We are currently in the A.I era, where automation often rules, the idea of automating internal linking with A.I or internal linking tools might seem appealing.

However, internal linking isn’t a mere routine process; it requires understanding, precision, and a human touch.

This article will uncover why this automation might not be in your best interest and why a manual approach often yields better results.

Understanding Internal Linking

What Is Internal Linking, and Why Is It Vital?

Internal linking involves strategically connecting different pages within your website. It’s essential for several reasons:

  • Ease of Navigation: It creates an intuitive pathway for users, enhancing their browsing experience.
  • SEO Benefits: Google and other search engines evaluate internal links to understand your site’s structure, affecting your search rankings.
  • User Engagement: Proper linking guides users to related content, increasing engagement.

This isn’t a mere technical task; it requires insight into your content’s context and relevance.

The Draw of Automation

Linkilo has been developing internal linking plugin for over 2 years now, with 3 years of research and development, having previously owned an SEO agency to streamline this process. We’ve been trying to find the perfect balance of automation vs manual process and we’ve heard from many of our customers about automation and would like to address a few drawbacks.

What Does Automation Promise?

Automation tools and AI algorithms promise to make internal linking a hands-free process. By analyzing your content, they auto-create links that supposedly maintain contextual relevance.

When and Where Is It Used?

Automation in internal linking has found a place in large websites, where manual linking might seem time-consuming. But is this a wise decision across all platforms?

Our auto linking feature is one automation you can use, but we do not fully automate this process, it requires a bit of manual process to make sure it aligns with your strategy.

Once you’ve entered the anchor text and the URL, our tool can find all the links with that targeted word. You can verify and approve each of the links that we found. This requires a bit of a human touch to understand the context of the sentence and you can determine if it is a good place to insert the link or not:

The Shortcomings of Automating Internal Linking

How Can Automation Go Wrong?

Automation can lead to several pitfalls:

  • Lack of Contextual Understanding: AI can’t always understand the nuanced relationships between different pieces of content. It may link unrelated topics or miss relevant connections, hurting user experience.
  • Over-Linking: Automation tools might overdo linking, leading to a cluttered experience and negatively impacting SEO.
  • Incompatibility with Specific Strategies: Automated tools might not align with your unique website structure or content strategy.

Why Is Manual Control Often Better?

Humans possess the ability to see connections that an algorithm may miss. Our understanding of subtleties, unique insights, and adaptability to specific goals and strategies make manual control often preferable.

Examples of A.I mistakes

To reinforce our argument, let’s look at real-world examples:

  • Large E-commerce Site: An e-commerce platform tried automating internal linking but found that the AI was linking unrelated products, confusing customers. An example would be “blue shoes” linking women’s shoes to men’s blue shoes.
  • Niche site: “Best Straight Razor” should be used for /best-straight-razor/ article, but linking that anchor text to “Best DOVO Shavette Straight Razor”.
  • News Portal: A news website faced SEO penalties due to over-linking through automation, which Google’s algorithm flagged as unnatural.

The amount of computation power to decipher if the article is for men or women, or binary. Or understanding that “best straight razor” should only be used for /best-straight-razor/ or understanding how many links should a page have, all require an immense amount of resources and steps to make sure that every single failing point is addressed.

Conclusion: Making an Informed Decision

Automation in internal linking offers allure with its speed and perceived efficiency. However, it may fall short of understanding nuanced relationships and alignment with specific strategies. A human touch ensures user-centric and SEO-friendly alignment, making it a more thoughtful choice. While automation may appear time-saving, it may pose long-term risks, making manual control a cautious choice.

Most of A.I companies and even Bing is offering a Co-Pilot approach to their users versus a fully automated one. Tools like SurferSEO does not fully automate their process and countless other tools don’t. There are tools that make sense in automation, but each website owner has different needs, to fully automate something, requires an immense amount of understanding of everyones needs and failing points to overcome the negativity that comes with it.