How to Use Link Whisper to Automate Blog Internal Links

Struggling with internal linking? Not anymore!

I’m sharing my all time favourite plugin for automating your internal linking to strengthen your SEO strategy.

I use Link Whisper in tandem with my intentional internal linking strategy. This method has seen massive traffic gains because it teaches Google my authority quickly and organically.

But the plugin can be a bit confusing at first. It took me a couple afternoons of hyper fixating to really crack it and now I’m gonna save you that time.

I’ll walk you through using the plugins, my ideal settings, and even how to troubleshoot common problems people encounter.

Watch The Video!

Prefer to watch instead of read? Check out the video tutorial:

What is Link Whisper?

Link Whisper is a tool created by Spencer Hawes of Niche Pursuits. The plugin connects with any WordPress site to suggest relevant internal links from and to posts on your site.

Do You Need Link Whisper?

You don’t need Link Whisper when you first start out. With less than 20 posts (I’d even say with less than 50 if you’ve got a better memory than I do), you can definitely do your internal linking manually.

But with 4 sites and over 500 posts total, I can’t keep track of them all. I need a tool like Link Whisper to help remind me of what else I’ve written and interconnect them.

Why Do We Care About Internal Linking?

Simple answer: because Google cares.

Internal links are one of the ways that we prove our authority to Google. It verifies our topical authority by connecting all of our content together so Google can see that it’s related.

Writing 50 posts on a topic is kinda like giving someone 50 Beanie Babies for Christmas. You have to individually wrap them and tell them it’s from you, and even then it’s more work for them to get into them and see the connection.

But if you bundle them all together and tie the present with an easy bow, they know it’s all from you instantly and see how they connect.

It also directs our users to additional content that keeps them on the page and on our site longer.

Before we dive into exactly how to use the plugin, I’m going to share some internal linking principles with you so you understand why we’re using the settings we’re using and why we even need the plugin.

Bad Internal Linking Strategies

1. Not linking at all
2. Linking completely randomly where it makes no sense (i.e. from “New Zealand” to any post on New Zealand, even if it doesn’t make sense in the context of the sentence)
3. Relying on a Related Posts carousel – which never actually suggests related posts
4. Using the post title as the anchor text every time

The point of internal links is to help your user. The 4 strategies I just listed don’t help your user, and so they don’t help your SEO.

We want to help your user, and Google, find content on your site more easily.

So use internal links, but use them in a way where the user expects where they’re going when they click a link.

Don’t send them down a weird dirt road where they think they’re gonna get murdered. Make sure they know the directions you’re giving them based on the context around the link.

Examples of Bad Internal Links

1. “Summer in Canada is full of amazing things to do.

If I linked from “summer in Canada” to a post about skiing in Canada in January, that makes no sense.

I shouldn’t even link “Canada” to a winter post because it makes no sense in the context.

It’s better to link to general Canadian posts if needed, but I’d stick with something to do with summer.

It’s exactly the same as the principle for external linking anchor text, or how annoyed you’d be if you got a backlink with completely incongruous anchor text.

2. “I’ve lived in New Zealand for 20 years.”

Linking from “New Zealand” to a post about the Waitomo Glowworm Caves doesn’t fit.

Sure, it’s about a place in New Zealand, but unless you moved there to go on the 2 hour tour, how does it relate to the sentence?

It’d make more sense to link to a post about living abroad in some capacity or the move to New Zealand. I’d even accept a general “things to do in New Zealand” post.

You would put off a reader by sending them to something so hyper specific from such a general keyword with 0 context in the surrounding text.

How to Internal Link the Right Way

1. Use relevant anchor text – often an SEO keyword
2. Vary the anchor text so it’s not always the same word
3. Make the links do follow
4. Add at least 10 inbound links per post
5. Add at least 10 outbound links per post
6. Don’t have any orphan posts
7. Link within the same topic pillar/silo as much as possible
8. Link back to your silo page about 10% of the time
9. Open internal links in the same tab for better user experience

How to Use Link Whisper

Dashboard

This is the hub of your Link Whisper plugin. It shows you at a glance some stats about your site.

• Posts Crawled: Number of posts and pages on your site
• Links Found: Total number of internal and external links across your site
• Internal Links: Total number of internal links on your site
• Orphaned Posts: Posts with 0 internal links pointing to them
• Broken Links: Links that end in a 404 page (this one is pretty glitchy. I don’t use it)
• 404 Errors: URLs on your site resulting in a 404 error (I also don’t use this one)
• Most Linked to Domains: The domains you link to the most. #1 should be your own domain since we’re mostly doing internal links. But you can also find your most linked to affiliates here.
• Internal vs. External Links: The Total number of links on your site that are to your domain vs. others. (I don’t pay much attention to this)

Links Report / Adding Inbound Internal Links

This report is the area I spend the most time in for this plugin.

This report shows you the total number of internal links pointing to a post, the number of internal links that post has in it pointing to other posts, and even the number of external links in the post.

You can ensure every post on your site has at least 10 outbound (Post A links to Post B) and inbound (Post B has a link from Post A) links.

If you click on “Add”, Link Whisper will run across your whole site to find opportunities to add internal links.

It does not do them automatically. You have to verify that you want to use any of its suggestions.

Domains Report

This report summarizes all of the domains you link to. It shows you the exact posts you link to it in and the specific links.

When Amazon decided to retire their Sitestripe Images, this is how I found all of my Amazon links and was able to quickly skim to find images and replace them.

You can also use it to mark affiliates as no follow.

Clicks Report

Clicks Report is like Affilimate scaled down. It’s all most beginners need to be able to see are people actually clicking on my links – especially on my affiliate links.

Figure out which ones are getting clicks and why.

Is it based on where they are on the page? The format? The anchor text?

This allows you to replicate things to add to time on your site with different posts and increase affiliate sales.

Error Report

Searches your site for broken links and errors.

Because it’s built into your site, it tends to miss internal links that are broken but have a redirect in place.

I prefer BrokenLinkCheck.com. It’s free.

Link Whisper Settings

Setting up the plugin properly is vital to having success while using it.

I get a lot of messages from people struggling to use the plugin, but they’ve never properly configured it.

The video takes you through this step by step, but let me highlight the key settings:

• Internal links should NOT open in a new tab
• External links should open in a new tab
• Only for published posts so you don’t end up with broken links to drafts
• I skip 3-10 sentences depending on the site
• No maximums
• Set URLs for it to ignore, like for Thank You pages for course sales or things that are meant to be orphans like temporary landing pages.
• Mark common domains from your affiliates as no follow, just in case you miss any of them when you’re creating affiliate posts.
• Do NOT set external links to no follow for all links
• Force them to be HTTPs
• If you have multiple sites, it’s good to internal link them together so you can pass authority between them. I have all of my niche sites connected via Link Whisper.
• Connect it to Google Search Console to pull secondary keywords. You want it to select the top 20 keywords based on clicks. Here’s what that looks like:

URL Changer

Here you can create redirects from delete posts to new posts.

I use Rank Math’s redirection function because I was doing it before I had Link Whisper there and I do recommend keeping them all in one place.

But for people using Yoast, which doesn’t include it in the free plan, Link Whisper is a good option.

The “Old URL” is the URL of the now dead page. The “New URL” is the live page you want the link to now send them to.

Target Keywords

If you are struggling to get Link Whisper to suggest proper keywords for you, this is somewhere to play around.

The Target Keywords report shows you the keywords that Link Whisper has identified for your posts.

It pulls from Google Search Console (if you have the connection turned on), your SEO plugin, and page content.

If you need more keywords included, select “custom keywords” and add them manually. Then Link Whisper will have more context for the post to be able to suggest better anchor text for internal links.

Auto Linking

If you always link from ‘Profitable Part-Time Blogger‘ to your Profitable Part-Time Blogger program (well, then you’d be me 😜), you can actually have Link Whisper do this for you.

I do this on one of my niche sites with a popular hotel I always mention so it adds the affiliate link automatically for me.

This works for internal and external links.

Just add the keyword you always want it to link when it finds it on your site, add the links, and you’re golden!

Now you can also play with the settings. Do you want it to do it every time it sees the text, or just once per post?

I’d likely say once per post for most of them, but for affiliate or sales-y keywords, we often need every iteration linked.

How to Add Internal Links With Link Whisper

Adding Inbound Links

When you publish a post, you need to go back through old posts to add internal links so Google understands what the post is about.

Most people skip this step, which means it takes even longer for their posts to rank.

Link Whisper makes this incredibly easy!

Go into Link Whisper and click on the “Add Inbound Internal Links” report. Then click on a specific post and “add” to add those links.

Note: You should run a “Link Scan” first if you just updated posts or published something new.

It will automatically suggest some places for internal links based on the keywords it can detect for your blog post based on the target keywords for that post.

If it has maxed out its ability to find related keywords, you can help it along by limiting the search to only blogs in the same category, or by “search by keyword” to find relevant keywords yourself across the site.

You can even adjust the text from this report. Click on any word in the suggested sentence to add it to the anchor text. Or double click to remove it.

You can even edit the sentence entirely to make it flow better and even include better anchor text for the internal link you’re adding.

If there are more than one opportunities per post for you to add an internal link, you’ll see a drop down option beside the first result. It’s usually highlighted grey around the text too – but depending on your brightness that can be hard to see.

Click the drop down to see all the options in a post.

To confirm you want to add a link, click on the checkbox on the left hand side of the report, then scroll to the bottom and click “Add Link”. It will refresh the page and load the link into the posts you selected.

Adding Outbound Internal Links

Go into any post in WordPress and scroll to the bottom of the page. Beneath the area where you can write content, you’ll find the “Link Whisper Suggested Links” section.

This is where Link Whisper gives you ideas for links to add to a post you’ve just written.

I use it after I’ve already done a first sweep for the links I planned out while writing the post.

Just like the inbound links, you can filter these by category to ensure you’re linking within the same silo.

Note: You will need to save the draft and refresh the page after adding content for Link Whisper to register what’s on the page. It won’t update it’s suggestions as you type.

“Link Whisper is Giving Me Bad Suggestions” And Other Problems

I get a lot of messages confused about how to use Link Whisper. So let’s address some common questions and concerns, and how you can fix them.

1. Link Whisper isn’t suggesting anything

This happens when there isn’t anything for it to suggest. Just because you wrote a post on Sudbury and you know that’s in Ontario, doesn’t mean that Link Whisper knows that.

Remember, Link Whisper can only hyperlink. It’s not adding text for you or evaluating your content like an expert on your niche.

It’s very much keyword driven, so you need to either add more keywords for the Sudbury post to help Link Whisper understand that this is about Ontario, or you need to go and add more references to Sudbury in other posts.

It could even be that you’ve never written on this topic before. If it’s a new cluster you’re working on, then be patient until the new posts are done.

2. Link Whisper’s suggestions make no sense

Again, Link Whisper is going off of keywords and what it can find on your site.

I can almost guarantee that it is not 100% successful at suggesting links. Because it’s not supposed to be. It’s supposed to show you all the options so YOU can make the choice of what to include.

If it was meant to do it for you, there would be no need to agree to the links being added to posts.

I get the desire to have something that automated – it’s the same complaint I often hear about AI writers. But if it was that simple, it wouldn’t be worth doing. And your competitors would have the exact same advantage, so then no one could get ahead.

An intentional internal link strategy is harder because it’s more powerful.

If the suggestions are all across the board and none are usable, filter by category first. I find this often narrows it down.

If that doesn’t work, then I’d double check the post. Did you provide opportunities for linking out to other content?

Link Whisper can’t reference Rome if you’ve never referenced it.

And then if it’s for inbound links, check the suggested keywords or search for a specific keyword you’re looking for. I search by a seed/root keyword like “Rome” rather than “best things to do in Rome”. This allows it to pull more variations you can adjust.

3. It’s not suggesting enough links

Link Whisper tries to keep it to the keywords in the system, so it won’t go hunting for completely random things to link to – as much as it may feel like it sometimes.

Remember, you’re driving the car here. You need to give it opportunities to add links.

4. If I have to do any work, why would I bother with this tool?

This is the same complaint I hear about most tools out there.

Good automation will still involve you. Especially for a tool that’s under $110 a year.

You need to ensure it aligns with your strategy.

It’s why tools that autopost on social media a picture and the title of a blog post don’t go viral. It requires someone doing the work of making great posts, and then automating their scheduling or the hashtags (do people still use those? I don’t understand social media).

Yes there’s work involved, but it’s a lot less time consuming than doing it manually.

That method requires manually searching your site for times you mentioned Link Whisper to add a link to this article once it’s live. That means clicking through dozens of posts, waiting for them to load, finding the text and adjusting it.

Doing that at scale, especially during content audit periods with hundreds of posts, will easily add hours to your work day.

I’ve paid far more than $100 to save myself a couple hours before. This has a higher ROI than those other investments.

5. It’s not perfect

Neither are you, boo.

Jokes aside, no tool is going to be perfect. They are meant to help streamline our strategies and speed things up a bit. But they are by no means instant perfection.

If Link Whisper was true perfection, like it suggested links and it input them and it checked them/updated them as your strategy updated and it knows all of the keywords you haven’t even told it about, it would cost at least $5k a month.

Conclusion

Ultimately, the best way to use Link Whisper is the way that helps you the most.

If you don’t need it for adding outbound links, but only want it for inbound, go for it!

If you only want it to for content audits 2x a year and otherwise you don’t want to use it, that’s fine! You can even remove it from your site in the meantime and just add it back when you need it (although you can’t try to be shady and then put it on another site during that time. It gets linked to the domain I believe when you upload it).

I’ve used Link Whisper to find Amazon API images, check affiliate link clicks, replace broken affiliate links or fix them when affiliates change programs, and to determine the best CTAs for my email list. Those were all from the Clicks and Domain Reports.

Now that you know how to use Link Whisper like a pro, let’s start working on getting you more backlinks. To start, you need to figure out what type of backlinks are going to do the most for your site.

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