Fixed on this site
LinkedIn link preview not showing an image? Mine did not either
The two places I share my site most are LinkedIn and my email signature. Both were getting a bare text box.
On this page
When you paste a link into a LinkedIn post, LinkedIn reads a few lines of code on that page to decide what the preview shows: a title, a description and an image. If the image line is missing, the preview has no picture.
My 20 September audit of my own site found that every page asked for a large image preview, and 17 of the 18 pages checked supplied no image at all. The only page with one was a blog post.
Before and after
This site, audited 20 September 2026
- Before
- 17 of 18 pages had no share image, while all 18 asked for a large one.
- A day later
- The site had grown to 35 pages, and none of the new ones had an image either. A gap in a shared template copies itself onto every new page.
- After
- Every page carries a 1200 by 630 share image, and each teardown has its own. The site now refuses to publish a page without one.
What LinkedIn actually reads
LinkedIn uses Open Graph tags: short lines in a page's code that describe it for sharing. LinkedIn's own help page lists four that must exist: a title, an image, a description and the page address.
The Open Graph standard defines the image tag in one line:
An image URL which should represent your object within the graph.
The Open Graph protocol
LinkedIn then sets a minimum size:
Minimum image dimensions: 1200 (w) x 627 (h) pixels
LinkedIn Help, making a website shareable on LinkedIn
Go smaller and the picture shrinks to a thumbnail:
Images less than 401 pixels wide display as a thumbnail image.
LinkedIn Help, making a website shareable on LinkedIn
Why my site had none
The template every page shares had the line asking for a large image preview, and no line supplying the image. So every page made the request, and none of them could meet it.
That is also why it got worse rather than better. The site went from 18 pages to 35 in a day, and every new page inherited the same gap. Fix one page by hand and the next new page arrives broken. Fix the template and every page is fixed at once.
The fix
Every page now carries a 1200 by 630 image in the site's own colours. Each teardown gets its own, with its headline on it, so a shared teardown previews as that teardown and not as the homepage.
Before anything goes live, the site now checks that every page has an image, that the file exists, and that it is the right size. The gap cannot come back quietly.
Is this SEO?
Not in the ranking sense. I know of no Google documentation that treats a share image as a ranking signal, and I am not claiming one.
It matters because of where links actually get seen. Mine are seen on LinkedIn and in email, and a link that arrives as a bare text box is easier to scroll past. That is judgement, not a measured effect.
Check my fix yourself
- Open LinkedIn's Post Inspector while signed in to LinkedIn. LinkedIn Post Inspector
- Paste the address of any page on this site and inspect it. The image LinkedIn picked up is shown with the preview.
- Or, without LinkedIn: open any page here, press Ctrl+U, then Ctrl+F and search for og:image. The line and its image address are there.
Check your own site, no code needed
- Open LinkedIn's Post Inspector and paste your homepage address. Look at the preview it shows.
- Repeat for one page of each type: a blog post, a product or service page, a case study. Templates differ, so one passing does not mean all pass.
- If a preview has no image, open that page, press Ctrl+U and search for og:image. If nothing is found, the page never offered one.
- If the line is there and the preview still has no picture, open the image address in your browser to make sure it loads, and check its size against LinkedIn's minimum.
What to ask your developer
- Does every page template set og:image, or only some of them?
- Is there a default image, at least 1200 by 627 pixels, for pages without their own?
- Can the site refuse to publish a page without one?
What this does not show
The blog on this site runs as a separate app, so its listing page is not covered by this fix yet. The one blog post already had its own image.
LinkedIn decides what it shows. Its help page says that when an image meets the requirements and still does not appear, the site may be blocking LinkedIn from fetching it.
Want your site checked the same way?
Send a URL. Three to five verified findings come back within two working days, free, each with a way to check it yourself.