Posting links to LinkedIn reduces reach by up to 35%: What are the workarounds?

Do you regularly share blog posts or links on LinkedIn? Most B2B companies do – and yet by doing this, you are decimating your organic post reach. Thankfully, there some workarounds.

It’s a little-known fact, but LinkedIn absolutely hates external links in posts. For a business that attributes its revenues to user activity, losing traffic directly hampers their profit.

As a result, if you include a URL that leads away from the platform in your posts, data suggests your post will attract (on average) 20-35% less reach than if you hadn’t included the link.

Evidently, there are times when you absolutely need to post a link. Important resources can’t always live on LinkedIn. Often, though, you can and should avoid adding links.

First off, depending on what you’re sharing, you could consider reformatting it into a LinkedIn-owned format. Ask yourself:

• Could this blog or report post be repurposed as a LinkedIn Article? Linking to a LinkedIn Article won’t harm your reach. As long as your blog post was published on your website first, having a near duplicate on LinkedIn shouldn’t harm your SEO.
• Can this event registration be delivered though a LinkedIn Event? For virtual events, or ones requiring simple registration, LinkedIn Events are fine. Linking to a LinkedIn Event page won’t hamper your post reach and you’ll benefit from extra word-of-mouth as people engage with the event on LinkedIn.
• Could this report or e-book work as a PDF carousel? You may (will!) need to reformat it to meet LinkedIn carousel best practice, but it’s relatively easy to create a snappy, text-light version of a bigger document, that’s easy to digest on LinkedIn. PDF documents attract high levels of engagement, so by doing this your organic reach will rocket.

Assuming you can’t reformat your document and are forced to include a link. There are several in-post workarounds you might like to try:

• Add the link after 60 mins – The LinkedIn algorithm purportedly ‘reads’ your post within the first 30 mins after it’s gone live; but maybe allow 60 minutes, just to be sure. The theory goes that if you edit your post to add a link after this crucial period, you should avoid being penalized and maintain your reach. I’ve no evidence to say this doesn’t work, so it’s worth a try. The downside, of course, is that during your post’s ‘prime-time’ first hour, your link won’t be present.
• Add the link in comments – You may have seen users doing this. I’ve seen comments from other LinkedIn analysts that the platform now considers links from authors within comments as equivalent to in-post links. But I think it’s worth trying. If you do this, just be aware your link may not show at the top of your comment thread. It also won’t show when people share your post.
• Lastly, and perhaps most sneakily – you could include a QR code image within your post. As long as this links to something really valuable and useful, I can see some people clicking through. As far as I’m aware, LinkedIn doesn’t check for QR codes in posts (yet).

If you have any experiences to share about LinkedIn links, or need help with your LinkedIn strategy, please get in touch.