How to add a link to your LinkedIn Featured section (the real rules, the right image size, and the click that goes nowhere)

You want to add a link to the Featured section of your LinkedIn profile. The click path is short — five taps, two minutes — and most guides stop there.

This one walks the path (desktop and mobile), then covers the four things those guides skip: (1) why Featured matters more in 2026 than it ever did — LinkedIn now penalizes in-feed external links by roughly 60%, and Featured is the slot the algorithm left open; (2) the right thumbnail dimensions (most guides say "custom thumbnail" without telling you the pixels); (3) how to force a fresh preview when LinkedIn cached the wrong image; and (4) what happens when a viewer actually taps your link from the LinkedIn mobile app — the part nobody writes about, and the part where most of the conversion you expected silently disappears.

what the Featured section is, and why it matters more in 2026

Featured sits directly below About, above Experience and Activity. Desktop shows it as a three-up grid; mobile renders it as a horizontal swipeable carousel. It is first-screen real estate on both surfaces and the highest-visibility link slot on your profile.

LinkedIn supports four content types in Featured: a post you created or re-shared, an article you published on LinkedIn, an external link, or an uploaded media file (image, document, presentation, or video). External link is what most people are here for.

The reason this slot matters more now than it did a couple of years ago is the 2026 algorithm. LinkedIn's depth-score-driven feed reduces reach on in-feed posts containing external links by approximately 60% (per algorithm reporting from groups like Gromming and others tracking the platform). The old "link in first comment" workaround has been caught up to and now carries its own suppression. Profile chrome was left alone: the Featured section is not a feed post, so the in-feed link penalty doesn't apply. Drive engagement on text-only or native posts, route the audience to your profile, and let them tap your Featured link from there.

That's the structural reason "check the link in my Featured section" has become the LinkedIn-equivalent of "link in bio." It isn't a trick to beat the algorithm; it's the slot LinkedIn left open after closing the in-feed one.

the step-by-step — desktop

Calm, numbered, exact label text. On Mac or PC web:

1. Open LinkedIn in your browser. Tap Me (your profile photo in the top navigation) → View profile.
2. If a Featured section already exists, scroll to it and tap the pencil icon to edit, then tap the + at the top right to add a new item.
3. If the Featured section doesn't exist yet, tap Add profile section (the button under your name and headline) → expand Recommended → tap Add featured.
4. In the panel that opens, tap + at the upper right → choose Add a link.
5. Paste the URL into the link field. Include https://.
6. LinkedIn fetches the destination and auto-generates a preview — title, description, image — from the destination's Open Graph meta tags. Read the preview before you save. The next section covers what to do when it's wrong.
7. Edit the title and description directly in the modal if you want to override what LinkedIn auto-pulled. Both fields are editable inline.
8. Tap Upload thumbnail if you want to replace the auto-pulled image with your own.
9. Tap Save.

The Featured item appears immediately on your profile and is visible to anyone who can view your profile. Reordering is only available once you have two or more Featured items, and removal is irreversible — per LinkedIn's own documentation, "once you remove a work sample from the Featured section, it can't be restored." If you might want it back later, save the URL and the thumbnail somewhere before deleting.

the step-by-step — mobile

iPhone first; Android is functionally identical:

1. Open the LinkedIn mobile app.
2. Tap your profile photo (top-left on iPhone, top-left on Android) → View profile.
3. Tap Add section under your headline area (or tap the pencil icon next to the existing Featured section to edit it).
4. Expand Recommended → tap Add featured.
5. Tap + at the top right → select Add a link.
6. Paste your URL. Tap the keyboard return or Done — LinkedIn fetches the auto-preview.
7. Edit title and description, and optionally tap Upload thumbnail to replace the auto-pulled image. Same fields as desktop, vertical layout.
8. Tap Save at the top right.

A few mobile-specific notes worth keeping in mind:

• The Featured section renders on mobile as a horizontal swipeable carousel, not a grid. Only the leftmost 1–2 items are visible without swiping, which makes ordering more decisive on mobile than on desktop (where the grid shows three at once without scrolling).
• The custom thumbnail crops differently on mobile and desktop. Test what you upload on both.
• On slow connections the auto-preview sometimes fails to fetch on the first try inside the mobile modal. Close the modal and re-add the link; that almost always resolves it.

the auto-fetched preview vs your custom override

When you paste a URL into the Featured-link modal, LinkedIn's crawler (LinkedInBot) hits the destination and reads its Open Graph tags: og:title becomes the title, og:description the description, og:image the thumbnail.

The fallback chain matters: if og:title is missing, LinkedIn falls back to the page's <title>; if og:description is missing, to <meta name="description">; if og:image is missing, LinkedIn does its best with the largest reachable image on the page — frequently meaning no usable image at all. This is the same pipeline that builds in-feed link previews, hitting the same cache. The full preview-debugging deep-dive — crawler behavior, the Post Inspector workflow stage-by-stage — is in the LinkedIn preview troubleshooting deep-dive.

Each field is editable directly in the modal before saving. Keep the title under ~60 characters (mobile truncates around 50). Description renders as the caption beneath the thumbnail; roughly 120 characters before truncation, so write the first sentence to stand alone. Image is overridable via Upload thumbnail.

Auto-fetched is fine when your destination has well-crafted OG tags and the OG image is sized for LinkedIn. Custom override is required when the OG image is the wrong aspect ratio (most common — pages built for Twitter/Facebook 1.91:1 work, but square or portrait OG images don't), when the OG title is too long, when the OG description leads with stale promo copy, or when you want the Featured caption to read differently from how the same link reads in a post.

Practical recommendation: override the thumbnail and title for every Featured link. The 30 seconds it takes is the single highest-leverage tactical move on the entire Featured section.

the right thumbnail size (the spec almost nobody publishes)

LinkedIn hasn't officially published a Featured-section thumbnail spec, which is why most articles skip dimensions or guess. The numbers below are the working spec consensus, sourced across multiple secondary references and verified against live rendering.

Two patterns work in practice. Document-style — best for lead magnets, gated PDFs, case studies — renders the cover of the asset as a 1200 × 627 banner with the title in large type; the viewer can read what they're getting before they tap. Benefit-driven graphic — best for booking links and signup forms — uses a flat-color background with a one-line value-prop. Skip the destination's logo; LinkedIn already shows your profile photo above the carousel.

what to feature (3–5 items is the sweet spot)

The "4–6 items" number gets cited a lot. The honest answer is 3–5 high-quality items for most profiles, scaled down to 1–3 when you only have one or two genuinely strong assets. The reason is visibility math: desktop shows three items without scrolling, mobile shows 1–2 without swiping. Past five, each additional item gets progressively lower visibility and dilutes the strongest item's signal.

The leftmost slot is the conversion priority slot:

• Lead-gen consultants and B2B operators: your highest-intent CTA — a booking link (Calendly, SavvyCal, Cal.com), gated lead magnet, or free-trial signup. The funnel math for this persona is in the LinkedIn-specific funnel breakdown.
• Job seekers: portfolio, most-recent significant case study, or a high-signal media feature (TEDx, podcast, press mention).
• Creators and authors: newsletter signup or most recent published article. Newsletter wins on conversion intent; article wins on credibility signal.
• SaaS founders: product demo (Loom, Storylane), free-trial signup, or a transparent build-in-public artifact.
• Agencies and small studios: your single best client case study, framed as a one-page outcome story.

Fill positions 2–4 with proof of authority (press mention, podcast appearance, speaking engagement), proof of depth (long-form post or article), a secondary CTA (newsletter if leftmost is a booking link, or vice versa), and social proof (testimonial graphic, measurable outcome).

What not to feature: your last three random posts because they got engagement, generic certifications without context, company brand-marketing video without a CTA, anything older than 18 months unless it's evergreen authority signal. Review quarterly; replace anything past 12 months unless the claim, framing, and click-through are all still on point.

reordering (and the fact that LinkedIn doesn't have a pin feature)

LinkedIn does not currently have a "pin this item" feature for Featured. The only ordering mechanism is manual drag-and-drop reordering, available once you have at least two items in the section.

How to reorder:

1. Desktop: scroll to the Featured section. Tap the pencil to edit, then drag items into the order you want. Save.
2. Mobile: open the Featured-section edit view, tap and hold an item to drag, place it in the new position, tap Save.

A few strategic notes worth internalizing:

• The leftmost slot gets the most views. On mobile — where the carousel only shows 1–2 items without swiping — it's disproportionately the most-viewed.
• Reorder every time you publish a major new asset. Your latest case study probably belongs leftmost for ~30 days, then can move right as it ages out of immediate relevance.
• Reorder when your focus shifts. New launch? Booking link leftmost. Hiring? Open-roles link leftmost. Speaking circuit? Talk reel leftmost.
• Reordering is the closest thing LinkedIn gives you to a pin. Use it deliberately rather than letting newest-added drift to the front.

when the preview is wrong (and the cache-bust path)

You added the Featured link. The auto-pulled image is from last year's homepage redesign, or the title reads "Untitled" because the destination's OG tags weren't set when LinkedIn first crawled. Now you've fixed the OG tags at the source, but LinkedIn still shows the old preview.

LinkedIn caches link previews — including Featured-section previews — for approximately 7 days. Updates on your destination don't propagate until that cache expires. Three ways to force a refresh before the TTL ages out:

1. LinkedIn Post Inspector (the canonical path): go to linkedin.com/post-inspector/, paste your URL, tap Inspect. This forces LinkedIn's crawler to refetch your destination immediately, replacing the cached preview with the current OG tags. After the inspector confirms the fresh preview, remove and re-add the Featured link to pick up the new cached version.
2. Cache-bust via query string: append a query parameter to your URL (?v=2, ?refresh=1, ?ref=linkedin-2026). LinkedIn treats parameter-decorated URLs as new URLs, refetches, and stores a fresh preview entry. Downside: the new URL is what gets featured, so use a parameter your destination accepts gracefully.
3. Version the image filename: if only the image is wrong (title and description are fine), rename the OG image on your destination (og-v2.png instead of og.png) and update the og:image tag. The new filename forces LinkedIn to refetch the image specifically.

Fast-path: use the Post Inspector. It works in ~30 seconds and doesn't pollute your URL.

For the longer version — what to do when the Post Inspector itself returns "unable to fetch," the OG-tag malformations to look for, the "first crawl wins" trap that hits new posts even after you've cleared the cache — see the sibling guide on troubleshooting LinkedIn's link previews.

Featured vs Activity vs Experience vs Contact Info (link placement strategy)

The Featured slot is one of four places to put a link on your profile. The right choice depends on the link.

Heuristic: one link everyone should see → Featured (leftmost); multiple priority links → Featured (3–5, ordered); a link tied to a specific job or project → Experience inline; secondary contact channel → Contact Info; a published post → Activity automatically, plus Featured if it's load-bearing.

The most common mistake: putting the primary CTA in Contact Info because the form there has a "Website" field. Don't. Contact Info is the least-visited section of your profile. Featured is where the CTA belongs.

Premium and Sales Navigator — same Featured section as free

Briefly, because the absence of an answer keeps coming up: LinkedIn Premium and Sales Navigator do not give you a different Featured section. The UI, content types, item count, reordering, and preview rendering are identical across free, Premium, and Sales Navigator. Premium's "who viewed your profile" depth is useful for measuring whether your Featured items are driving the visits you intended, but it doesn't change the section itself. There is no "Premium Featured section" tier — if you saw advice that implied otherwise, it was outdated or selling something.

the part nobody writes about — what happens when a viewer actually taps your Featured link

You added the link, overrode the preview, sized the thumbnail correctly, put it leftmost. A follower scrolls to your profile on the LinkedIn mobile app, sees your Featured carousel, taps your Calendly link.

LinkedIn opens that link inside LinkedIn's own in-app browser — a sandboxed webview built into the LinkedIn app, the same architectural pattern Instagram's in-app browser uses and the one TikTok ships. That webview has its own cookie jar, separate from Safari and Chrome on the same device. Your follower's Calendly session — saved meeting preferences, past booking history, pre-filled name and email — lives in Safari's cookie jar. LinkedIn's webview can't see it.

From Calendly's perspective, this is a brand-new visitor. The booking widget renders the generic flow, not the personalized one. The Apple Pay button on your Stripe Checkout doesn't render because the in-app browser can't reach the device payment keychain — the same Stripe Checkout / Apple Pay rendering issue documented for TikTok's webview applies identically here. Your HubSpot form doesn't pre-fill and the lead gets logged as anonymous instead of attributed to the right company. Your beehiiv newsletter signup form 403s because it can't write the cookie — the newsletter-signup-form-403 fix documented for Instagram applies identically. OAuth-based logins (Google, Microsoft) break the same way they break on Calendly when launched from any social-app webview.

The follower didn't decide not to convert. They got handed to your destination as a logged-out stranger and most of them gave up.

For a creator driving Amazon affiliate clicks from TikTok, this is the documented mechanism behind URLGenius's reported 200–300% commission lift when affiliate links escape the in-app browser. For a B2B operator using LinkedIn Featured to drive booked calls, the proportional loss is similar — the destination just costs more per missed conversion. A recovered Calendly booking is worth orders of magnitude more than a recovered affiliate click.

This isn't LinkedIn's bug. It's the structural design of every social-app in-app browser. The cookie-jar mechanism and why it can't be patched at the app layer are covered in the structural thesis on why in-app browsers strand your viewers and the engineering view on cookie isolation. To check whether your follower would land in an in-app browser from a given link, the in-app browser detector tool is the quickest way.

The fix has to live at the link layer. Three options:

• Ask viewers to "open in Safari" manually (LinkedIn Account preferences → toggle "Open web links in app" off). Possible, low ceiling — most viewers won't do this for one link from one creator's profile.
• Use a link tool that escapes the in-app browser automatically. linkboo bounces the destination out of the LinkedIn webview into Safari or Chrome before the destination loads, so the follower's cookie jar is the right one. We compared the escape-tool category honestly if you want the field overview. See linkboo's plans.
• Live with the loss. Most B2B operators do, unknowingly. The gap shows up as "LinkedIn channel converts below CTR-weighted expectation" in HubSpot and gets blamed on audience quality.

frequently asked

How many items can I add to the Featured section? No documented limit; the sweet spot is 3–5. Mobile shows 1–2 without a swipe, desktop three without scroll. Past five, per-item visibility drops and the strongest item's signal gets diluted.

Why is the wrong image showing on my Featured link? LinkedIn caches the preview for ~7 days. After updating your destination's OG image, use the LinkedIn Post Inspector to force a fresh crawl, then remove and re-add the Featured link.

What size should my Featured thumbnail be? 1200 × 627 pixels at 1.91:1. Square images get center-cropped; portrait crops harder. Keep text inside the central 80% to survive mobile cropping.

Can I edit the title and description of a Featured link? Yes — both are editable directly in the add-link modal. Override the auto-pulled values whenever the OG title is too long or the description leads with stale promo copy.

Can I pin a Featured item to the leftmost position? No — LinkedIn doesn't have a pin feature for Featured. The only ordering mechanism is manual drag-and-drop reordering, available once you have two or more items.

Does Premium or Sales Navigator give me a different Featured section? No. Featured is identical across free, Premium, and Sales Navigator. There is no Premium-tier Featured upgrade.

Why does my Featured link work on desktop but my followers say it's broken on mobile? Most often a thumbnail-crop issue (square images crop differently on mobile than desktop) or a preview-cache lag on their device. Sometimes it's the in-app browser cookie problem — the link technically works but lands the follower logged-out at the destination, which they read as "broken."

Why does my Featured link get clicked but never convert? The in-app browser problem. LinkedIn's mobile app opens the link in a sandboxed webview with its own cookie jar; your follower's saved session at the destination isn't visible. The booking flow renders generic, the form 403s, the payment button doesn't load. The fix lives at the link layer — see the long-form explainer on the cookie jar mechanism.

related

• The sibling guide on the OG-tag side of broken LinkedIn previews: /guides/linkedin-link-preview-not-showing
• linkboo's LinkedIn-creator deep-dive: /for/linkedin
• The in-app browser logged-out thesis (the structural why): /guides/in-app-browser-logged-out
• How in-app browser cookies actually work (the engineering view): /guides/in-app-browser-cookies-explained
• The X (formerly Twitter) version of the preview-debugging problem: /guides/x-link-card-not-showing
• The Facebook preview-debugging guide for the same OG-tag pipeline: /guides/facebook-link-preview-not-updating