someone stumbles across you and wants to do business with you? Can they figure out how?
Customize your URL and add that link to your emails and other communication methods.
Make recommendations and ask professional colleagues to write a recommendation for you.
Connect, Connect, Connect. People like to do business with people who are already successful. Get that connection number up over 500.
Join Groups. There a multiple benefits to this but the main benefit is networking. If you are member of an industry-specific group, you will find like-minded people in those groups.
Update your status on a fairly regular basis. You don’t have to put something out there every day but when you see something industry-specific or interesting, share it. Make sure it is related to your profession, geography or business in general.