Which platform is the best? //

The rise in popularity of social media has brought about the “link in bio” tool, which allows users to create landing pages with multiple links that they wish to share with their audience.

They were originally created to circumvent Instagram’s one link rule. Many brands and influencers use them in other social networks to share content with just one link. Many people consider their link in-bio page to be a replacement for a website.

However, they are not good for ranking in search engine results. This article will examine ‘link in Bio’ platforms from an SEO perspective.

These platforms are also known as “link page” apps and “social media landing pages” tools. They have practically proliferated overnight.

These are distinguished by their short, trendy names, which often combine with unique top-level domains to create phonetically spelled wordgrams that can be easily understood (like “linktr.ee”, and “hoo.be”.

Surprisingly many social media influencers choose these simple link pages over custom-built websites that can do anything they want.

Websites can be difficult to maintain so these one-page platforms fill a niche.

However, ease-of-use and convenience are not the only factors that matter when it comes down to your online presence. SEO (Search engine optimization) is still important for increasing a brand’s visibility within search results.

Search engines rank more popular and high-quality content higher in search results. One way search engines determine popularity is through linking analysis.

Popular social media profiles will likely have already gained large amounts of “rankingweight” because Google analyses the link graph in the social network where the account is situated.

Popular social media accounts can also be mentioned on other social networks’ posts or on many webpages (i.e. news articles and elsewhere).

Your link-in-bio platform can have an impact on how effective your link weight flows to other accounts or webpages where you are not as popular.

While there are many things to consider when selecting a platform for your business, SEO is an important aspect.

The following comparison matrix will help you determine which link listing page platforms are best from an SEO perspective.

These are the most popular ‘link in Bio’ platforms, ranked from the top to the bottom.


Site
Custom Page URL Formula
Are You Following Links?
Indexed Pages
Additional Notes
linktr.ee linktr.ee/[yourname] Yes 4,010,000 One of the most-used link-in-profile services, Linktree has JavaScripted construction, but it appears to be engineered to be search-engine-friendly.
taplink.cc taplink.cc/[yourname] Yes 332,000 Although the site uses JavaScript content delivery, it appears well-engineered to be search engine friendly. Contactin.bio was previously the site.
carrd.co [yourname].carrd.co Yes 317,000
instabio.cc instabio.cc/[random ID] or paid option: instabio.cc/[yourname] Yes 277,000 Some themes are better than others. Some themes may only be JavaScript content delivery.
carbonmade.com [yourname].carbonmade.com Yes 61,100
solo.to solo.to/[yourname] Yes 48,400
direct.me direct.me/[yourname] Yes 30,600
withkoji.com withkoji.com/@[yourname] Yes 18,000 Although the site uses JavaScript content delivery, it appears well-engineered to be search engine friendly.
wlo.link wlo.link/@[yourname] Yes 10,300
lynxinbio.com lynxinbio.com/[yourname] Yes 8,570
8b.io [yourname].8b.io Yes 7,820
hoo.be hoo.be/[yourname] Yes 6,710
my.playbookapp.io my.playbookapp.io/[yourname] Yes 6,230 This is more of a rev-share app for athletes/trainers/coaches. It is a great format for those who are in this niche.
contactin.bio [yourname].contactin.bio Yes 4,530
url.bio url.bio/[yourname] Yes 1,740 All page titles identical (“Link In Bio Tool-One URL. Unlimited Links | url.bio”). Although the site supports JavaScript delivery, it appears well-engineered to be search engine friendly.
tapkit.com tapk.it/[yourname] Yes 500 Although the site uses JavaScript content delivery, it appears well-engineered to be search engine friendly.
about.me about.me/[yourname] No 1,270,000 Good construction is important – Google may ignore nofollows on many pages.
msha.ke msha.ke/[yourname]/ No: rel=”UGC” 148,000
shor.by shor.by/[yourname] Yes, but links 302 are redirected. 82,800 * All links seem to have been replaced automatically by shor.by.302 temporary redirects. It is more difficult to determine how many shor.by pages Google has indexed than just redirects because of the redirected links. It is likely to be one-fourth or one-half of the number reflected in this count.
beacons.ai beacons.ai/[yourname] No 82,400 Strangely, beacons.ai pages contain robots meta tags instructing “index, Follow,” but individual links have rel=”nofollow,” which is still not optimal.
campsite.bio campsite.bio/[yourname] No: rel=”UGC” 35,800
lu.ma lu.ma/[yourname] No 20,500 Lu.ma functions more as an online event-hosting service than a provider of link pages.
elink.io elink.io/p/[yourname] No 19,000 JavaScript page construction could render search engines inaccessible to content.
tap.bio tap.bio/@[yourname] N/A: JS Links 13,100 Nonoptimal JavaScript content delivery.
linkin.bio linkin.bio/[yourname] N/A: JS Links 8,390 All pages with identical titles (“Linkin.bio”), and nonoptimal JavaScript content delivery.
biolinky.co biolinky.co/[yourname] No 8,230
skedsocial.com sked.link/[yourname] N/A: JS Links 1,300 Nonoptimal JavaScript content delivery.
c8ke.com [yourname].c8ke.com N/A: JS Links 809
getsl.ink www.getsl.ink/[yourname] N/A: JS Links 700 JavaScript page construction could render search engines inaccessible to content.
visitstore.bio visitstore.bio/[yourname] N/A: JS Links 700 Sprinklr provides microsites. This cleverly associates thumbnails of each of your Instagram photos with a link back to your website or another page. It allows people who see your Instagram posts to quickly browse your visitstore.bio page in order to find the thumbnail they want to click. Search engines may not be able to find the content due to JavaScript page construction.
hypage.com hy.page/[yourname] N/A: JS Links 600 JavaScript page construction could render search engines inaccessible to content.
iglinks.io www.iglinks.io/[yourname] N/A: JS Links 408 Nonoptimal JavaScript content delivery.
bio.fm bio.fm/[yourname] Yes 165 Googlebot useragent seems to be blocked by bio.fm as profiles show a 503 status code.
manylink.co many.bio/[yourname] orlinksto.info/[yourname] N/A: JS Links 67 No HTML page titles. All content JavaScripted. Linksto.info links 301 redirects to a parallel many.bio. link.
shopinbio.com shopinbio.com/[yourname] Yes 60 Small multi-page/product shops. It appears to be more Kazakhstani-oriented, and is not fully baked yet.
linkinprofile.com linkinprofile.com/[yourname] No 7 It’s tempting to use, because once setup is complete, you just need to add a URL to an Instagram post. This will create a parallel linkinprofile.com post! These pages do not index and the links are not followed.
t.me t.me/[yourname] N/A 4,760,000 Telegram Messenger provides t.me landing pages. These pages are not link-in-bio pages but they are used as such. Although there is no way to add links to other websites, people do add links in plain text that is not clickable. These links are not optimal so they should be moved to the bottom.

Notes about the SEO assessment

Users can add “follow” links to the sites that are ranked highest on the list.

Google advised that websites that allow users to add links to their site should include a rel="nofollowin their code. This tells Google that the website is not endorsing that link. This stopped the flow of link weight values to pages linked to.

Google recently announced that they would sometimes count link weight.

Other attributes were also added: rel="ugc” to allow user-generated content, and rel="sponsored” to allow paid advertising or purchased hyperlinks.

It is safer to assume that Google will not count it, despite the blurred lines in Google’s position.

Next was the ability of the link-in bio provider to allow users to modify the URL.

As all providers allow users to include their handle in the URL, this is a standard feature.

(Use a sequence that closely matches your main brand name. Example: My name is Chris Smith, so a good handle/username would “chrissmith.”

Although shorter URLs are more beneficial in organic search rankings than others, it is so marginal that we didn’t count it.

Due to the nature of the business most link-in bio providers have already created short URLs.

Next, we looked at the number of profiles pages that the platform has indexed.

Popularity and indexability may be indicators of how well they will perform in search engines.

Google will also try to use signals and content from platforms that have more pages.

We also examined other factors that could affect search results, such as:

As you can see, a number of these sites are highly JavaScript-dependent. Although Google can successfully interpret some JavaScript, it still has problems rendering such content. This results in poor performance.

I was curious to know if Google displays page content in both text-only cached versions and cached versions.

Sometimes sites that used JavaScript content delivery displayed blanks. This means Google may not be able to see the page content.

Other, worse cases of JavaScripted websites showed identical generic snippets. This further indicates that Google didn’t see the unique content.

In a few cases, however, the content appeared to have been fully rendered and was visible by Google.

These sites may have successfully executed JavaScript to make them more machine-friendly. They will probably perform well, assuming they have clear titles, text and links.

All of this being said, here are my top 10 picks:

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Terms.

Google personnel have not, to my knowledge, spoken about link-in bio pages.

In general, Google is platform-agnostic. Google is unlikely to object to websites that are not platform-agnostic, unless they are being used to manipulate rankings.

It is acceptable to use a link-in bio page as a hub on your social media profiles.

Google wants companies and individuals to link their primary identities online in order to build their knowledge graph.

It is easier to identify the same entity if a subject has interlinked their social media sites.

John Mueller , Google search advocate, recently advised someone to link to their own social media profiles. You would trust the links to your profiles.

Nofollowing links means that you don’t trust or endorse the content of your links.

Mueller also recommends linking to your social media profiles via your website using rel="me_ to communicate that the properties are related and are authoritative for your identity.

All this being said, it could seem that Google would prefer that your main URL page not contain nofollow links to other profiles. This deductive reasoning is humorously funny.

There is a reason for those who operate link-in-bio pages platforms not to impose nofollow on links created by others. You could also use rel="me Ugc" to create links instead of Nofollow.

Even more important is the fact that search engine spiders must have access to the pages in order to be able to find them.

Brands and influencers who want to use link-in bio pages in their web presence management should pay attention to SEO-friendliness. This is more important than visual design options and costs.

If you want to maximize your social media presence, make sure that your platform includes proper SEO elements.

All your accounts can be found easily by your followers. They may rank highest for keywords and topics you are interested in.

Search Engine land.

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