Internal Linking

Overview

Internal Linking automatically adds relevant links to other articles on your site within your generated content. This improves SEO by helping search engines discover and understand the relationships between your pages, and improves user experience by guiding readers to related content.

Configure internal linking under Internal Links in the Settings sidebar of your workflow editor.

Requirement: Internal linking requires an OpenAI API key for generating embeddings used in relevance matching.

How It Works

  1. Index your site: Provide a sitemap URL or manual list of URLs. Publish Owl indexes your pages using vector embeddings.
  2. Find matches: When generating an article, the system uses semantic search to find the most relevant existing pages.
  3. Validate with AI: An LLM validates that each potential link is contextually appropriate.
  4. Insert links: Links are inserted inline where the anchor text appears naturally in the content. If no natural placement exists, links are added to a "Related Articles" section.

Indexing Your Site

Before internal linking can work, your site's pages need to be indexed.

  • Sitemap URL: Enter your sitemap URL (e.g., https://example.com/sitemap.xml). Publish Owl will crawl it and index all pages.
  • Manual URLs: Alternatively, paste a list of URLs to index manually.

Sitemap Filtering

For large sitemaps, use filters to target the most relevant pages:

  • Child Sitemap Filter: Include or exclude specific child sitemaps (all, include list, or exclude list)
  • URL Include Patterns: Only index URLs matching these patterns (e.g., /blog/*)
  • URL Exclude Patterns: Skip URLs matching these patterns (e.g., /tag/*, /author/*)
Page Index Limits:
  • Standard plan: Up to 500 pages
  • Pro plan: Up to 10,000 pages

Use sitemap filters to stay within your limits by targeting the most relevant pages.

Configuration Options

  • Min Links per Article: Minimum number of internal links to aim for (default: 0)
  • Max Links per Article: Maximum number of internal links to add (default: 5)
  • Min Relevance Score: Threshold for link relevance (0-1.0, default: 0.7). Higher values mean stricter matching.
  • Link Distribution:
    • Spread: Distribute links evenly throughout the article
    • Natural: Place links where they fit most naturally
  • Insertion Mode:
    • Inline: Insert links within the article content
    • Post-process: Add links after content generation

pSEO Batch Linking

In pSEO mode, you get additional linking scopes:

  • Within Batch Only: Link only between articles in the same pSEO batch. Fast, no AI embeddings required.
  • Site-Wide: Link to any relevant article from your indexed site content.
  • Both: Combine batch linking with site-wide for maximum coverage.

For batch linking, you can configure anchor text (article titles, a specific column, or a custom template) and URL patterns (default /slug, or custom like /blog/{{slug}}).

Troubleshooting

No internal links being added

Check that your site is indexed (provide a sitemap or manual URLs). Verify your OpenAI API key is configured. Try lowering the min relevance score if links are being filtered out.

Links are irrelevant

Increase the min relevance score (try 0.8 or higher). Use URL exclude patterns to remove low-quality pages from the index (tag pages, author pages, etc.).

Index limit reached

Use sitemap filters to target only the most relevant pages. Upgrade to Pro for up to 10,000 indexed pages.

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