The short version: a LinkedIn profile link is simply the web address that points to your public LinkedIn profile, something like linkedin.com/in/yourname, and you create a clean one by going into your profile settings and editing the custom URL field instead of leaving it as the default jumble of numbers LinkedIn assigns you. It takes about ninety seconds. Most people have never done it, which is why so many business cards and email signatures still have URLs that look like a password reset gone wrong.
What a LinkedIn profile link is
Every single person on LinkedIn has a public profile URL whether they know it or not. The moment you sign up, LinkedIn assigns you one automatically, and it usually looks something like linkedin.com/in/john-smith-8823947b. That string of numbers and letters at the end is generated by LinkedIn’s system, not by you, and it is not designed to be memorable, shareable, or something you’d want printed on a business card.
Your profile link is what people use to find you outside the platform. You put it in your email signature, on your CV, on your website, in your Instagram bio if you’re doing cross-promotion, on a conference lanyard, in a proposal document. It’s the door that leads back to your professional presence, and unlike a lot of things in marketing, this one is entirely within your control to tidy up.
It’s worth separating two things people often confuse: your profile link (the public URL to your profile) and your profile itself (the actual page with your photo, headline, experience and posts). The link is just the address. What happens once someone clicks it is a completely different conversation, and honestly the more important one, which I’ll come back to.
The default link is a mess, and it’s costing you more than you think
I had a client a few years back, a roofing contractor called Dave, who’d had 3,000 business cards printed with his LinkedIn URL on the back. The URL was linkedin.com/in/david-thompson-847293-b2. Nobody was ever going to type that into their phone standing in a driveway with a cup of tea going cold. He’d spent money getting cards printed with a link that was functionally useless the moment it left the digital world, because nobody memorises a string of random numbers, and most people won’t bother copying it out letter by letter either.
That’s the practical cost. There’s also a credibility cost. A messy default URL signals, fairly or not, that someone hasn’t bothered to tidy up the basics. It’s a small thing, but small things add up when someone is deciding whether to trust you with their business. A clean URL like linkedin.com/in/davidthompsonroofing takes the same ninety seconds to fix as it does to complain about it.
How to create your custom LinkedIn profile link, step by step
Here’s exactly how to do it, whether you’re on desktop or mobile, because the process is slightly different on each.
On desktop
- Log into LinkedIn and click the “Me” icon at the top of the homepage.
- Click “View Profile.”
- On the right-hand side of your profile, find the “Edit public profile & URL” box and click it.
- On the new page, look for “Edit your custom URL” in the top right, next to your public profile URL.
- Click the pencil icon.
- Type in your preferred ending, then click “Save.”
On mobile
- Tap your profile photo, then tap “View Profile.”
- Tap the “More” button (or the three dots), then “Share profile” or the edit icon depending on your app version.
- Look for “Edit Public Profile & URL” under the settings menu.
- Tap the pencil icon next to your URL and type the ending you want.
A few technical limits worth knowing before you type anything in: LinkedIn only allows letters, numbers and hyphens in the custom section, no spaces, no full stops, no underscores. The whole custom portion needs to sit within LinkedIn’s character limit, which in practice means somewhere between 3 and 100 characters, though anything over 30 or so starts looking unwieldy and defeats the point. And here’s the bit that catches people out: the ending has to be unique across the entire platform. If your name is common, plain “janesmith” will almost certainly be taken, so you’ll need a variation, your middle initial, your job title, your business name, or a number that at least means something, like a founding year.
What to put in your custom URL
The obvious choice is your first name and last name run together, no hyphen needed unless LinkedIn forces one on you. If that’s taken, here’s the order I’d try things in:
- Firstname plus middle initial plus lastname
- Firstname lastname plus your industry or role, e.g. lilachbullockspeaker or lilachbullockai
- Firstname lastname plus your business name, if it’s short
- Firstname lastname plus a location, if you’re deliberately targeting local search, e.g. for a tradesperson or consultant working a specific region
Avoid stuffing keywords in there thinking it’ll help your search ranking. It won’t meaningfully move your position in LinkedIn’s own search, and it makes the link harder to read and remember, which defeats the entire point of customising it in the first place. Readability beats cleverness every time.
Where your profile link should live once it’s fixed
Once you’ve got a clean URL, use it everywhere, consistently. Email signature, CV, speaker one-sheets, guest bio blurbs, your website’s “about” or “contact” page, your Google Business Profile if you’re a service provider, printed materials, and anywhere you’re asked for a “website” field on a form that doesn’t have its own dedicated LinkedIn slot.
One thing worth knowing if you’ve ever ended up with more than one LinkedIn presence, perhaps a personal profile and a separate one you set up years ago for a business that no longer exists, is that the rules around how many LinkedIn profiles one person can have are stricter than most people assume, and having two live profiles floating around with different links can confuse the people you’re trying to reach, sending some of them to a dead or outdated version of you.
The uncomfortable truth about the link itself
Here’s the part that most guides on this topic skip over because it’s less satisfying than a tidy checklist: your custom URL is a hygiene item, not a growth lever. Getting it right takes ninety seconds and fixes an embarrassment, but it will not bring you a single new client, follower or conversation on its own. I’ve watched business owners spend an entire afternoon agonising over whether their URL should include their middle name or their job title, while their actual profile photo is a blurry crop from a wedding four years ago and their last post went up in 2023.
That’s backwards. The link is the envelope. What matters is what’s inside it, your headline, your recent activity, whether you’ve posted anything worth reading in the last month, whether your experience section reads like a CV nobody asked for or like proof you solve real problems. Polishing the envelope while ignoring the letter is comforting because it feels like progress without requiring you to put yourself out there. If you want your LinkedIn link to do any real work for you, the honest fix is to spend those ninety seconds on the URL and then spend the rest of your effort on figuring out what type of content performs best on LinkedIn right now and posting it, consistently, for months, not days.
What people see when they click your link
It’s worth knowing what happens on the other end. By default, most sections of your profile are visible to anyone with the link, logged in or not, though some detail is hidden from people who aren’t LinkedIn members at all. If someone views your profile while logged in, and you’ve got the setting turned on, they’ll show up in your “who viewed your profile” panel, which cuts both ways. If you’re curious about the reverse, whether you can look at someone else’s profile without them knowing you were there, it’s possible to view a LinkedIn profile anonymously, but it comes with real trade-offs to your own visibility that most people don’t think through before switching the setting.
One more practical wrinkle: if your account has ever been flagged or restricted, you may find you temporarily can’t edit your public profile settings, including your custom URL, until the restriction lifts. It’s one of the lesser-known knock-on effects, and if you’re ever confused about why an edit isn’t saving, it’s worth checking why a LinkedIn account might be temporarily restricted before assuming you’ve done something wrong with the URL itself.
Common mistakes I see with profile links
- Leaving the default numeric URL for years because nobody explained it could be changed.
- Changing the URL and then never updating it anywhere it was already printed or pasted, so old business cards, old email signatures and old website footers all point to a broken or outdated link.
- Adding a company name to the URL and then leaving that company years later, so the link no longer describes who you are.
- Trying to cram a full job title and location into the custom section, ending up with something 60 characters long that nobody will ever type from memory.
- Assuming a tidy link substitutes for an active profile, when it’s the opposite that’s true, an active profile makes even a slightly clunky link worth clicking.
A quick real-world test
Here’s a test I use with clients. Open a new blank email, type your LinkedIn link from memory, no copying and pasting, no looking it up. If you can’t do it, nobody else can either, and that link is not going to work for you at networking events, on the phone, or in any situation where someone asks “what’s your LinkedIn” and expects you to say it out loud rather than send a text. If your link passes that test, it’s doing its job. If it doesn’t, it takes less time to fix than it took you to read this section.
Related reading: how many channels can you create on youtube.
Frequently asked questions
What does a LinkedIn profile link look like?
A clean LinkedIn profile link looks like linkedin.com/in/yourname, using only letters, numbers and hyphens after the “/in/” section. The default version LinkedIn assigns automatically is longer and includes a string of random numbers, which most people replace with a custom version.
How do I find my current LinkedIn profile link?
Go to your own profile page and check the address bar at the top of your browser, or on desktop click “Me,” then “View Profile,” and look at the URL displayed there. On mobile, tap your profile, then the “Share profile” or “Contact info” option, which will show your current public URL.
Can I change my LinkedIn profile link more than once?
Yes, but LinkedIn limits how often you can change it in a short period, and there’s a short waiting window before you can reuse an old ending once you’ve released it, so it’s worth choosing carefully rather than changing it repeatedly for small tweaks.
Does having a custom LinkedIn URL help my search ranking?
Not meaningfully within LinkedIn’s own search, and it has no direct effect on Google ranking either. Its real value is human readability and credibility, someone being able to remember, type or trust your link, not any algorithmic boost.
