This ensures the plugin never breaks your layout or theme markup.

Smart Keyword Scanner Guide

The Smart Keyword Scanner automatically searches your site for recurring phrases. You can configure:

• Phrase length: 1–15 words
• Minimum occurrences: 1–5 times

How It Works

1. Scans all published posts and pages.
2. Extracts sentences and breaks them into clean words.
3. Builds sliding-window phrases of the chosen length.
4. Counts occurrences across the entire site.
5. Suggests only phrases meeting your minimum threshold.
6. Automatically detects the most relevant page to link to.

Why This Is Powerful

Search engines love naturally occurring phrases. This scanner finds the same phrases users already search for — perfect for internal links and SEO clustering.

Scanner UI Features

• Select-all checkbox
• Add Selected → Adds directly to your keyword list
• Trash Selected → Excludes phrases permanently
• Per-phrase link target suggestions

Examples

Example Keyword Pair

bitcoin mining|https://example.com/crypto-guide/

• The phrase Bitcoin mining will be linked everywhere it appears.
• Headings will never be linked.
• Up to your defined limit (1–50 times per page).
• Never linked on its own target URL.

Example Scanner Output (10-word phrase)

"how to optimise your wordpress website for speed"

You can instantly add it to your linking database.

Best Practices for SEO

• Use 2–4 word phrases for most internal linking.
• Use longer phrases (5–10 words) for glossary-style definitions.
• Avoid linking every occurrence — 3–10 per page is ideal.
• Don't link multiple variations of the same keyword.
• Use Pro's conditional logic to avoid over-linking in irrelevant categories.

Troubleshooting

🔹 Links appearing in the wrong places

This usually means the theme has text inside unusual custom tags. The plugin only links text nodes, but some themes wrap titles in non-standard containers.

🔹 Homepage titles not linking

Correct — by design. WordPress homepages use loops, not singular content.

🔹 A keyword isn’t linking

• Check for uppercase/lowercase differences
• Ensure it is not inside HTML tags
• Ensure it is not inside a heading
• Ensure the max-per-keyword limit has not been reached

FAQ

Does this slow down my site?

No. All linking is done on the final HTML output using efficient regex and placeholder handling.

Can I add thousands of keywords?

Yes — the plugin is built to scale.

Does it affect SEO?

Yes, positively. Internal linking improves crawlability and authority flow.

Does it work with page builders?

Yes — Elementor, Gutenberg, Divi, Bricks, Breakdance, and most others.

Changelog

= 1.8.8 =

• Improved: Cleaner, more intuitive UI for the Smart Keyword Scanner
• Added: Bulk delete ("Trash Selected") option in keyword suggestions
• Added: Option to select maximum words per keyword phrase (1–15)
• Added: Option to set minimum occurrences (1–5) to reduce low-quality or accidental keyword phrases
• Improved: More accurate keyword and phrase scanning
• Improved: Better filtering of repeated or low-value phrases
• Improved: More reliable handling of punctuation and special characters in scanned phrases
• Improved: Reduced duplicate suggestions and overall scan quality

= 1.8.7 =

• Added: Smart Keyword Scanner — auto-discover valuable phrases from your content
• Added: One-click suggestion of best internal link targets
• Added: Select-all and bulk-add functionality in keyword generator
• Improved: Better UI/UX throughout settings

= 1.8.6 =

• Added: Option to open external links in new tab with rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer"
• Added: Visual indicator (Internal / External) in settings keyword table
• Improved: Better escaping and full WordPress coding-standards compliance
• Fixed: All known bugs and layout issues at the time of release

= 1.7.0 =

• First public release of Simon's Auto Keyword Linker
• Initial engine for automatic keyword → link replacement
• Stable, lightweight internal linking plugin foundation

Made with ❤️ in the UK by Simon Ward