Why You Shouldn't Use LinkTree - Or Any Other Bio Link Tool

The most used call to action on Instagram might be “link in bio”. Instagram only allows one link to live in your bio, which means that you either constantly have to change it to match your current post, or have a link that allows users to see many different website options at once. A popular service many Instagram users choose as a solution to this problem is LinkTree. Let’s break down what LinkTree is, why you shouldn’t use it, and what you should do instead.

What is LinkTree?

LinkTree is a service you can sign up for so you only have one link in your bio that leads users to a landing page with as many links as you want. That way when you say “link in bio” in a post, you won’t have to change out the link in your bio to match the post. People can simply scroll through your links and find the one that your post was referencing. There is a free version of LinkTree that offers limited color customization and no analytics, and there is a pro version that allows you to customize the colors and shows you analytics for your links. Check out the example of a pro LinkTree page below.

Why You Shouldn’t Use LinkTree

1. It's Doesn't Take People to Your Website

If you want your brand or business to be found more frequently on Google, you need to be driving traffic to your website. If you use LinkTree, you're driving traffic to LinkTree. They're gaining all the good SEO that you should be getting. Also, you're hoping that people will take the extra step of clicking on your actual website. We want everything to be as streamlined as possible online. Making users take an additional step is never a good idea.

2. You Don't Control LinkTree

LinkTree has been known to go down. You don't want your followers to click on the link in your bio and be lead to a broken page. You can't go in and trouble shoot LinkTree. It will either work or it won't. You are completely at the mercy of this service. Also, over the past couple of years there have been reports that Instagram is flagging LinkTree as spam. LinkTree says this flagging could happen to any bio link tool, and they're correct. So why allow something on your profile that could be flagged as spam?

3. It Doesn't Match Your Branding

The free version of LinkTree has limited color choices. The pro version has many more color choices - but you have to pay for it. If you already have branded colors, fonts, and design elements on your Instagram, it will be quite the shock when users head to your LinkTree that doesn't match the rest of your brand. Branding is extremely important, and you don't want to dilute all the hard work you've put into your branding by using LinkTree or any other bio link tool.

What to Use for Your Link in Bio

You should use ... *drumroll please* ... your own website! If you don't have your own website yet, you should get on building that ASAP. Here's a link to our blog post with the top 5 basic things to include in your website build. When you use your own website, you are driving traffic to your own brand. But what if you still want the multiple links feature that LinkTree has to offer? You can do that with your own site!

Create a new page on your website with buttons that are linked to all the places you might be trying to drive traffic to from your social media (your Etsy store, your other social media profiles, your blog, etc). Make the new page and make sure the end of the URL is something like "links" or "linkinbio". Media A La Carte's page is called mediaalacarte.com/links. You also want to make sure that this page doesn't show up in your site's menu because it could confuse people that are landing on your site from places other than social media. Check out Media A La Carte's "link in bio" page below. It includes our brand colors, font, and the same style of button that you find all over our website. You want to make sure this page is fully optimized for mobile view because most people will be clicking on this link from their cell phones.

P.S. Please don't hop on the new trend of creating a link in bio site through Canva. If anyone clicks on one of your links, a message pops up asking them if they're okay leaving Canva.com. You don't want that extra step getting in the way of your followers finding your content. In our opinion, the Canva link in bio is even worse than LinkTree.

It's time to leave LinkTree behind and start using your own site to control your traffic. Plus, depending on what website hosting service you use (we are big fans of Wix), you'll be able to see all the click analytics from your "links" page. You get the SEO, the branding, and the analytics. Creating your own link in bio page is a win - win - win situation. Now get to it!

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