Is Linktree bad for SEO?

As a small business owner, you know how important it is to connect with your audience and grow your email list. You probably spent time creating an opt-in to help your ideal customer and encourage them to join your email list so you can nurture them while building your like and trust factors so they’re more likely to work with you or buy from you in the future. If you’re wondering what an opt-in is, start with this post and then come back here. Have you set up a link in your bio that uses a link tree or a similar service to share your opt-in links?  It seems like a great option at first.  But have you heard people say not to use it, and you’re wondering if Linktree is bad for SEO? Have you made a mistake by setting it up?  

Take a deep breath; it’s going to be OK.

Is Linktree bad for SEO?

Technically, using a tool such as Linktree doesn't hurt your SEO directly, but it’s not helping you either because you’re sending valuable website traffic to someone else. I know the appeal of an easy-to-use solution such as Linktree is high up there – I get it; I even used it briefly before creating a page for my website.

 Listen to the podcast here.

What’s better than Linktree for SEO?

But if you’re here to learn about SEO and drive more traffic to your website, I want you to avoid using a tool like Linktree for your link in the bio and instead create a page on your website. Drive traffic to your website, not someone else’s site.

The benefits of creating a freebies page on your website

You’ll help yourself in several ways if you make freebies or opt-in landing pages on your website. First, the traffic comes directly to you rather than through a 3rd party tool. Second, you have a chance to customize that page much more than you can Linktree; you get people used to coming to your website from the beginning.

What information should you have on your freebies or opt-ins page?

Include links to your most important opt-ins. You’ll find links to my SEO Content Quick Start Guides and free SEO classes on my Freebies page. Those are the resources most people are looking for when they’re headed to my website for a freebie.

If you’re curious, you can check out my Freebies page here – I replaced Linktree with it a few months ago and now drive the traffic directly to my website rather than through a 3rd party.

If you are active on social media or have a YouTube channel, you can also highlight it on that page. If you have a blog post that’s super important to your ideal customer, you could even include it at the bottom of the freebies page with a simple message that if they’re looking for more information, this post is a great place to start.

Help improve your SEO

The freebies or opt-ins page on your website rather than Linktree will help your SEO by showing additional authority on your subject. You’re also creating internal links from the freebies page to the landing pages for your opt-ins, which is good. Google follows the links on websites to help it discover more content.

While using Linktree isn’t technically hurting your SEO, the fact that it’s not helping is enough reason to stop using it and create a page for yourself.

Does Linktree Hurt your SEO Podcast Epiosde Transcript 

Welcome back to the sSmple SEO Content podcast today. We're going to dig into a burning question that I've gotten from several of you. Is Linktree bad for SEO. I am your host, Rachel Lindteigen president and founder of Etched Marketing and Etched Marketing Academy. And I'm here to help you learn all about SEO, content, marketing, blogging, all the ways to grow your business through organic marketing. So let's dive right in.

What is Linktree?

If you're not yet familiar with link tree. It's used by a lot of people. I used it myself at one point for social media. That's kind of the main place that it's used is for that link in bio, because remember until recently Instagram only gave you one link in your bio. Now they give you, I believe it's five, but you only have one in your bio up until just very recently. So you were kind of limited. To how you could use that link in bio to drive people to your website, or to get them, to follow you, to get them onto your email list, et cetera. So linktree was a very viable solution. However, a lot of people are talking about link tree and how it relates to SEO. Now that more people are getting interested in SEO, it's suddenly become a little more popular. In part because our social media channels are becoming search engines and also because of so many of the privacy changes with things like Facebook ads are a little more challenging today. So a lot of people are coming over to the SEO side. They're trying to learn more about organic marketing, which is fantastic, but we get a lot of questions and a lot of confusion because of that. So. Let's talk about this today and is Linktree bad? Is it good? Is there a better alternative?

Why is Linktree Popular?

So Linktree is popular for several reasons. First off it's free or it has a free version that works fine and it's easy to set up. All you do is open a Linktree account, put in your link information there, and it creates a little landing page for you. So when people click on that link in your bio, it brings up your options for your landing page and so it shows them all the different opt-ins that you have. And the reason you want opt-ins is you want to grow your email list. So maybe you have a freebie or a webinar or a free training, or you want to tell them about your podcast. You put all that information on your Linktree. So it's great in that respect. 

Does Linktree Hurt your SEO?

However, it's not so great. Because it's not driving traffic to your website. You're unnecessarily giving your traffic to a third party in exchange for ease of use and a free tool. So it's not hurting your SEO, but it's also not helping your SEO because your going to lose. You're missing out on those social signals in those engagement metrics that Google would be getting for your website.

You're also missing out on the traffic because the traffic coming from a link in your bio to your website is going to be more engaged. They're more interested in what you have. They're likely to click to get your freebies. They're likely to join your email list, but they're also likely to check out additional content and spend more time on your site.

Why is Linktree a concern for SEO?

If you're sending them somewhere like Linktree. They can't do that because they're not on your site. So that's really the biggest concern is why would you send traffic to someone else when you could bring them to your website? 

When you are working on search engine optimization, you're working on growing your business. You're working on growing your marketing. You really want to focus on bringing people to your website, not sending them somewhere else because bringing them to your website helps you. You want to get them used to coming to your site, which is really important. It gets them used to looking to you as an expert or a resource that they want to talk to. They want to hear from you. 

It also shows Google that people trust your site and that they engage with your site. They spend time on it, they get your downloads, they request more information. These are all really good engagement signal signals. For Google that will potentially help with your keyword rankings that will potentially help drive additional traffic to your website. So it's really important that you bring them to your site, not hand them off to someone else's site. 

What can you do Instead?

So how do you do this? You can create a freebies landing page on your own website. It's actually pretty easy to do if you're not sure what this looks like or how to do it. I have one. It's patterned very much after what I had on Linktree initially. But it's just etchedmarketing.com forward slash freebies. Or if you go to the website edge marketing.com, you'll see it in the navigation at the right and you can click on my freebies tab  get a look at it, take a look, get a feel for it. You'll see that I have my free classes on there and I have my opt-ins all my SEO content, quick start guides and my traffic plans and anything like that. The resources are on my website. So rather than sending somebody away to link tree, I now direct them to my website and say, Hey, grab whatever you need on my freebies page. It's all right there for you. It makes it really easy. All they have to do is click that link and it takes them to the registration page for the free courses, or it takes them to the landing page where they can sign up for the SEO content, quick start guide or the 90 day traffic plan, whatever it is that they're looking for. It's right there. So it makes it really easy.

Creating your Freeies Page

And I want you to do the same type thing. Go ahead and look at my, and use it as an example. It doesn't matter. You're going to customize it to your business and your colors and your brands and your fonts and your opt-ins. So unless you're going to try and you know, copy mine verbatim, including my opt-ins. I don't really care. Please. Don't copy my opt-ins. Those are specific to me. I've created them for you. But use that as a guide to help you create one for your business.

As you're going to take your page, you're going to create a page, give it a super easy name, like freebies. Then you're going to want to add in, if you have a webinar or you have a free training, anything like that, add that in. If you have any opt-ins meaning you've created an opt-in to help build your email list, add those on there. Put whatever information you want. If you want to tell them they can follow you on social, you can add that at the bottom and the link to your social media channels so that they know how to find you on social. 

Why this matters to your SEO and Google

These are people who are here, they're warm. They're very interested in who you are and what you teach, and they want to learn more from you. So make it easy for them, help them learn more from you. So the benefit here, the benefit of having it on your site versus using Linktree. So it's still free. It's still easy. The benefit is now the traffic is coming to your website. You're no longer giving your traffic away to Linktree. They're coming to you. They're going to be engaged. They're going to read through your content on your opt-in page. They're going to opt-in to some of it. Google's going to see some of those really good engagement metrics and some of those signals to help them understand that people like your site. Also. If other sites find that you're a really good resource for these type things. It's possible. They could link back to your freebies page, which would help build your domain authority. Which makes it easier for you to rank for additional keywords. Generally the higher the domain authority, the more likely the website is to rank for any given keyword. So that's another little benefit. 

Building Your Authority with Google

The other thing is it just helps you to really showcase your authority on a given subject and your authority, your expertise, all of that is important to Google. With some of the latest algorithm updates, the really, truly looking for people who are experts, who have experienced this has been updated and changed more since chat GPT became such a big focus within the community in the last couple of months. Google really wants to make sure that they are showing information from people who are experts in their field, they have background, they have information.

Do you have to do this Today?

So this helps to showcase your authority, which could help you as well. So it's really important that you do this. It's not hurting you, if you're in a place right now where you have a Linktree page and you're listening to this episode and you're thinking, oh, my gosh, I have to change this immediately. and I don't know how I'm gonna fit this in because I've got 900 other things to do, and the kids are getting out of school next week, where the kids are out on out of school now, and camp doesn't start and you're just trying to juggle and you're in survival mode. Don't panic okay. This is not something that you have to change today. You're not hurting yourself by using Linktree. You're not damaging your SEO. You are however, limiting your SEO by using it. So just add it to your priority list, go ahead and plan on  moving and migrating away from Linktree and over to a freebies page on your own site, but you don't have to panic and do it today. Okay. So deep breath. It's going to be okay. All right.

If you have any questions about this, you know how to find me, you can DM me on Instagram @etchedmarketingacademy. If you're curious and you want to learn more, check out my freebies page and join me in the free SEO class. And then I am opening up enrollment in simple SEO content as well. All right, that's it for today's episode, I will see you right back here next week. Thanks so much. Bye for now.