Adding affiliate links to your WordPress content is likely a massive challenge. The process will see you search through posts and pages to find every mention of a product or service, then manually insert a link with the correct URL and attributes. For sites with hundreds of articles or frequent content updates, ClickWhale’s Keyword Auto Linker can make the task more manageable and cut out the repetitive, menial work.
In this tutorial, I’m going to examine how the Keyword Auto Linker works, its configuration options, and more. This WordPress link manager could become your new go-to tool!
Why Link Management Matters for WordPress Websites
Structuring your link management can give you multiple benefits, regardless of your size or niche. For Search Engine Optimization (SEO), organization can help to create a logical structure that helps search engines understand the relationships between your content.
Internal links, for example, can guide visitors and search engines through your site hierarchy to assist with establishing topic relevance and authority. External links to reputable sources are an excellent credibility enhancer. Regardless, managing affiliate links properly will offer transparency to both users and search engines.
The presentation of those links affects user trust too. Readable URLs with appropriate branding will typically perform better than long, cryptic strings of characters. A clean URL that includes your domain name will have some recognition as part of your brand ecosystem to users. This can lead to higher click rates and conversions.
If you’re an affiliate marketer, proper tracking will help you determine which promotions and campaigns succeed. Without a system to monitor which links generate clicks and conversions, your marketing decisions will rely on guesswork rather than data. A solid WordPress link manager will provide this insight and show which product mentions and placements drive revenue.
What ClickWhale’s Keyword Auto Linker Is
There are a few WordPress link manager plugins around, but ClickWhale’s Keyword Auto Linker uses full automation to create those links.
In fact, the Keyword Auto Linker is a component within the wider ClickWhale WordPress plugin ecosystem. It essentially adds links throughout your WordPress site to the keywords you specify. This is a background task for the plugin, so you won’t need to create manual links often (if ever).
The process takes two basic steps:
- Create a link within ClickWhale (such as an affiliate link).
- Define the keywords that should connect to the URL.
After, sit back as the plugin scans your content and replaces those keywords with your link. In addition, new content that contains your specified keywords will update to include your links. Old content will update with new links when you add them to the system.
Rather than a blanket bombardment of links though, you can set limits for frequency and context. For example, you can decide how many times a keyword receives a link per-page, which content types should include auto-linking, and whether the links implement case matching.
I’ll discuss the price in greater detail later, but it’s vital to highlight that the Keyword Auto Linker is a premium option within ClickWhale. However, you can access it on any available premium plan.
How to Use ClickWhale’s Keyword Auto Linker
Once you install and activate the premium ClickWhale plugin, you can begin to configure the keyword auto-linking. The process takes two steps: create a link, then assign keywords to connect to that link throughout your site.
1. Creating a New Link
First, you’ll need to create the link that your keywords will point to. To do this, head to the ClickWhale > Links screen within the WordPress dashboard:
This will be empty on first use, but we’re going to change that! Here, click the Add new button, which will bring up a host of fields:
There are three tabs here: the General tab lets you fill out aspects such as the reference name for your link and its unique slug. Here’s a quick breakdown of what each field means:
- Target URL. This will be where you add your affiliate link.
- Redirection Type. A redirect essentially lets you use your domain name within the link URL. ClickWhale defaults to 301 Moved Permanently, but this isn’t often the best choice. I recommend you change this to 307 Temporarily Redirect for most affiliate links.
- Nofollow. You’ll want search engines to ignore your link for affiliate marketing, for a number of reasons. Enabling this is the default.
- Sponsored. If the affiliate link is a sponsor, you’ll want to enable this setting.
You can also set an optional description for the link, and when you complete this, click the Save link button. The next step is to configure your keywords for automatic linking.
2. Adding Keywords for Auto Linking
After you save your link, head to the Keyword Auto Linker tab to set this up. This screen has more complexity, as you need to enter a keyword into the waiting field then choose a link target (whether you open in a new tab or not):
The greater complexity comes from the multiple keywords you could enter here – up to ten. To do this, click the Add More button and populate the fields:
This will come in handy for variations and spellings. For example, with a Bluehost affiliate link, you might add variations such as Bluehost, BlueHost, and Blue Host to capture different spelling patterns.
Regardless, once you save your changes, your content should populate with new affiliate links.
However, you can further ‘massage’ how ClickWhale does this in the plugin’s settings.
3. Configuring the Global Auto Linker Settings
You can refine how the Keyword Auto Linker behaves across your site through the ClickWhale > Settings > Keyword Auto Linker screen.
This section offers several configuration options along with a checkbox to turn off the Auto Linker altogether. For example, you can set the default Link Target here, and set a custom limit for link placement per post.
However, the majority of the settings help you place the links that generate throughout your content. This is a series of checkboxes to let you replace keywords across a few pages and within headings. You can also set content types up for auto linking here too.
My advice is to start with conservative settings. Begin with linking keywords once or twice per post on a narrow range of post types and pages. This will give you a balance between monetization and reader experience. From there, you can increase the scope or tailor things further based on your analytics.
Where ClickWhale’s Keyword Auto Linker Will Fit Into Your Workflow
There are a lot of different ways the Keyword Auto Linker can serve your site, no matter what the niche is. The most direct application is going to be affiliate marketing and automated monetization of your content – a multi-pronged approach will be sound here:
- Hosting recommendations. Terms such as Bluehost, SiteGround, or WP Engine (and variants) can link to the respective affiliate programs.
- WordPress products. Any mentions of themes and plugins will also connect to the affiliate URLs.
- E-commerce references. Product names can automatically link to merchant affiliate programs.
This implementation captures every monetization opportunity without manual intervention. For multi-author sites, this maintains linking consistency regardless of who creates the content.
When it comes to Internal linking, this can improve SEO and reader navigation through your content (not to mention accessibility). Here, you can set keywords that link to pillar articles relating to cornerstone content. You can also look at a simpler approach, such as connecting category-related terms to taxonomy pages or linking product names to review or comparison pages.
Ultimately, a WordPress link manager is going to be uber-valuable for content publishing sites, affiliate marketers, e-commerce store owners, and agencies. Also, anywhere you work alone (maybe as a solo entrepreneur or content creator) will benefit from the automation ClickWhale’s plugin provides.
Pricing Breakdown: What Each Tier Costs
ClickWhale offers multiple pricing options that includes both annual and lifetime licenses. While the free version of ClickWhale is a good WordPress link manager plugin, it doesn’t include the Keyword Auto Linker.
Instead, you’ll want to choose one of the premium plans:
- €79 per year for a single site license. This option will suit you if you’re an individual blogger or site owner.
- For managing multiple websites, there is a three-license tier at €129 per year. It’s going to be cost-effective for small agencies that work with a multi-site client.
- You can get ten site licenses for €295 per year, which will be ideal for agencies with a large portfolio.
Each plan includes the entire feature set of ClickWhale, which includes the Keyword Auto Linker. You can also access detailed statistics, UTM tracking, customization options, priority support, and more.
You can also get all of these plans as ‘lifetime’ licenses. This one-time payment for permanent access to ClickWhale could be even better value for long-term link management.
ClickWhale: A WordPress Link Manager That Nails Keyword Auto Linking
A WordPress link manager is one of those ‘behind-the-scenes’ plugins that doesn’t get much attention. However, the right one can impact your bottom line a lot. ClickWhale’s Keyword Auto Linker is one part of a wider toolset that lets you automate the process of adding links to relevant on-site content.
If you’re an affiliate marketer, content publisher, or site owner that deals with large archives, the Keyword Auto Linker turns the process from a burden into an almost inconsequential one. In addition, the price is excellent – you may even find sales that provide more value.
Does ClickWhale’s Keyword Auto Linker fill a need on your site? I’d love to hear your opinion in the comments section below!
