3 Ways To Change Your LinkedIn URL To Help Your SEO [With Examples]

What is a LinkedIn URL? 

LinkedIn URL is your LinkedIn profile’s unique address. It is automatically assigned to every new LinkedIn member and it can be customized for a more professional LinkedIn experience. 

Every LinkedIn URL starts with https://www.linkedin.com/in/ followed by your name and some numbers (user ID) which you get by default when you open your LinkedIn profile for the first time. Here’s an example of a default LinkedIn profile URL https://www.linkedin.com/in/suzana-ristic-48a636207/. The part in bold of your profile’s address can be customized to look more neat and professional. 

The same rule applies to any LinkedIn company page. 

When shared, your LinkedIn profile URL is clickable, and it leads directly to your profile on the platform. You can send it in a message, hyperlink your email signature, or copy-paste it into your resume so that people can easily check what you’re all about professionally.

Aside from looking more professional, there are other benefits to customizing your LinkedIn URL, which we will cover down below. 

By the end of this blog, you’ll know 

• Where to find your LinkedIn URL
• How to change it
• How to change your LinkedIn profile URL on the app
• How customizing it affects your experience and helps your LinkedIn lead generation
• 3 ways how to customize your LinkedIn URL if a specific URL is already taken and show up in LinkedIn and Google search engine results more often.

How to find your LinkedIn URL?

There are two ways how you can find your LinkedIn URL. 

#1 Option 1 Go to your LinkedIn homepage and check out the address bar. You can copy and paste your LinkedIn URL from here and allow anyone who you shared it with to go directly to your LinkedIn profile. 

#2 Option 2 Stay at your LinkedIn homepage. Click “Contact info”.

This is your LinkedIn URL. 

4 LinkedIn URL restrictions you should know about

• Your custom URL can be 3-100 characters long. Also, you cannot use spaces, symbols, or special characters. 
  
• The customizable part of the LinkedIn profile URL is NOT case-sensitive. This means that you can’t use capital letters to try and differentiate your choice. LinkedIn recognizes www.linkedin.com/in/johnsmith and www.linkedin.com/in/JohnSmith as the same URL.
  
• You can change your URL up to 5 times within 6 months. Once you have changed your URL for the 5th time, you won’t be able to change it for another six months.
  
• Your original URL will be unavailable to other members for 6 months. LinkedIn thinks that reassigning your original URL to another member in less than 6 months would make plenty of confusion. 

How to change your LinkedIn profile URL? 

#1 Go to your LinkedIn homepage. In the top right corner, you’ll see the “Edit public profile & URL” section. Click on it. 

#2 This action will take you to a separate page. Again in the top right corner, click on the pencil icon to change the customizable section of your profile URL. After you’ve finished, click “Save”.

NOTE: Both LinkedIn and search engines will take some time to detect the URL changes. However, you should see the URL change right away in the Contact info section of your profile. Until the URL changes everywhere, make sure you copy-paste it from there. 

How to change the URL for your LinkedIn company page?

You can and should customize your company’s LinkedIn account URL as well. The same rules apply to LinkedIn accounts. 

#1 Access your LinkedIn company page from the Super admin view. Click “Edit page”. 

#2 Choose “Page info”. Type in the custom URL for your company. 

How to change your LinkedIn profile URL on the app? 

This is how you change your profile URL on the LinkedIn app. 

#1 Go to your profile home page. Click on the 3 dots. 

#2 Choose the Contact info option. 

#3 Click the pencil icon to edit your contact info on the LinkedIn app. 

#4 Click here to go to a page where you will be able to change your LinkedIn profile URL. 

#5 Click here to edit the customizable part of your LinkedIn profile URL. 

Why should you change your LinkedIn URL? 

Bear in mind that your LinkedIn URL can be 5 to 6 times in a 6 months. As frequent as it may seem, we strongly advise you to, before clicking that “Save” button, do your research and make sure that your choice is good enough for the next 6 months. 

#1 It looks more professional. 

Customizing your profile URL looks more professional and gives you instantly more credibility. It shows that you know how to use the platform and that you indeed do utilize it for social selling and other business purposes. Other LinkedIn members will feel more comfortable talking business with you online and you will close more deals in a shorter amount of time. We have a full lesson dedicated to optimizing your LinkedIn URL in our masterclass Set up your LinkedIn Profile: Complete guide. 

Our FREE masterclass gives a step-by-step approach to optimizing your LinkedIn profile overall. The Set up your LinkedIn Profile: Complete guide course is so thorough that you will not need any additional courses to earn the all-star LinkedIn profile status. You’ll see, by following the instructions from each lesson of this course, that your LinkedIn profile will be fully set for quality networking and lead generation. 

#2 You’ll show up in Google and LinkedIn search engine results more often. 

Whether your prospects or people you would like to be found by are using LinkedIn for lead search or Google if you optimize and the way you optimize your LinkedIn URL can affect how often and how high your LinkedIn profile will rank in their search results. 

Yes, a well-customized profile URL plays a significant role in LinkedIn SEO and LinkedIn Xray search. 

LinkedIn SEO refers to the way you write and use your profile to increase its ranking in a search and therefore its visibility. The higher your profile is ranked when someone searches for a particular term, the more views your profile is likely to get.

LinkedIn X-ray search is a method used to do LinkedIn prospecting on Google. In other words, using the Google browser, you can search for the profiles without using LinkedIn internal filters.

Both search engines take into account the URL of your LinkedIn profile and rank you accordingly. That’s why, sometimes, it can be useful to put specific keywords in your LinkedIn URL as well. 

Here are several examples of how to include specific keywords in your profile URL that can rank you better in search engines. 

www.linkedin.com/in/john-smith-head-of-sales 

www.linkedin.com/in/john-smith-vp

www.linkedin.com/in/john-smith-growth-specialist

www.linkedin.com/in/john-smith-saas

www.linkedin.com/in/john-smith-ceo

www.linkedin.com/in/john-smith-content-team-lead

Options are endless and their success majorly depends on how well you can predict your ideal lead’s search intent. 

3 ideas on how to customize your LinkedIn profile URL

If your name is not particularly unusual, or you wish to optimize your LinkedIn URL to show up in LinkedIn and Google search results more often, here are 3 ideas how to do it.

#1 Use the combination of your full name and title 

This is the combination we spoke about earlier, as it can work well for both LinkedIn and Google SEO, especially if you are holding a C-suite, upper management, or any decision-making decision that you know people will search. You can combine it with your company name as well if you think that could help your lead generation.   

www.linkedin.com/in/john-smith-head-of-sales

www.linkedin.com /in/john-smith-ceo-skylead

www.linkedin.com/in/john-smith-skylead

#2 Use your brand name, brand nickname, or a combination of your brand name or nickname plus your company name or a specific keyword. 

This is particularly useful for people who have common names or whose brand is widely known under their nickname. For example, if your name is Daniel Bonatti, but you branded yourself as a marketing expert under Dan Bonatti or Dan Bon, this can be your LinkedIn profile URL go to. 

www.linkedin.com/in/danbon 

www.linkedin.com/in/dan-bonatti

www.linkedin.com/in/dan-bon

www.linkedin.com/in/dan-bon-creartive 

www.linkedin.com/in/dan-bon-marketing-specialist

#3 It can be same as your website or a blog or a business page 

If you are known for a specific brand or a website or a blog on a specific topic, you can use it for your LinkedIn profile URL as well. If that website name includes your personal name that’s even better, if not, that’s fine too. This way, you’ll get your brand out there even more, not just on Google but on LinkedIn too. 

www.linkedin.com/in/marketing-with-john

www.linkedin.com/in/marketingwithjohn

www.linkedin.com/in/marketingformarketeers 

Summary 

LinkedIn profile URL might seem like a less visible part of your LinkedIn branding, but as you may see, it’s not. 

It affects the way people see the professional YOU and how high your LinkedIn profile ranks on the platform and on Google. 

Whether you are on LinkedIn to network or for lead generation, a custom-made URL is your friend. And so is Skylead. 

If you are in search of practical marketing and sales knowledge, you can check out our Library Of All Things Sales Engagement-Related. On the other hand, if you are searching for a tool that can take over time-consuming sales processes and allow you to put more focus on closing the deal itself, join our free demo call and see how Skylead can be your trusted ally.