Auto Links vs AI Suggestions — Which Should You Use?

TL;DR

• Auto Links = a rule you write. "Whenever the phrase X appears in any post, link it to URL Y." Mechanical. Predictable. You're in charge.
• AI Suggestions = Linkilo's brain. Reads each post, decides which other posts on your site it's topically related to, and proposes a link. Smart. Contextual. You approve each one (unless you turn on Auto-Apply).

Most sites end up using both. They solve different problems.

When Auto Links is the right tool

Pick Auto Links when you already know exactly which phrase should link to which URL.

• Money page that needs every mention of a product name to link to it. You sell "the Linkilo Pro license" and want every blog mention of "Linkilo Pro" to link to your pricing page.
• An author bio you reuse. "Written by Jane Doe" should always link to Jane's author page, in every post.
• A campaign URL on a seasonal anchor. "Black Friday deal" → your Black Friday landing page, with a start/end date so it auto-expires.
• A canonical anchor → URL mapping you're enforcing across the site. You decided "espresso machine" links to /best-espresso-machines/ everywhere; Auto Links is the enforcement tool.

Auto Links runs without any AI cost. No OpenAI key needed. The rule fires on every post matching its conditions.

When AI Suggestions is the right tool

Pick AI Suggestions when you want Linkilo to discover opportunities you wouldn't have thought of.

• Filling out internal links on existing content. You've got 500 posts and don't remember which ones cover what. AI scans them all and surfaces relevant connections.
• New posts that need contextual links. You just wrote a post; AI reads it and proposes 8–10 links to related existing posts based on semantic match — not exact keyword match.
• Cluster building. AI groups posts into themes and links between them.
• Catching topically related content you didn't realise was related. A coffee post linking to a productivity post because both discuss "morning routine" — Linkilo's embedding model catches that; an Auto Link rule never would.

AI Suggestions costs a few cents per post in OpenAI usage but produces dramatically richer links.

Side-by-side comparison

How they interact

The two engines run independently, but they respect each other:

• A post containing an Auto Links target phrase won't get a duplicate AI suggestion for the same phrase pointing at the same URL.
• The AI engine reads the same Excluded Words / Categories to Skip filters that Auto Links reads, so a target you've blocked is blocked for both.
• Both write into your URL Records inventory, so Click Analytics and the Anchor Report cover links from either source.

Common mistakes

Using Auto Links when you should be using AI Suggestions

Symptom: the same exact-match anchor pointing to the same URL in 60 different posts because your Auto Links rule has no per-post cap.

Fix: turn on One link per post in the Auto Links rule. Better: delete the rule and let AI Suggestions propose context-appropriate links with varied anchors.

Using AI Suggestions when you should be using Auto Links

Symptom: AI doesn't reliably link "Free SEO Course" to your course landing page because the post text uses paraphrases like "free course" or "SEO training" and the AI scores them differently.

Fix: add an Auto Links rule for the exact phrases you care about. Use AI for everything else.

Running both with overlapping rules and no cap

Symptom: a post ends up with 12 links to the same target URL.

Fix: Auto Links → One link per post ON. AI Suggestions → Max suggestions per post capped. URL Records → Same URL report flags accidental dupes.

Suggested setup for most sites

1. Start with AI Suggestions to get a baseline of contextual internal linking across all your existing content.
2. Identify 5–15 anchor → URL pairs that must always link consistently (product names, money pages, author bios).
3. Add those as Auto Links rules with One link per post.
4. Let AI Suggestions handle everything else, with Autopilot on for ongoing maintenance.

See also

• AI Suggestions
• How to Use the Add New Auto Links Feature
• Is the Auto-Linking Tool Fully Automated?
• How to Improve Linkilo's Link Suggestions