How to Get Backlinks from LinkedIn: A Practical Guide for Small Businesses

Yes, you can get backlinks from LinkedIn. Your profile, company page, articles and posts can all link to your website. Most of those links are nofollow, so their direct ranking power is limited. The real wins are referral traffic, brand trust, and the relationships that earn links on other websites.

This guide is written for UK small business owners, not SEO professionals. It explains where LinkedIn links can live, what they can and cannot do for your rankings, and the steps to use them well — without spam or shortcuts.

What counts as a backlink from LinkedIn?

A backlink from LinkedIn is simply any link on LinkedIn that points to your website. That could be the website link on your personal profile, the one on your company page, a link inside a LinkedIn article you publish, or one you share in a post. Each is a real link a visitor can click.

The main places a link to your site can live on LinkedIn are:

• Your personal profile’s website and contact info section.
• Your profile’s Featured section, where you can showcase a page or article.
• Your company page’s website field, visible to every visitor.
• Links inside LinkedIn articles you publish under your own name.
• Links in posts you share from your profile or company page.
• Links you leave in comments on other people’s posts.

Not all of these carry equal weight. Profile and company page links are permanent and visible to anyone who finds you. Article and post links depend on people seeing the content. Comment links are the weakest, and the easiest to misuse.

Are LinkedIn backlinks dofollow?

No. LinkedIn marks its outbound links as nofollow or ugc, which tells search engines not to treat them as a straightforward vote of confidence in your site. Since 2019, Google has treated nofollow as a hint rather than a strict instruction. A nofollow link still sends real visitors and helps your site get discovered.

That does not make them worthless. LinkedIn has more than a billion members, and a credible profile builds trust when customers and journalists check you out. What a nofollow link will not do is act as a shortcut to higher rankings.

Treat LinkedIn links as part of a wider small business SEO effort, not the whole strategy. Their value is the traffic they bring and the conversations they start — some leading to genuine, followed links elsewhere.

How to get backlinks from LinkedIn

Getting backlinks from LinkedIn starts with the links you control: a complete personal profile and a complete company page, each pointing to your website. From there, publishing articles, sharing content properly and taking part in conversations adds more links and, more importantly, more chances for people to visit and remember your business.

Complete your personal profile and add your website link

People buy from people, and your personal profile is usually the first version of you a prospect meets. Fill in your headline, summary and experience properly, use a clear photo, and add your website in the contact info section so viewers are one click from your site.

Then use the Featured section: pin your most useful page, perhaps your main service page, rather than leaving it empty. It takes minutes and stays there, working quietly.

Set up a complete LinkedIn company page with your website link

A company page gives your business its own presence on LinkedIn, separate from you personally. Complete every field: description, industry, location, logo and, most importantly here, your website address in the website field, where visitors expect to find it.

Keep the page alive by posting occasionally — new work, useful tips, company news. A page untouched for years suggests the business has stalled. A modest but current page supports the trust your website is building.

Publish LinkedIn articles that link to deeper guides on your own site

LinkedIn lets you publish long-form articles under your own name. Use them to cover a topic your customers care about in summary form, then link to the fuller guide on your website. The article earns the attention; your site provides the depth.

Keep the links natural — one or two per article, placed where readers want more detail. An article that exists only to push links persuades nobody. Written honestly, they position you as knowledgeable and send your site a steady trickle of visitors.

Share your content with genuine commentary (not bare link-drops)

When you publish something new on your website, share it on LinkedIn — but write a real post around the link. Explain who it helps and ask a question your audience might answer. A link shared with thought gets clicked; a bare link gets scrolled past.

This matters for local SEO too: posts about work done in your area get shared by exactly the local audience you want to reach.

Take part in relevant groups and conversations

LinkedIn groups and comment threads under popular posts in your industry are where your customers and partners spend time. Join the ones relevant to your trade and area and answer questions helpfully. Your profile — with its website link — sits behind every comment you leave.

The link doing the work is your profile link, reached by people who valued your contribution. Slower than dropping your URL everywhere, but it builds a reputation instead of risking one.

Turn connections into collaborations

The most valuable links LinkedIn produces rarely appear on LinkedIn itself. A connection can become a guest post on a partner’s blog, an interview on an industry site, or a mention in someone else’s article — and those links, on their websites, are usually the followed kind.

Start by being useful: share connections’ work, introduce people who should meet, comment with substance. Collaboration offers land far better from someone trusted than from a stranger.

Use LinkedIn for outreach to journalists and bloggers

Journalists, podcasters and bloggers are all on LinkedIn, and many are open to good approaches. Follow those who cover your industry or region, engage with their work first, and when you have something genuinely newsworthy — a survey, an unusual project, a local story — pitch it briefly and politely.

This is digital PR in its simplest form. Coverage in a local paper’s online edition or an industry publication brings a link from a trusted website, worth far more than dozens of profile links.

Get your team linking consistently

If you employ anyone, their profiles are part of your presence too. Encourage staff to list your business as their employer — which links their profile to your company page — and to include the company website in their contact details where appropriate.

It costs nothing. But when a prospect checks your team before enquiring — and many do — consistent, complete profiles make the business look established and joined-up.

What not to do

Avoid anything that treats LinkedIn as a link vending machine. Dropping your website address into unrelated comment threads, buying links, joining link-exchange schemes, or sending mass connection requests followed instantly by a pitch will not improve your rankings. At best it wastes time; at worst it damages your reputation and your account.

The specific risks are worth spelling out:

• LinkedIn can restrict or suspend accounts that spam members or automate outreach.
• Google’s link-spam policies cover bought links and manipulative schemes, and pages benefiting from them can be demoted or removed.
• Other members remember spam. A business known for it locally has done itself lasting harm.

It is simply a poor return on effort. The honest methods above take a little longer, but everything they build stays built.

How to check your LinkedIn backlinks are working

You can check whether your LinkedIn links are doing anything in three straightforward ways: look at how much traffic arrives from LinkedIn, see which LinkedIn pages Google has recorded as linking to you, and watch whether your profile and page are being viewed. No specialist software needed.

• In your website analytics, look at referral traffic from linkedin.com. Rising visits after you post show the links are being clicked.
• In Google Search Console, open the Links report. It lists external sites linking to yours, and LinkedIn pages appear there when Google has seen them.
• On LinkedIn itself, check your profile views and page analytics. More views from the right people mean your presence is growing.

Judge success by visitors and enquiries, not the count of links. Ten clicks from local business owners are worth more than a hundred links nobody follows.

Frequently asked questions

Small business owners usually ask the same four questions about LinkedIn links: whether they help rankings, how many they can get, whether articles make a difference, and whether posting links is risky. Here are straight answers to each, based on everything covered above.

Are LinkedIn backlinks good for SEO?

They help in indirect ways. LinkedIn links are nofollow, so they are not a direct ranking lever, but they bring referral traffic, help search engines discover your pages, and build trust that leads to coverage and links elsewhere.

How many backlinks can you get from LinkedIn?

There is no fixed number. You control at least two — your profile link and your company page link — and every article, post and Featured item can add more. What matters is whether people see and click them: a handful of well-placed links beats dozens ignored.

Do LinkedIn articles help SEO?

Indirectly, yes. Articles put your expertise in front of your network and link readers through to fuller guides on your website. That traffic, and the reputation articles build, support your SEO even though the links are nofollow.

Can posting links get your LinkedIn account restricted?

Posting your own content normally is fine. Restrictions come from spam-like behaviour: bulk connection requests, automated messaging, and repeatedly dropping promotional links into other people’s threads. Share at a human pace, take part genuinely, and there is nothing to worry about.

Next steps

Backlinks from LinkedIn are one part of a bigger picture: content, technical health and local presence. If you would like help putting it together, our SEO services cover everything from on-page optimisation to local search for UK small businesses. Or contact Zee Developers and tell us where your website stands today.