Internal linking is good practice. When you link a keyword with a post and website visitors click this URL, the website’s bounce rate will reduce, and when search engines come across the post containing the URL, they might visit the URL and index the page.
As time passes, the website owner or authors may publish several articles. The older articles might not be linked to newer ones and vice versa. There are two ways to solve this problem – use a plugin that will automatically link articles on your website or show related posts below the article. You’ll find many related post extensions but very few internal link extensions. Below, we’ve shared our review of a WordPress plugin called “Internal Link Juicer”.
ILJ is a freemium WP extension that links keywords with URLs automatically. With a nice rating of 4.7 and 20000+ users, it is one of the top internal linking plugins in the WordPress repository.
Once you install and activate it, ILJ will open its interactive tutorial that teaches you or makes you aware of its features. Make sure you go through the tutorial else you might get confused.
Using Internal Link Juicer
When you open the WordPress post editor, you’ll find an “Internal links” section on the sidebar that appears on the right side of the Gutenberg editor. This section has a textbox where you must add keywords. You can add multiple keywords in this textbox.
After entering the keywords, save the post or publish it. ILJ will now link the keywords to your article and generate an index. All posts on your website containing the keywords you’ve entered in ILJ’s Internal Links section will be automatically linked to the URL of the post. For example, if the keyword is “iPhone” and the URL is “example.com/test”, a page on your site containing the keyword “iPhone” will have the internal link “example.com/test” with anchor text “iPhone”.
Keyword gap
ILJ has a keyword gap function that enables users to create keyword variations by specifying one or multiple keywords. If the keyword gap is set, it will automatically find and link words with a URL when the following condition is met:
- 1st and the last keyword match.
- The 1st N/last N keyword matches.
ILJ enables users to create three types of gaps – minimum, maximum, and gap.
Settings
ILJ is customizable. It can insert links in posts N number of times. You can configure it to not insert URLs in specific posts/pages of your choice and add the rel=”nofollow” attribute to the URL. This extension lets users change the hyperlink structure or add custom attributes to it.
If the HTML heading in the post contains the keywords, ILJ might insert a URL in the heading. You can prevent this from happening by entering the heading tags you’d like the extension to ignore. ILJ lets users configure the conditions on which they’d like it to interlink posts. These were the options you’ll find in ILJ’s settings interface.
Import/export option
WordPress extensions may not work as expected when you update them. As ILJ has the option to import/export the link data, you can back up your keywords and related data safely and import the same when the database of keywords created by ILJ is lost when you update the extension.
Reports
Users can see the number of times the keyword on the site was linked and the frequency of the anchor text usage. In the report, you’ll find an option to edit or view the post in the browser’s tab.
Pro features
ILJ Pro edition includes many handy features. It lets users choose the indexation type and enables only the admins to edit/add keywords. It lets users whitelist taxonomies and blacklist child pages/terms. You can configure it to limit links/insert a certain number of URLs in paragraphs.
Pricing
The developer of ILJ has introduced six paid plans and has also published the free edition of the plugin in the WP repository. The single site license of ILJ costs 69 dollars/year. The Lifetime version of this plan costs 249.9 dollars. The 5 and 10-site license pack costs 149.9 and 189 dollars per year. The Lifetime 5 and 10 site license plan is priced at 349 and 699 dollars.
Pros
Time saver: If a site has only 4 to 5 pages, a user can remember each post’s title, but what if the site is large with 100s of articles? Remembering each post on large sites is impossible. Once you set keywords for posts with ILJ, the plugin will automatically do the job of interlinking posts. Thereby saving the admin’s/author’s time.
Works great: The interlinking function of pages and posts of this WP extension works like a charm without slowing down the website. ILJ finds keywords in posts automatically and links them to the correct URL.
Variations: When you use the keywords gap function of ILJ, the plugin will create different anchor texts for a URL. Thereby increasing the chances of your pages/posts ranking for different keywords in Google, Bing, etc.
Cons
Linking in the post editor: ILJ links URLs to keywords when you open a post. Although this isn’t a significant drawback, it would be great if the plugin inserts URLs when the user is editing a post.
Closing words: ILJ makes the lives of bloggers/WP website owners easy by automatically linking pages with each other. Its free version is feature-rich. However, if you’d like to have control over the functions, you can get ILJ’s Pro version.
