21. Internal Links | SEO Forge - Rank Higher with AI-Powered SEO

SEO Forge provides two internal linking mechanisms: link suggestions and auto-links on publish. PRO feature.

Link Suggestion Algorithm

SEOFORGE_Internal_Links::suggest( $post_id ) extracts keywords from the post, queries for matching published posts, then scores each candidate by relevance. Relevance scoring:

+10 points for each keyword match in candidate post’s title
+(similar_text percentage / 5) bonus for overall title similarity

// Get link suggestions for a post
$links = SEOFORGE_Internal_Links::instance()->suggest( $post_id, 10 );

// Use suggestions in a custom metabox
add_action( 'add_meta_boxes', function () {
    add_meta_box( 'my_link_suggestions', 'Link Suggestions', function ( $post ) {
        if ( ! class_exists( 'SEOFORGE_Internal_Links' ) ) {
            return;
        }
        $suggestions = SEOFORGE_Internal_Links::instance()->suggest( $post->ID, 5 );
        echo '<ul>';
        foreach ( $suggestions as $link ) {
            echo '<li><a href="' . esc_url( $link['url'] ) . '">'
               . esc_html( $link['title'] ) . '</a> (relevance: ' . intval( $link['relevance'] ) . ')</li>';
        }
        echo '</ul>';
    }, 'post', 'side' );
} );

Auto-Links on Publish

SEOFORGE_Auto_Links runs on transition_post_status when a post transitions to publish for the first time. Scoring for related posts:

Signal	Points
Shared category	+3
Shared tag	+2
Title keyword match	+5
Content keyword mention	+1

Safety rules: Skips text inside tags and heading tags. Inserts marker before each auto-link.

$auto_links = SEOFORGE_Auto_Links::instance();

$enabled = $auto_links->is_enabled();
$max     = $auto_links->get_max_links();
$related = $auto_links->find_related_posts( $post_id, 5 );
$auto_links->insert_links_in_content( $post_id, $related, 3 );

Configuration

update_option( 'seoforge_auto_links_enabled', true );
update_option( 'seoforge_auto_links_max', 5 ); // min 1, max 10

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