LinkedIn SSI Score: What It Is and How to Improve It

Your LinkedIn SSI score is one of those metrics people stumble across, feel mildly anxious about, and then forget to do anything with. That's a missed opportunity.

Your LinkedIn SSI score (Social Selling Index) is a free metric LinkedIn gives every user — a number from 0 to 100 that reflects how effectively you're building your presence, finding the right people, engaging with content, and nurturing relationships on the platform.

It sounds like a vanity metric. It isn't. People with higher SSI scores consistently see better reach, more profile views, and stronger inbound from their content. In this guide, you'll learn exactly what your score means, how it's calculated, and seven specific actions you can take to improve it — starting today.

What Is the LinkedIn SSI Score?

The Social Selling Index was originally built for LinkedIn Sales Navigator users — a way to measure how well salespeople were using the platform to build pipeline. LinkedIn later made it available to all users for free.

Your SSI score is calculated on a scale from 0 to 100 and is broken into four equal pillars, each worth up to 25 points:

Establish your professional brand — Is your profile complete, compelling, and optimised? Are you publishing content?
Find the right people — Are you using LinkedIn's search and discovery tools to connect with your target audience?
Engage with insights — Are you sharing and commenting on industry-relevant content?
Build relationships — Are you growing your network in a meaningful, targeted way?

Your total SSI is the sum of all four. A score of 70+ is considered strong. Most users sit somewhere between 30 and 60.

You can check your own score free at: linkedin.com/sales/ssi — no Sales Navigator subscription required.

Why Your LinkedIn SSI Score Actually Matters

Here's the honest take: your SSI score isn't a magic ranking factor that directly pushes your posts into more feeds. LinkedIn hasn't confirmed that.

What it is is a useful proxy for the behaviours that do drive LinkedIn performance. If your SSI is low, it's almost always a sign that you're either neglecting your profile, posting inconsistently, or not engaging with other people's content.

Fix those things and your SSI improves. More importantly, fix those things and your actual LinkedIn results improve.

LinkedIn's own data suggests that social sellers with high SSI scores create 45% more opportunities than those with low SSI scores and are 51% more likely to hit their quota.

For founders, marketers, and creators — the logic translates directly to organic reach, inbound leads, and profile discovery.

How to Check Your LinkedIn SSI Score

Simple:

Go to linkedin.com/sales/ssi
Log in if prompted
Your current score loads immediately — no Sales Navigator needed

You'll see your overall score plus a breakdown of all four pillars. The pillar breakdown is where the value is. If one sub-score is dragging your total down, that's where you focus first.

7 Ways to Improve Your LinkedIn SSI Score

1. Complete and Optimise Your Profile

The "Establish your professional brand" pillar is the fastest one to improve because a lot of it is just... filling things in.

LinkedIn measures profile completeness against its "All-Star" checklist: profile photo, banner image, headline, About section, experience entries, skills (minimum 5), and education.

If any of these are missing or thin, fill them in. Your headline in particular carries more weight than people realise — it's the first thing anyone sees on every post, comment, and search result. If yours is still just your job title, that's a quick win.

Try the LinkedIn Headline Generator to write a sharper, more searchable headline in about two minutes.

2. Publish Content Consistently

The biggest driver of your "professional brand" sub-score is whether you're actually creating content. LinkedIn wants to see you as an active contributor, not a passive scroller.

You don't need to post every day. Three times a week is enough to move the needle. What matters more than frequency is that you post at all — and that the posts get some engagement.

If you're struggling with what to say, the LinkedIn Post Generator takes a topic, your industry, or a rough idea and builds a structured, ready-to-post draft you can edit and make your own. It's significantly faster than staring at a blank screen.

3. Optimise Your About Section

Your About section is scored under professional brand and it's one of the most skipped sections on LinkedIn. Most people either leave it blank or write a third-person biography that sounds like it came from a PR agency in 2009.

A strong About section does three things: explains who you help, how you help them, and invites the right people to connect or reach out. It should be written in first person, kept to 3-5 short paragraphs, and include relevant keywords for your industry.

The LinkedIn Summary Generator can draft your entire About section based on your role and goals. Worth trying even if you just use it as a starting point.

4. Use LinkedIn Search Intentionally

The "Find the right people" pillar tracks whether you're actively searching for and engaging with relevant profiles. LinkedIn wants to see you using the platform to discover people, not just broadcasting into the void.

Practical tactics:

Use LinkedIn's search filters to find people by role, industry, and location
View profiles of people you want to connect with (yes, simply viewing profiles counts toward this)
Send connection requests with a brief, specific note explaining why you're connecting

Even spending 10 minutes a day using search purposefully — exploring profiles of potential customers, collaborators, or people in your niche — will lift this sub-score.

5. Engage with Other People's Content

The "Engage with insights" pillar is entirely about whether you're participating in the content ecosystem, not just posting your own stuff.

Comment on posts in your niche. Share articles with your take added. Like content from people you admire or want to connect with.

The quality of your comments matters more than the volume. A generic "Great post!" contributes almost nothing. A three-sentence comment that adds a perspective, shares an experience, or asks a real question — that moves the needle and often drives profile views back to you too.

Aim for 5-10 meaningful comments per week. It's a small time investment with disproportionate return. For ideas on how to build a sustainable content system, see our guide on LinkedIn content strategy.

6. Build Relationships Deliberately

The "Build relationships" pillar measures whether your network is growing — specifically whether you're connecting with decision-makers and expanding into your target audience, not just collecting random connections.

LinkedIn looks at:

Whether you're sending and accepting connection requests
Whether your connections match your target professional audience
Whether you're messaging and interacting with your network (not just accumulating connections and ignoring them)

A practical habit: after every meeting, call, or conversation — on LinkedIn, in-person, or otherwise — send a connection request within 24 hours. A short personalised note referencing the conversation has a dramatically higher acceptance rate than the default message.

7. Log In and Engage Daily (Even Briefly)

This one sounds almost too simple, but LinkedIn's SSI algorithm rewards consistent activity. You don't need to spend an hour on LinkedIn every day. But five to ten minutes of deliberate activity — reading your feed, commenting on a post, checking search — signals to the algorithm that you're an active platform participant.

Consistency compounds. An SSI score that's been steadily climbing for three months is more durable than one that spiked because of a single viral post.

What's a Good LinkedIn SSI Score?

Here's a rough benchmark:

Score Range	What It Means
0-30	Profile needs work; minimal activity
31-50	Occasional user; gaps in all four pillars
51-70	Active and engaged; solid profile presence
71-85	Strong performer; consistently posting and networking
86-100	Top tier; fully optimised across all four pillars

For most professionals looking to grow their LinkedIn presence, hitting 70+ is a realistic and meaningful goal. Don't obsess over the number — focus on the four underlying behaviours, and the score will follow.

How Often Does Your SSI Score Update?

Your SSI score updates daily. You can check it any time at linkedin.com/sales/ssi and watch it shift as your activity patterns change. Most people see meaningful movement within 2-4 weeks of making consistent changes.

The One Thing People Get Wrong About SSI

People treat their SSI score as a report card to optimise — gaming the system by doing the minimum required actions to tick each pillar's boxes.

That's the wrong framing. The four pillars exist because they map to the four activities that actually build influence on LinkedIn: a strong profile, deliberate networking, engaging content, and real relationship building.

Do those things with genuine intent and your SSI takes care of itself. More importantly, so does your LinkedIn presence.

Ready to Improve Your LinkedIn SSI Score? Start Here.

The fastest wins are usually profile-related — a sharper headline, a complete About section, a professional profile photo. Start there, then layer in consistent posting.

If you want to post more but aren't sure what to say, try the LinkedIn Post Generator — it's free, takes 60 seconds, and gets you past the blank screen every time.

Your SSI score will thank you. More importantly, so will your inbound pipeline.