18 checks to audit your LinkedIn presence against the new ranking signals — before your reach disappears entirely

Something changed on LinkedIn in late 2025. Median reach is down 66% from its 2023 peak. Company pages are reaching 1.6% of their followers. Marketers who were posting consistently are seeing half the impressions they had 18 months ago.

Most of the explanations circulating are technically wrong. And the tactics people are reaching for — posting more often, adding hashtags, moving links to comments — aren't helping, because they're solutions to the wrong problem.

LinkedIn's feed now runs on a two-stage AI pipeline. Stage one uses a large language model to understand what your content is actually about and match it to members with relevant professional interests — not just your followers. Stage two learns each member's professional trajectory over time and ranks content based on how well it fits where that person is heading professionally.

The result: topic expertise and profile coherence now determine reach more than follower count ever did.

This checklist runs through the five signals the algorithm now weighs. Work through it once for your own profile and once for your company page. Every box you can't tick is a reach leak.

Section 1: Topic consistency

The algorithm builds a "semantic authority" model for each LinkedIn member based on their posting history. Consistent focus on one or two topic areas compounds into distribution advantage over 90+ days. Scattered topics dilute the signal.

• [ ] I can name two or three specific topic areas my LinkedIn content focuses on. If you have to think for more than five seconds, the answer is probably "not really."
• [ ] My last 20 posts stay within those topic areas. Scroll back and check. Product updates, culture posts, and industry commentary that don't connect to your core topic areas all fragment your semantic signal.
• [ ] I haven't posted across more than three distinct subject areas in the last 90 days. The algorithm doesn't penalise breadth explicitly, but it can't build topical authority for an account that covers everything.
• [ ] I have a content theme plan for the next 30 days. Reactive posting (sharing whatever is interesting this week) is the fastest route to diluted semantic authority. A loose plan doesn't need to be rigid — it just needs a consistent throughline.

If you ticked fewer than 2 boxes: Your semantic authority is probably fragmented. The fix is committing to a topic area for 90 days, not forever. Pick the two subject areas most relevant to your buyers and let the rest go for now.

Section 2: Profile-content alignment

Every post you publish is cross-referenced against your LinkedIn profile. Your headline, About section, and experience are read by the algorithm as a signal of who you are and what you're genuinely expert in. If your profile says one thing and your posts say another, the system has less confidence about where to send your content.

• [ ] My headline describes my specific expertise, not just my job title. "CMO at [Company]" is a job title. "B2B CMO specialising in demand generation for challenger SaaS brands" is expertise. The latter gives the algorithm context to match your content to the right audience.
• [ ] My About section mentions the topic areas I post about. It doesn't have to be written for the algorithm — it needs to be coherent with your content. An About section that covers your whole career history but doesn't mention what you actually write about is a wasted signal.