Getting Started with Linkilo

The whole point of Linkilo is to help you add good internal links to your blog posts without spending hours doing it by hand. This page walks you from "I just bought it" to "I'm seeing my first suggestion." It takes about 10 minutes.

What you need before you start

• A WordPress site (version 5.6 or newer)
• PHP 7.0 or newer (8.1+ recommended — see your host's PHP selector if you're not sure)
• The Linkilo .zip file from your purchase
• Your Linkilo license key (from your linkilo.co account)
• About 5 minutes of OpenAI setup if you want the AI features (you can skip this and still use the classic Legacy engine)

Step 1 — Install the plugin

1. Log into WordPress admin.
2. Go to Plugins → Add New Plugin.
3. Click Upload Plugin at the top.
4. Choose the Linkilo .zip file you downloaded.
5. Click Install Now, then Activate Plugin.

You should now see Linkilo in your WordPress sidebar.

Step 2 — Activate your license

1. Click Linkilo → Settings.
2. In the Settings sidebar, click Licensing (under the Advanced group).
3. Paste your license key into the License key field — copy it from your linkilo.co account, no extra spaces.
4. Click Activate License.

You should see a green "License active" message.

To deactivate a site later (to move your license elsewhere), sign in to linkilo.co → Manage Sites → remove the site there. There isn't an in-plugin deactivate button.

Step 3 — Add your OpenAI key (optional but recommended)

This is what powers the AI suggestion engine. Without a key, Linkilo falls back to a Legacy keyword-matching engine — still useful, just less smart.

Get an OpenAI key

1. Open a browser tab to platform.openai.com.
2. Sign up or log in.
3. Click your account icon (top-right) → View API keys.
4. Click Create new secret key. Copy it. (It starts with sk-.)

Your key is like a password — don't share it.

Paste it into Linkilo

1. In WordPress, go to Linkilo → Settings → AI Settings.
2. Paste your key into the OpenAI API Key field.
3. Click Test API Key to verify it works.
4. Click Save Settings at the bottom.

About cost: roughly $0.001–0.005 per post. A 500-post site costs $1–2 to fully process. Set a hard monthly cap in your OpenAI account dashboard if you want guard-rails.

Step 4 — Run your first scan

1. Go to Linkilo → AI Suggestions in the WordPress sidebar.
2. Click Run Now at the top of the page.
3. Wait. The plugin scans your posts. The progress bar shows posts processed.
4. When the scan finishes, suggestions appear below the form.

Each suggestion shows:

• Source post — the post the link would go IN
• Target post — the post being linked TO
• Anchor text — the visible words that become clickable
• Confidence score — higher = better match

Step 5 — Approve your first link

1. On any suggestion, click Apply.
2. Linkilo opens the source post, finds the anchor text, and turns it into a link to the target post.
3. View the post on your live site — you'll see the new link.

You can also click Reject if a suggestion doesn't make sense. Linkilo learns from rejections — bad suggestions don't come back.

Step 6 — Turn on Autopilot (optional)

If you don't want to run scans by hand:

1. Go to Settings → AI Settings.
2. Scroll to the AI Automation card.
3. Turn on Smart Autopilot.
4. Click Save Settings.

Linkilo will scan your site in the background, in small chunks, without slowing your editor down. New suggestions appear on the AI Suggestions page whenever they're ready.

For more about Autopilot and Auto-Apply, see AI Suggestions.

What to do next

• Style your internal links so readers can spot them: Internal Link Styling
• Tell Linkilo what to skip: Content Filters
• Group your posts by topic for better SEO: Topic Clusters
• Find broken links and fix them: Broken Link Checker

Common Questions

Do I need OpenAI for Linkilo to work?

No. Without an OpenAI key you get the Legacy engine — a classic keyword-matching link finder. Still useful and totally free to use. The AI just makes the matches a lot smarter.

Will Linkilo slow down my site?

No. All scans run in the background. The plugin only adds a few small CSS and JavaScript files to your public site, and they only load on pages that need them.

Where are the links being added?

Inside your existing post content. Linkilo finds words that match a target post and wraps them in an <a> link. It doesn't change anything about the words — just adds a link around them.

Can I undo a link?

Yes. Two ways: edit the post and remove the link manually, OR go to Linkilo → URL Records, find the link, click Remove.

How long should I leave Autopilot on before checking results?

Give it 24–48 hours after first turning it on. Autopilot processes your site in small chunks so it doesn't overload your server. Check back the next morning — you'll usually have new suggestions waiting.

I don't see the Linkilo menu

Check Plugins → Installed Plugins. If Linkilo is greyed out, click Activate. If it's missing, the upload didn't finish — try Step 1 again.