Internal linking is one of the highest-return SEO tasks you can do — and one of the most skipped, because it’s genuinely tedious to do by hand. Spatz SEO solves that by scanning your existing content, spotting linking opportunities, and surfacing them right inside the WordPress editor so you can apply them in seconds. Here’s exactly how the workflow runs from start to finish.
Why Internal Links Matter More Than Most Site Owners Realize
Every internal link does two things at once. First, it passes authority — sometimes called “link equity” — from one page to another. If your homepage earns a strong backlink, and it links to a product page, some of that strength flows downstream. Second, internal links help search engines understand your site’s structure: which pages are the most important, how topics relate to each other, and which content covers a subject in depth.
For users, a well-placed internal link keeps them reading. Someone who lands on your beginner’s guide to email marketing and sees a natural link to your email automation comparison is likely to click it. That reduces bounce rate and increases time on site — signals Google does pay attention to.
The problem is scale. If you have 50, 100, or 500 posts, manually reading through every article to find missed link opportunities is hours of work you probably don’t have. That’s the exact gap Spatz SEO fills.
How Spatz SEO Identifies Internal Link Suggestions
When you open a post in the WordPress editor with Spatz SEO active, the plugin analyzes two things simultaneously: the content you’re editing right now, and the library of posts and pages already published on your site.
It looks for topical overlap — phrases or concepts in your current post that match the subject matter of other content you’ve published. Crucially, it also checks whether a link already exists, so you won’t be shown suggestions for connections you’ve already made. The result is a focused list of genuine gaps, not noise.
Suggestions are ranked by relevance. A post that shares heavy topical overlap with your current article appears at the top. A post with only a passing connection appears lower down or not at all. This means you spend your time on the links most likely to help both users and search engines, not on stretches that would feel forced.
The plugin also checks your anchor text. Rather than leaving you to pick a phrase yourself every time, Spatz SEO recommends specific anchor text — the clickable words in the link — pulled from language that already appears naturally in your post. This keeps your links reading like a real editorial decision, not something bolted on after the fact.
Step-by-Step: Applying Internal Link Suggestions in the Editor
The workflow is designed to be fast. Here’s how it runs in practice:
- Open your post. Navigate to the post or page you want to work on in the WordPress block editor. Spatz SEO loads automatically — there’s nothing to manually trigger.
- Open the Spatz SEO panel. In the right-hand sidebar, find the Spatz SEO tab. Inside, locate the Internal Links section. You’ll see a list of suggested target pages along with the recommended anchor text for each.
- Review the suggestions. Each suggestion shows you the title of the target post, the URL it points to, and the exact phrase in your current post that Spatz SEO recommends you use as the anchor text. Read through these — most will make obvious sense, and you may spot a few that don’t fit the context. Trust your editorial judgment and skip those.
- Apply a suggestion. Click the apply button next to a suggestion. Spatz SEO highlights the recommended anchor text phrase in your post and wraps it in the link automatically. You don’t need to select text manually or copy a URL. The block editor updates in real time.
- Check the result in context. Scroll to the paragraph where the link was placed and read it in context. If the phrasing feels off or the link interrupts the sentence flow, you can adjust the anchor text or reposition the link manually using the standard block editor tools. Spatz SEO’s suggestion is a starting point, not a locked-in edit.
- Repeat for remaining suggestions. Work through the list, applying the links that make sense. For a typical post, this takes two to five minutes — compared to the 20 or 30 minutes it might take to do the same thing manually by searching your site and copying URLs one at a time.
- Save or update the post. Hit Update. Your internal links are live.
What Makes a Good Internal Link? Common Mistakes to Avoid
Spatz SEO handles the heavy lifting of finding opportunities, but the final call is always yours. A few principles help you use the suggestions well.
Use descriptive anchor text, not generic phrases. “Click here” or “read more” tells search engines nothing about the destination page. A phrase like “email automation platforms” tells Google exactly what the linked page covers. Spatz SEO’s suggested anchor text is almost always descriptive by design — that’s a deliberate feature, not a coincidence.
Don’t over-link a single post. There’s no magic number, but stuffing a 1,000-word article with 15 internal links feels spammy to readers and dilutes the authority you’re passing to each destination. A reasonable rule of thumb: one internal link per 200 to 300 words of content, with priority given to the most relevant targets.
Link to pages that deserve more authority. If you have a cornerstone article — a comprehensive guide you want to rank for a competitive term — make sure other relevant posts link to it. Spatz SEO’s suggestions will surface this naturally when topical overlap is strong, but it’s worth consciously directing links toward your most important pages.
Check for orphaned pages. An orphaned page is one with no internal links pointing to it. Search engines have a harder time discovering and weighting pages that sit in isolation. Spatz SEO helps surface these gaps because it can flag when a published post has never been suggested as a link target — a signal that it’s sitting disconnected from the rest of your site.
How Often Should You Run an Internal Linking Audit?
Every time you publish a new post, you create two sets of new opportunities: the new post needs links pointing to it from relevant existing content, and it may be a good source of links pointing out to other posts.
A practical routine that works well for most WordPress sites:
- At publication: Before you hit Publish on a new post, run through Spatz SEO’s outbound suggestions to add links from the new post to relevant existing content.
- Monthly or quarterly: Pick a batch of your older posts — prioritize high-traffic or high-priority pages — and work through their Spatz SEO suggestions. Your content library grows over time, so older posts may now have linking opportunities to newer content that didn’t exist when they were originally written.
- After a site audit: If you’ve done a content audit and identified key pages you want to rank better, use Spatz SEO to find all the posts where those pages could be linked. Systematically adding internal links to an underperforming page is often faster and more effective than waiting for new backlinks to appear.
For agencies managing multiple client sites, this routine scales cleanly. Because Spatz SEO surfaces suggestions per post rather than requiring you to map out the entire site structure manually, an SEO consultant can open a post, apply relevant links in a few minutes, and move to the next one — turning internal linking from a project into a habit.
Getting the Most Out of Spatz SEO’s Internal Link Workflow
A few practical tips that make the workflow even smoother:
Write with your topics clearly defined. The more focused a post is on a specific subject, the better Spatz SEO’s suggestions will be. A scattered post that covers five unrelated topics produces muddier overlap signals than a tightly scoped article on one theme.
Keep your post titles descriptive. Spatz SEO uses post titles and content to establish topical relevance. A post titled “June Update” tells the algorithm very little. A post titled “How to Set Up WooCommerce Shipping Zones” gives it a clear subject to match against.
Don’t skip the review step. Automated suggestions are accurate the vast majority of the time, but you know your content and your audience better than any tool. If a suggested link leads to a post that’s outdated, off-brand, or tangential to what your reader needs at that moment, skip it. One well-placed, genuinely useful link beats three links that feel like SEO box-ticking.
Internal linking isn’t glamorous. It doesn’t have the appeal of a new keyword strategy or a backlink campaign. But it’s one of the most controllable levers in SEO — entirely within your own site, actionable today, and directly tied to how well search engines understand and reward your content. With Spatz SEO handling the discovery and the application, there’s very little reason to leave those opportunities on the table.