How to Exclude Words and Phrases from Link Suggestions

When you need this

Linkilo recommends links based on keywords in your titles, content, and focus keywords. If your niche uses certain words constantly, you might get too many suggestions built around those common words — they technically match, but they aren’t useful.

Example

You write affiliate reviews and every post title contains the word “buying guide” or “WordPress plugin”. Linkilo sees the keyword overlap and recommends linking those phrases between every post — which doesn’t help your readers or your SEO.

Add words to the exclude list

1. Go to Linkilo → Manage → Settings and click Content & Ignored Words in the left navigation (under Content Filters)
2. Find the card Words Linkilo should ignore → field Your stop words
3. Type each word or phrase to exclude, one per line
4. Click Save Settings

Linkilo will skip any link suggestion built around those terms going forward.

(Older docs and screenshots sometimes call this the “Excluded words” field — same thing. The UI label is “Your stop words.”)

What gets excluded by default

Common stop-words for your site’s language (and, the, of, with, for, etc.) are already excluded. The list follows the Your site language setting under Settings → General and is merged in automatically. The Your stop words field is for niche-specific terms unique to your site.

A few examples worth excluding

• Recurring brand phrases (“Best of the Year”, “Guide”, etc.) that show up everywhere
• Generic descriptors (“best”, “top”, “review”) if every post title uses them
• Brand names that appear in every post (your own brand or a recurring sponsor)

What NOT to exclude

• Your actual target keywords. If you genuinely want pages about “WordPress plugins” to link to your “WordPress plugins” hub, leave the phrase alone.
• Long-tail keywords you’re trying to rank for.

Excluded words can’t be re-included on a per-post basis — they’re skipped everywhere. Use this list surgically. If AI Suggestions keeps proposing a pattern you dislike, a linking rule (Settings → AI Settings, step 4) is another option.

See also

If you need to block a phrase on just one specific post instead of site-wide, that’s a different tool — see Negative Keywords vs Excluded Words. The full set of filters is covered in Content Filters.

Last reviewed for Linkilo 3.0.0 (October 2026).