WordPress internal linking: three ways and which one suits your blog
WordPress internal linking means adding links in your posts to your other posts, pages and products. You can do it by hand in the editor, with a plugin that suggests or inserts links itself, or with a chat that proposes the place and wording of each link and adds it after your approval. Each route has a different cost and a different level of control.
Author: The TellMyShop team. A guide for WordPress site and WooCommerce store owners: the cause, the manual fix and the same work in a chat conversation.
Last updated: · 6 min read
Why link posts to each other at all
An internal link does two things. It shows the reader where to read next. And it helps Google find the page and understand what it's about. Google says in its link best practices that every important page should have a link from at least one other page on the site, and that link text should be descriptive.
On a typical business blog it works differently. A new post gets a link from the post list and from its category, and then sinks lower and lower. Old guides that still get traffic from Google don't link to anything new. Every post is an island.
Three ways to link internally: a comparison
| By hand in the editor | Automatic plugin | Chat with TellMyShop | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Who finds related posts | you, from memory or with the admin search | the plugin, by words in the content | the chat, by topic and post keywords |
| Who picks the place in the sentence | you | the plugin or you | the chat suggests one existing sentence |
| Control over each link | full | depends on settings | full, preview before saving |
| Time | a lot with many posts | little | one conversation per batch of posts |
| Risk | you miss posts you've forgotten | the same anchor everywhere, links in odd places | the chat doesn't know your priorities unless you tell it |
| Undo | post revisions | depends on the plugin | change history, one request |
No route is the only right one. With a few posts, doing it by hand is enough. With several dozen, it's worth having help.
By hand: how to add an internal link in the WordPress editor
- Open the post where the link should appear.
- Find a sentence that naturally talks about the topic of the target page. Don't add a sentence just to fit a link.
- Select two to five words that describe where the link goes.
- Click the link button in the block toolbar, or press Ctrl+K.
- Type a few words of the target post's title. WordPress suggests matching posts and pages from your site.
- Pick the post, save the changes and click the link in the preview to check it goes where it should.
Step two is the hardest. With fifty posts it's hard to remember which old post covers what.
Automatic plugin: when it works
Internal linking plugins read the content of all your posts and look for places for links. A popular example is Link Whisper, which has a free and a paid version. It suggests links as you write and shows a report of posts without links. Yoast SEO Premium has an orphaned content filter for content that no internal link points to.
A plugin works well when you have a lot of content and someone regularly reviews its suggestions. Trouble starts in fully automatic mode. The plugin inserts a link everywhere the word “roses” appears, with the same link text. The reader sees three links to the same page in one paragraph. Choose the mode where you approve each suggestion.
Anchor text: what should be clickable
The anchor is the words you click. Google advises keeping them descriptive and concise.
- Good: “how to overwinter roses in pots”.
- Weak: “click here”, “more”, “this post”.
- Overdone: a whole sentence as a link, or the same phrase in twenty posts.
It works best when the anchor is part of a sentence the reader reads anyway. Then the link doesn't get in the way.
Internal linking with the chat: a preview of every link
With your chat (Claude or ChatGPT) you start with an ordinary sentence, for example “Add internal links to my guides”. It's one of the ready tasks of the TellMyShop plugin for WordPress and WooCommerce. You can name a page that should get more links, or leave the choice to the chat. Then it looks for important content with the fewest links pointing to it.
The chat checks how many published pieces link to the target page. Then it finds five to ten related posts and in each one points to a single existing sentence with a fitting phrase as the anchor. The task's rules: at most one or two new links per post, no change to the meaning of sentences, no links to pages hidden from Google or redirected.
You: Add internal links to the post about overwintering roses.
Your chat: Today one piece of content links to “How to overwinter roses”. I found 6 posts with a natural place for a link. The first two:
You: Skip the first one, the second is fine.
Your chat: Skipping the first. The preview of one change is ready. I'll save it after your ‘yes’.
Card status: waiting for your “yes”Pruning roses in spring, paragraph about March:
old version: If the roses were well covered for winter, the stems will be healthy right down to the ground.
new version: If the roses were well [covered for winter], the stems will be healthy right down to the ground.
Rose fertilisers, paragraph about autumn:
old version: Before overwintering roses, stop feeding with nitrogen.
new version: Before [overwintering roses], stop feeding with nitrogen.
In TellMyShop Pro the chat adds the links after your approval, in batches, and every change goes into the change history. You undo it with the request “undo the last change”. In TellMyShop Free the chat shows the same table: post, sentence before, sentence after and target. You then add the links yourself, or after moving to TellMyShop Pro. More about the plugin on the TellMyShop for WordPress and WooCommerce page, prices on the pricing page.
Where to start
Start with the pages you care about: your offer, your best products, guides that bring in customers. Check whether links in content lead to them. Then go to old posts that get traffic from Google and add links in them to newer posts. It's a good moment to refresh them too; we explain how in how to refresh an old post. Link new posts as you write them, following how to write a WordPress blog post.
A link to a page that no longer exists leads the reader into a dead end. How to find such addresses is in the post on 404 errors in WordPress. More guides are on the blog.
Questions and answers
How many internal links should one post have?
There's no single number. What counts is whether a link helps the reader go further. In a typical guide, a few links to genuinely related posts and products are enough. Every important page should have a link from at least one other page on the site.
What is anchor text?
It's the clickable words of a link. Good anchor text says where the link leads, for example “how to overwinter roses”. Weak anchor text is “click here” or “more”. Google advises keeping it descriptive and concise.
Do the menu and footer count as internal linking?
Yes, those are internal links too. But they usually point to a few main pages. Blog posts need links in the content of other posts, because the menu can't hold every guide, and a link inside a sentence says more about the page's topic.
Can an automatic linking plugin do harm?
It can, when it inserts links without control: the same anchor in dozens of posts, links in odd places in a sentence, or links to pages that no longer exist. So with plugins it's worth keeping approval of each suggestion rather than full automation.
How do I check whether any internal links point to a page?
The simplest way is to search for the page's address in the content of other posts, or use a plugin that counts links. Yoast SEO Premium has a filter for posts with no incoming links. In TellMyShop the chat checks this when diagnosing the visibility of a specific page.
WordPress is a trademark of the WordPress Foundation. WooCommerce is a trademark of Automattic Inc. Claude is a trademark of Anthropic PBC. ChatGPT and OpenAI are trademarks of OpenAI. TellMyShop is not affiliated with these companies.