In case you missed it – in 2025, LinkedIn doesn’t want your links! Or so we’ve been told…
When I read earlier this year that LinkedIn’s algorithm tends to de-prioritize posts that contain external links, I wasn’t surprised, since this is how Meta’s algorithm operates as well. I was a bit annoyed, though, to have yet another social media platform that requires a silly song and dance just to share an external link.
But hey, I made the change for one of our clients and started sharing external links in the comment section instead. Then, I included a call-to-action in the post description to send folks to the comments to get the link.
I was skeptical that this change would be a positive one. To me, it felt like adding an extra step to get folks to click a link they may only be mildly interested in anyway. Would this practice really increase engagement?
After two months of including links in the comments rather than the post description, here’s what happened:
- Our client’s engagement rate actually went up!
- Their link clicks remained stable and/or decreased slightly – no significant change was seen, though.
These findings were initially a bit inconclusive…
Another two months passed, and our client’s engagement rate continued to increase. But… link clicks continued to slowly fall. I ultimately concluded that our client’s engagement rate continued to increase because it is healthy – in other words, it would have grown at this rate, regardless.
In short, moving links to the comments did diddly squat for engagement. And, more importantly, it actually hurt link clicks, as I suspected it would.
So, should you be including links in your post description or the comments? I’d say, if you already have a solid LinkedIn following, it may be worth trying out including links in the comments. It’s often a slow burn to see results on LinkedIn, and having a larger following will naturally provide a bigger data pool to work with, and more opportunities for link clicks.
But remember: above all, being active on social media platforms should feed our goals!… which often means getting higher link click rates. So, when in doubt, maybe keep including your links in the post description, at least until we have more detailed information about LinkedIn’s algorithm.
