Why Your LinkedIn Post Preview Looks Wrong (and How to Fix It)

You post a link on LinkedIn. It shows a blank grey box. Or the wrong image. Or a truncated title from three months ago. This guide fixes all of it.

Why LinkedIn is stricter than other platforms

LinkedIn crawls your page when you post the link — but it caches aggressively. It also has stricter image dimension requirements than X (Twitter) or Slack. A single wrong setting can silently break your card for thousands of views.

The 6 reasons LinkedIn previews break

1. Missing og:image

Most common cause. LinkedIn shows nothing without an og:image — it doesn't fall back to any in-page image.

<meta property="og:image" content="https://yourdomain.com/og.png" />

2. Image too small (under 1200×627px)

LinkedIn requires 1200×627px minimum. Images under 400px wide are rejected entirely.

<!-- Use exactly 1200×628px for best LinkedIn compatibility -->

3. Image not publicly accessible

LinkedIn fetches as an anonymous bot. Login-protected or CDN-restricted images fail silently.

<!-- Test: curl -I https://yourdomain.com/og.png  — must return 200 with no redirect -->

4. Stale cached preview

LinkedIn caches OG data for ~7 days. Use the Post Inspector to force a re-fetch after fixing your tags.

<!-- Go to: linkedin.com/post-inspector → paste URL → click Inspect -->

5. Missing og:title or og:description

Without these, LinkedIn renders a minimal plain-link card with no context.

<meta property="og:title" content="Your Title (max 70 chars)" />
<meta property="og:description" content="Your description (max 160 chars)" />

6. og:url mismatch or missing

LinkedIn uses og:url for deduplication. If it doesn't match the actual URL, reshares may show a different cached card.

<meta property="og:url" content="https://yourdomain.com/exact-page-url" />

The complete working template

<head>
  <meta property="og:title" content="Your Page Title Here" />
  <meta property="og:description" content="150 char description." />
  <meta property="og:image" content="https://yourdomain.com/og-1200x628.png" />
  <meta property="og:url" content="https://yourdomain.com/this-page" />
  <meta property="og:type" content="website" />
  <!-- For Next.js App Router, these are handled by the metadata export -->
</head>

For Next.js App Router

export const metadata: Metadata = {
  title: "Your Page Title",
  description: "Your description.",
  openGraph: {
    title: "Your Page Title",
    description: "Your description.",
    url: "https://yourdomain.com/this-page",
    images: [{ url: "https://yourdomain.com/og-1200x628.png", width: 1200, height: 628 }],
  },
}

Test your tags before publishing with the OpenGraph Preview Tester — it shows you exactly how your card looks on LinkedIn, X, Slack, Discord, and Facebook.