Should you put links in your LinkedIn post or the first comment?
Put the link in the post when you want clicks, and leave it out when you want reach. The 2026 data agrees that a link in the body costs some reach. It disagrees on how much, and the first-comment workaround now has its own cost. Pick by goal:
| Your goal for this post | Where the link goes | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Signups, demo bookings, article reads | In the post, near the end | You accept less reach for more clicks |
| Reach, followers, comments | Nowhere in the post; offer it by DM or keep it in your Featured section | No link, no penalty to argue about |
| A resource people asked for | In the post, with a summary that stands alone | The summary earns the reading time either way |
| Not sure | Run the five-and-five test below | Your audience's numbers beat anyone's average |
One variable shifts the whole table: who posts. Ordinal, a social media management tool, says in its August 2026 analysis that company pages carry most of the link penalty while personal profiles show almost none in its data. That is one vendor's segmentation, but it matches what practitioners report about company pages in our guide to posting from a personal profile or a company page.
What does LinkedIn itself say about links?
Nothing specific. LinkedIn has published no rule that demotes posts with links. Its help page on feed relevance lists the signals it ranks on: who you are, what the post is about and how people engage with it, and your own activity, including the content you spend the most time viewing. The same page says LinkedIn's algorithms filter out or taper the distribution of low-quality and unsafe content. Links aren't named.
Two other LinkedIn pages matter here. The Professional Community Policies ban untargeted, irrelevant or obviously unwanted promotional content, and ask members not to do things that artificially increase engagement. And the help page on comments explains that comments can be sorted by Most relevant or Most recent, then adds: "Some comments will only be visible under Most recent view." The same page says LinkedIn may limit the visibility of comments when it detects excessive comment creation or use of an automation tool.
Our reading: LinkedIn rewards time spent on LinkedIn, and a link asks readers to leave. That is why both camps have a point. ContentIn's glossary entry argues the penalty is largely folk wisdom and that thin link-dump posts fail because they are thin. The studies below show the gap persists across hundreds of thousands of posts.
What do the 2025 and 2026 tests show?
Every large sample finds less reach for posts with a link in the body, from about a sixth to about a third. None is a controlled experiment, so read them as patterns:
| Who, when | Sample | Finding | Caveat |
|---|---|---|---|
| Richard van der Blom, 26 Jul 2026 | About 300,000 posts, March to June 2026 | One external link costs 16% of reach, down from 18.8% in April; two or three links about 7%; more than that about 24% | Method not public; the author sells a paid report on the same research |
| LinkPost, 12 Jul 2026 | 358,021 posts from 30,843 profiles, 2020 to April 2026, 62% in French | Median 448 impressions with a link against 705 without, a 36% gap | Vendor data from a LinkedIn content tool; LinkPost calls it a correlation, not a confirmed penalty |
| Ordinal, 8 Aug 2026 | Posts Ordinal reviewed from early 2023 to early 2026; no count on the page | A 26.5% median reach gap, concentrated on company pages | Vendor data, described as Ordinal's own experience; several figures are missing from the page text |
| Paul Austin-Menear, published 2 Dec 2025; test dates not given | Three similar posts a day for two weeks | No link: 1,186 impressions. Link to a LinkedIn Newsletter: 493. Link to Substack: 436 | The author flags the small sample |
Two details from these tests are worth more than the headline numbers. Austin-Menear's link to LinkedIn's own newsletter product lost almost as much reach as the Substack link, so in that small test the penalty didn't spare LinkedIn's own product. And van der Blom's figure moved from 18.8% to 16% within a few months, so any number you read is a snapshot.
Leave out figures you can't trace. An August 2026 Bulldog Reporter column puts the cost at about 60 per cent but doesn't name the study behind it.
Does the first-comment trick still work?
Less well than it did, and possibly not at all for clicks. Van der Blom's July 2026 analysis claims: "LinkedIn now actively hides comments that contain links, from everyone except the author." Van der Blom puts it at up to 80% of cases under the default relevance sort, and says a link in the post converts 5.2 times better than the same link in the comments. Both are van der Blom's own figures, and the method behind them isn't public. Van der Blom adds that you won't notice from your own account, because you still see your own comment.
LinkPost's July 2026 study takes the opposite line and recommends the first comment as the default. LinkedIn's comments help page confirms only that some comments show under Most recent and not under Most relevant, without saying which ones or why.
You can settle it with arithmetic. If a link in the body cuts reach by a share p, the in-post link reaches (1 minus p) of your usual audience. A first-comment link only wins if its click rate is above (1 minus p) times the in-post click rate:
| Reach cost of an in-post link | The comment link must get at least this share of the in-post click rate |
|---|---|
| 16% (van der Blom, 2026) | 84% |
| 26.5% (Ordinal) | 73.5% |
| 36% (LinkPost) | 64% |
If link comments are hidden as often as van der Blom reports, a comment link is unlikely to clear even 64%. The edit-after trick, posting clean and adding the link later, is the other workaround. Van der Blom says it has a ceiling and that heavy edits can hurt a post. If a post already died after an edit, our guide on when to delete and repost on LinkedIn covers what to do.
Where else can the link go?
Off the post entirely. Van der Blom lists six places that carry a link or a call to action without touching a post's reach. We have grouped them by what a founder is usually sharing:
- Featured section and profile link. For the one page you want every visitor to see, such as a demo booking page or your best guide.
- LinkedIn Newsletter. Van der Blom says newsletters aren't penalised for external links. That is about links inside the newsletter. Austin-Menear's test shows a feed post promoting a newsletter still lost reach.
- Services page and Events. Both have their own buttons or registration pages, so the announcement post can stay link-free.
- A DM after engagement. When someone comments with real interest, send the link privately. It reaches the one person who wanted it.
The DM route is the one to plan for. Van der Blom says moving to a DM after real engagement converts better than a public link and costs the post nothing, though no figure is given for it.
A practical rule for founders sharing a blog post or a demo
Write the post so it is worth reading without the click, then decide where the link goes by what you want from that one post. Three common cases:
| You are sharing | Body of the post | The link |
|---|---|---|
| A new blog post | The three main points in plain sentences, plus one number from the article | Last line of the post if you want reads; none if you want reach, then DM it to commenters |
| A product demo or launch | The problem, one screenshot or short video, and who it is for | Booking link in Featured; in the post only on launch day |
| Someone else's research | Your take and what it means for your buyers | In the post, credited; it is the reason the post exists |
A template for the blog case:
- Line 1: the finding, as a number. "[X] of the [Y] [things] we checked had [problem]."
- Lines 2 to 4: what you found, one sentence each, with no link needed to follow it.
- Line 5: what you would do differently, in one sentence.
- Last line: either the link ("Full write-up: [URL]") or a question ("How are you handling [problem]?").
For more starting structures, our 12 LinkedIn post templates with hooks cover the common formats.
Run your own five-and-five test
Pick ten posts
Plan ten posts on similar topics and in the same format, from the same account, over two to three weeks.
Alternate the link
Five posts with the link in the body, five with no link anywhere. Post at your usual times. Don't edit after posting.
Log three numbers after 7 days
Impressions, comments and link clicks for each post. Use your site analytics for clicks.
Compare medians
Medians, not averages, because one viral post skews an average. If the link posts brought more clicks per post, keep links in the body for click goals.
If both sets score close to zero, the link is not your problem. Start with our checklist for zero engagement on LinkedIn.
If you post through Siela's LinkedIn Presence agent, set publishing to "show me every post first" for the test weeks, so you see each post before it goes out.
Frequently asked questions
Does LinkedIn hide comments that contain links?
LinkedIn hasn't said so. Its comments help page says comments can be sorted by Most relevant or Most recent and that some comments will only be visible under Most recent view, without saying which. Richard van der Blom's July 2026 analysis claims comments with links are hidden from everyone except the author in up to 80% of cases. The method behind that figure isn't public.
Does adding the link by editing the post later avoid the penalty?
Not reliably. Richard van der Blom's July 2026 analysis says the edit-after tactic can work briefly but has a ceiling, and that heavy edits can hurt a post, and advises editing no more than a small share of the original copy. LinkedIn publishes no rule either way. If clicks are the goal, putting the link in from the start is simpler.
Do links hurt LinkedIn company pages more than personal profiles?
In one vendor's data, yes. Ordinal's August 2026 analysis says company pages carry most of the reach penalty from external links, while personal profiles show almost none. No other study we read breaks the numbers down by account type, so a founder posting from a personal profile should test before assuming either way.
Is a link to a LinkedIn Newsletter treated better than an external link?
Not in the one test we found. Paul Austin-Menear's December 2025 experiment found the group of posts linking to a LinkedIn Newsletter generated 493 impressions, against 436 for the Substack-link group and 1,186 for the no-link group. The author flags the small sample. Richard van der Blom says newsletters themselves aren't penalised for links inside them, which is a different claim.
Does adding more than one link reduce the penalty?
Richard van der Blom's data on about 300,000 posts from March to June 2026 says two or three links cost about 7% of reach, against 16% for one link, and that more links push the cost to about 24%. Van der Blom also says the multi-link advantage shrank within weeks. These are van der Blom's own figures with no published method, so treat them as one analysis to test, not a rule.
Sources
- LinkedIn Help: LinkedIn relevance - Optimizing the member experience (checked 24 Oct 2026)
- LinkedIn Help: Comment on posts and reply to a comment (checked 24 Oct 2026)
- LinkedIn Professional Community Policies (checked 24 Oct 2026)
- Richard van der Blom: #67 The Link Penalty Just Changed. Most People Missed It. (26 Jul 2026)
- LinkPost (Yannis Haismann): Do external links kill your LinkedIn reach? (-36%) (12 Jul 2026)
- Ordinal: LinkedIn Link Penalties: Does Posting with Links Hurt Reach? (8 Aug 2026)
- Paul Austin-Menear (The Journey, Six Catalysts): Does LinkedIn Hate Substack? (2 Dec 2025; updated 30 Dec 2025)
- ContentIn: What Is the LinkedIn External Link Penalty? (22 Jul 2026)
- Bulldog Reporter (Agility PR Solutions): The LinkedIn link tax (26 Aug 2026)