TURBO-CHARGE YOUR URL

The URL is an acronym that stands for "Uniform Resource Locator". Rather boring mumbo jumbo unless you're a software engineer (Personally, I find it deliciously fascinating). At a very superficial level, it is a unique Internet address, essentially a webpage.

In LinkedIn, one is assigned to you when you first created an account, that URL links to your personal profile, like this one for example. Seems pretty straightforward, but there can be some pretty painful consequences if you manage it wrongly or carelessly, and some pretty nifty benefits if you give it some deeper thought.

1. When you first created your LinkedIn account, it comes with a default URL which is made up of your FirstName and LastName and a series of trailing meaningless numbers (Used to differentiate same names). It can look like this;

2. You can and should edit this URL to make it neater and more professional by removing the distracting trailing numbers.

3. [Done on laptop] - To start changing your profile URL - Go to your profile - on the right panel, look for "Public profile & URL" - Click on the pencil icon. See image below

4. When you remove the trailing numbers, it can sometimes result in a FirstName-LastName combination that is already in use. I suggest that you either turn the name around to LastName-FirstName, or add a special number behind like your year of birth or even Country to differentiate.

5. This is not a time to get too cute. Leave the flirty, political, religious or any form of activist message for another day. Often job applications (If you believe in that sort of thing), can ask for your LinkedIn URL.

6. For most situations, a neat simple version of your FirstName-LastName in the URL and you are set to go but....

PRO-TIP : There is good reason to consider using either your company name, your function or your technical speciality into your URL as well. This is because LinkedIn URLs are Google Indexed. When someone does a Google for these keywords, your LinkedIn profile is among the first few that gets picked up usually, often right at the top of the search index. (But it depends on whether you allowed your profile to be detected outside of LinkedIn - See point 7 below for the how to)

7. To ensure that the world outside of LinkedIn can see you, you need to turn on that switch. (Settings - Visibility - Edit your public profile - Look for Edit Visibility section on the right hand panel)

8. Some people do not wish to be searchable and intentionally leave their last name hidden (Settings - Visibility - Who can see your last name).

9. Even though your LastName can be hidden to non connections via the Settings (See point 8), your full name has already actually been "written" into the original URL at point of creating your account. So unless you also removed it from your Profile URL, that LastName gets easily exposed. That means that you think you are hiding but your royal butt is sticking out for the world to see.

DANGER WARNING PRO-TIP : If you wish to keep your LastName hidden from people who are not your 1st-degree connections. You need to also change your Profile URL to remove evidence of it there.

Try searching for someone on LinkedIn (not a connection) that does not show their LastName, click on the profile, then click on "Contact Info". This unfortunately reveals their hidden LastName. (assuming it has not been edited)

10. If you create content on LinkedIn, this content also has a URL assigned to it. Much more messy and complete with a whole bunch of programming-speak with variables, identifiers and weird parameter info. Your Profile URL is mixed into this whole pot of gobbledegook.

11. Changing your Profile URL as and when you wish can cause you a whole bunch of headaches and the message below starts to pop up like ants to a picnic, moths to a flame, relatives to a will reading.

DANGER WARNING PRO TIP : If you have been posting content for awhile, and you do send the links of these content out to others, either in a message, email or via text. And then you decide to change your URL address, all the links that you sent out before the change will be invalidated. This can be painful if you have been sending out links to your contacts to keep in touch, and they discover that now all links have failed.

DANGER WARNING - PRO TIP : If you have gone even further and created a Public Profile badge that you embedded into your own website or online resume, any changes to your LinkedIn URL will cause all these fall apart like that egg guy on the wall and soldiers and horses etc etc.

[Updated 18/01/24] - PRO TIP : If you get an invite from a flaky profile that you feel isn't quite right. The name, the profile picture and the experiences just don't match. Have a quick look at the Profile URL and you may discover that the name there and the name on the profile could be different and you then know for sure, it's a fake or hijacked account. (Thanks for Sheryl Quek making a comment that led to this added pro tip)

The Profile URL is a really cool feature that gives you back some control. There's actually quite a few other useful things related to this and I will share it in other posts on LinkedIn Tips & Tricks. (not the mention the other stuff that I share beyond just the superficial)

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More information about the LinkedIn Branding Fundamentals program I run. You can read what others say about the stuff I do. You can follow my profile or if you are adventurous enough, you can ring my bell.

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