This post expands on a recent post we created – “How do I make sure my LinkedIn post appears “top” for a connection?”
In 2025, LinkedIn’s algorithm underwent several refinements to prioritise professional value, authenticity, and sustained engagement over superficial virality or promotional tactics. These updates, including an accidental exposure of internal rules in October, aimed to combat low-quality content proliferation and enhance user experience by delivering more personalised, expertise-driven feeds. Organic reach declined significantly – by up to 50% for some creators – due to stricter quality filters and a shift towards meaningful interactions, with video views slumping for certain formats as prioritisation evolved. Core processes remain: initial quality checks, engagement testing in the ‘golden hour’, and relevance-based ranking, but 2025 tweaks emphasise expertise recognition, content freshness, and native formats.
Key Updates and Their Impact on Visibility
- Expertise and Authenticity Boost: The algorithm now automatically identifies and favours consistent niche posters as ‘authorities’, expanding their reach to broader audiences. This rewards original insights, personal stories, and actionable advice while deprioritising clickbait or generic prompts (e.g., ‘Comment YES!’). Visibility improves for smaller creators and humanised brand content that sparks professional discussions, but drops for low-value or repetitive posts.
- Relevance Over Recency: High-value posts can resurface weeks later if they align with users’ interests, past interactions, or followed topics, reducing emphasis on timestamps alone. However, ‘freshness’ is still key – content with recent references or events ranks higher, penalising outdated links or recycled material via enhanced duplicate detection. This extends visibility for evergreen expertise but limits it for stale or copied content.
- Engagement Quality and Viewer Tolerance: Thoughtful comments (15+ words) and dwell time (reading duration) outweigh likes or shares, with the algorithm tracking individual non-engagement to suppress future posts from the same author in that user’s feed. Initial strong reactions in the first hour trigger wider distribution to second/third-degree connections, but superficial tactics trigger penalties.
- Native Content and Format Preferences: Videos (native, portrait, 1-2 minutes with captions), carousels (under 9 slides), polls (three options), and visuals receive 2-5x more engagement, as external links or text-only posts are deprioritised to keep users on-platform. Micro-content under 300 characters paired with images also ranks better than lengthy updates.
- Frequency and Spam Controls: Optimal posting is 2-5 times weekly, spaced 24-48 hours apart; excess (e.g., multiple daily) or overuse of tags (>5) triggers throttling. Company pages saw 75% engagement drops, favouring personal profiles for initial distribution.
New Priorities and Features
- Priorities: Fostering B2B conversations, employee advocacy, and accessibility (e.g., removing GIFs in DMs and certain fonts for better search). LinkedIn Live and ‘Where You Appeared’ metrics track real-time and source-based visibility.
- No Major Overhauls: Updates build on 2024’s interest-graph, with no entirely new systems but refined detection for duplicates and tolerance.
Tips to Optimise for the 2025 Algorithm
| Strategy | Details |
|---|---|
| Build Expertise | Post consistently on one niche (e.g., 2-3x/week) with unique insights; use analytics to refine topics matching your audience’s skills/hashtags. |
| Maximise Golden Hour | Time posts for audience peaks (Tues-Thurs, 8-10am or 5-7pm); hook with questions in first 3 lines and respond promptly to comments. |
| Prioritise Formats | Use native videos/carousels/polls; place links in comments; vary types weekly to avoid duplicates. |
| Encourage Depth | End with targeted prompts (e.g., ‘What’s your take on X challenge?’); aim for 15+ word replies to foster discussions over likes. |
| Monitor and Adapt | Track saves/dwell time via analytics; repost personal content to company pages; engage with large-network contacts for amplification. |
