Crafting a clear, concise and correct professional headline is vital to the overall success of your efforts on LinkedIn.   It is no easy feat particularly when you have only 120 characters to do it in.  

Kristin Johnson, CEO of the career and headhunting firm Profession Direction has explored the challenges and opportunities of producing a quality LinkedIn headline. She offers these tips to help you build a headline designed to get you noticed in searchers and to move people to take the actions you would like on your profile.  

1. Decide if you want Search Engine Optimized - or a Human-Friendly Headline.

LinkedIn is a dichotomous beast. There is the side that requires specific keywords to play well with LinkedIn's algorithm, but there's also the human element. There no clear-cut preference. Some LinkedIn experts recommend focusing solely on the search engine optimization (SEO), since that will make your profile more likely to appear higher in the rankings by LinkedIn's search engine. However, the pursuit of SEO rankings could leave your headline unreadable by humans.

Note from Ninja Marben: Writing a headline with a mixture of both SEO and human friendly words is the option used by most LinkedIn Ninjas.