How to make your own Instagram Link in Bio landing page: Linktree alternative

Even though Instagram now allows a Facebook link and up to 4 other external links in the bio section of your profile, they look a bit messy and basic. They don’t give you a sleek, branded landing page for your Instagram account.

In this blog post, I’ll go through the options for content creators and influencers who want their own branded “link in bio”, but don’t want all their social media traffic going to an intermediary first, and paying for the privilege.

Some of the links in this blog post are affiliate links. This means I may get a small commission if you buy something after clicking through.

One of the key reasons that professional and even “side-hustle” content creators, influencers and bloggers have social media accounts is because they wish to drive traffic to their website, mailing list, online shops, collaborations or promotions.

However, it’s not easy to direct traffic to the right place from what is often only one link from the social media platform (although Instagram has allowed up to 5 separate basic links since April 2023).

Linktree and similar companies such as Beacon provide a simple page that directs people clicking on the bio to other places.

However, there’s actually no need to have this service if you have your own website. In fact it’s probably cheaper to set up a one page website yourself and host your own link-in bio landing page for social media.

This blog post talks you through the options, and explains how you can do it yourself, if that’s what you’d like to try. But first, let’s talk go through a couple of FAQs.

Linktree is ubiquitous on social media. It provides social media influencers and content creators with a simple platform that makes it easy for their followers click on buttons to take them to wherever the influencer wants. Everything from an Etsy shop to a sign-up page for a mailing list, affiliate links and other social media platforms.

Here are the pros and cons of Linktree and other similar “link in bio” services for content creators:

Linktree and similar services are great for people who don’t have a website, yet want to direct their social media followers to other accounts and promotions.

Here are the key advantages of using the Linktree platform for your link-in-bio landing page:

• Linktree is a quick and easy way to create a landing page experience when you share your links with your social media followers. It’s great for people who don’t feel comfortable adding things to their website, and need a web developer to do it. It means they can easily what goes into their Link-in-Bio themselves.
• The buttons are well-designed buttons, and highly customisable in the Pro version.
• Linktree works on all the key social media platforms including Instagram, Pinterest, TikTok, Facebook and LinkedIn.
• It’s optimised for mobile devices, and loads quickly.
• If you pay for the Pro version for £4 per month, it’s possible to create a lovely page that’s on brand and looks sleek.
• Linktree also offers analytics, although they’re basic in the free version. The Pro version connects to other platforms like Mailchimp, Vimeo, Zapier, Amazon, YouTube, and Google Analytics.

The free version of Linktree is very basic and has the following restrictions:

• You can’t hide the Linktree logo.
• The free version doesn’t allow you to chose your own fonts or button styles and colours.
• You’re unable to upload images.

If you’re looking to customise your Linktree page so it shows your branding, images and colours, you’ll need to pay for the Pro version, which at the time of writing, is £4 per month, or £48 a year.

To put it in perspective, that is more than the monthly hosting fee for companies like SiteGround. In fact, it would be cheaper to set up your own one page website to host a Linktree-like landing page, than to pay for Linktree. (Click here for a guide on how to set up a website for almost nothing, and less than Linktree Pro).

The biggest issue with platforms such as Linktree is that the traffic from social media goes to them first, and not your own website.

The gateway to your products and services is therefore controlled by yet another platform, and it’s yet another subscription to pay for.

Although the Pro version allows you to customise the look and feel, it is still not your website, which will have your full brand personality.

Although you would probably not want your Instagram landing page to appear in Google search (and it’s easy to remove it from Google using Yoast), you do want the extra traffic landing on that page from the social media accounts. If you have Linktree, it’s Linktree that gets the traffic.

The beauty of Linktree it its simplicity – profile picture, buttons and images.

However, you can’t add other content underneath the buttons, such as a grid of blog posts or a short “About” feature.

It’s fair to say that WordPress isn’t very user-friendly when it comes to creating buttons in the standard Gutenberg block editor. At least the sort of buttons that are a standard size and go across the screen on a mobile phone. In other words, like those of Linktree. Spectra improves it a bit, but even Spectra’s buttons aren’t brilliant.

Maybe this explains why many who do have their own website still pay for Linktree. Even fairly large online entrepreneurs, use Linktree to direct followers to pages on their website.

However, it is possible to build a Linktree alternative link-in-bio landing page on your WordPress website, without using a developer to design a custom code, and without relying on the block editor. Here are the two methods:

Even if you prefer to use the Gutenberg block editor for the rest of your website (which I enhance with Spectra for free), you can use plugins to build a link-in-bio with the pretty buttons.

Two popular ways of doing this are using Elementor or SeedProd. I used Elementor to build the landing page for The Independent Landlord that you can see above. It’s not ideal looks-wise, but it’s done the job for me, and has saved me £48 a year. (These little subscriptions all add up!)

The problem with this approach is that if you’re using the Gutenberg block editor for your main content, using Elementor or SeedProd for your landing page means you’re installing an unnecessary plug-in, which adds more code that a browser has to load. This can slow your website down and also clutters up your WordPress dashboard. If you use the free versions, it’s also one more company that is asking you to upgrade…

When I was building this website (yes, I did it myself at the age of 55!), I struggled with using the Gutenberg block editor to make my pretty link-in-bio buttons, all the same size for a mobile.

As I use the Astra theme with Spectra, I decided to Google how to do it. I came across this excellent article on the Spectra website, and followed the steps to use HTML and CSS to code the buttons myself. I thought it was going to be difficult, but it turned out to be easy. Even as a non-digital native.

In order to create buttons on my link-in-bio landing page for Instagram, I first set up a container structure using Spectra (it’s free btw). I then inserted a series of spacers in between the Custom HTML blocks.

As you can see from the above, this is the HTML code I used for the anchor tag:

Where the turquoise text is, insert the URL of the link you want to click through to. For the pink, give the button a class name, which means you can use the name of the class in the CSS code. Finally, customise the the text you want where it says Button text in blue.

The next stage is to insert CSS to give the button its shape, background colour and text colour.

First find the “Additional CSS” button under Customize, which you can find on the top tool bar or under appearance.

Then you need to cut and paste the CSS code into the Additional CSS box. However, make sure you change the name of the “more-info” class to match the name you gave it in the HTML above. I used “blog-button” and “about-button”, for instance.

This is the CSS code that Spectra recommended using for a green button with white text, which changes to a black background on hover. Where it shows as Gold below, you can change the colour by using a different hex code. As well as using the right class name for the button so it matches the HTML, make sure you don’t delete the “.” in front of the “more-info-button”. If you do this, the code won’t work without it. Ditto the curly brackets {} and the semi-colons. They’re all important.

If you need more help, please go back to the original Spectra article, as that has more guidance and you can cut and past their code.

Why don’t more people create their own social media landing page on their websites?

I struggle to understand why people who have their own website don’t set up their own landing page, and save the Linktree subscription. Particularly when they’re bloggers, who are used to WordPress.

When I set up The Independent Landlord, I did it on a shoestring and refused to spent £48 for Linktree each year. The subscriptions really add up, I didn’t see the value of Linktree for me, especially when I compare it to ( say) Yoast SEO Pro, or even the lovely stock images from Ivory Mix.

Maybe it’s just easier to do it on Linktree, and people don’t know it’s easy to do yourself?

I hope that this blog post encourages you to have a go at creating something yourself. My attempt on The Independent Landlord using Elementor wasn’t brilliant, but it has done the job. People subscribe and click through to my blog.

I’ve gone a bit fancier with my buttons for The Web Smith, and am happy with the result. I can’t figure out how to remove the breadcrumbs (home >> hello), but I’m not going to worry about that. I suspect I’m the only one to notice! 😊 It’s good enough. Let me know what you think in the comments.

About Suzanne

Suzanne is lawyer and expert blogger, based in the UK, and runs the successful blog, The Independent Landlord.

She set up The Web Smith to help entrepreneurs build fantastic blogs to increase organic traffic to their websites and grow their businesses.

The key to building a blog with high organic traffic is to consistently create high quality content that the target audience wants to read. Then this content needs to be optimised for search engines, ie SEO.

Suzanne works with entrepreneurs to help them devise and implement a strategy for their website that’s right for their business. As part of this, she provides one-to-one consultation, SEO audits, website audits, content creation and editing.

You can sign up for The Web Smith free newsletter here.

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