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Ye Olde Blog of SEO
Feb 01

LinkedIn’s Permalinks are Down Right Ugly

As many of you know, I’m not a huge fan of LinkedIn. I mean, I don’t despise them as I do Yelp or even the BBB, but I put LinkedIn into the category of “weird, confusing, and challenging.”

So today I decided to point out the ugliness and non-SEO friendliness of LinkedIn’s permalinks. As a programmer, I get it. I am able to look at these parameters and pretty much figure out how the server rendered these URIs. As a person, I am scratching my head at how someone has not cleaned this mess up.

Log into LinkedIn for the first time, you get this.

https://www.linkedin.com/nhome/?trk=

Normally you get a clean “www.example.com” but LinkedIn just has to add garbage.

Let’s navigate on over to my company website:

https://www.linkedin.com/company/2585194?trk=tyah&trkInfo=idx%3A2-1-2%2CtarId%3A1422766368982%2Ctas%3Aelite+strategies

Quite the mystery again. Companies do have much cleaner URLs:

http://www.linkedin.com/company/elite-strategies

However that is not in the mix for LinkedIn.

Let’s browse for some jobs:

https://www.linkedin.com/job/home?trk=nav_responsive_sub_nav_jobs

Or browse the Moz user group:

https://www.linkedin.com/groups?mostRecent=&gid=2976409&trk=my_groups-tile-flipgrp

Oh, let’s sign up for a premium account:

https://www.linkedin.com/premium/products?displayProducts=&trk=nav_responsive_sub_nav_upgrade

Edit my profile (just plain scary)

https://www.linkedin.com/profile/edit?goback=.nas_*1_*1_*1_*1_*1

Forget SEO, this is so bad for UX

In this day in age, it is very common for folks to copy / paste URLs and send them via email, Skype, or (gasp) even copy them down on a piece of paper.

How on Earth does LinkedIn expect me to write this URL down:

https://www.linkedin.com/profile/view?id=203195684&authType=NAME_SEARCH&authToken=DgzL&locale=en_US&trk=tyah2&trkInfo=idx%3A1-1-1%2CtarId%3A1422766391393%2Ctas%3Ajulian+flynn

Yes, I am a savvy individual and I can find the friendly URL (after a lot of searching)

https://www.linkedin.com/in/juliantrueflynn

But again, in 2015 why isn’t this “fixed?”

I’ve written about a number of ridiculous “features” of LinkedIn over the years.

LinkedIn needs to get their shit together. They have an incredible user base and a great concept. Their front end absolutely sucks. It is so confusing and cumbersome. Every time I visit LinkedIn I am presented with a different experience, and more questions.

About The Author

Patrick is an SEO blogger and the founder of Elite Strategies, an SEO and internet marketing agency located in Delray Beach, FL.