Requirements and compatibility
Everything you need to check before installing, in one page: the versions, the SEO plugin layer both plugins depend on, what each plugin supports, and the cases that genuinely do not work.
Server requirements
| Requirement | Minimum |
|---|---|
| WordPress | 5.0 or higher |
| PHP | 7.4 or higher |
| MySQL | 5.6 or higher, for the custom tables used by Automatic Internal Links |
| Editor | Classic and Gutenberg both supported |
These are floors, not recommendations. Any host running a currently supported PHP version clears them comfortably.
The SEO plugin layer
At least one of these must be installed and activated:
- Yoast SEO, free or premium
- Rank Math, free or premium
- All in One SEO, free or premium, supported by Auto Focus Keyword 1.0.8 and Automatic Internal Links 2.0.7
- SEOPress, free or premium, supported by Auto Focus Keyword 1.0.8 and Automatic Internal Links 2.0.7
This is a hard dependency, not an integration. The focus keyword field belongs to the SEO plugin: Auto Focus Keyword writes into it and Automatic Internal Links reads from it. With none of the four installed, there is no field to work with.
One active source of truth
Do not run several SEO plugins at once unless you are deliberately migrating. Each keeps its own keyword storage, so two active plugins means two divergent keyword layers and results that look arbitrary.
Support for four SEO sources does not mean the four are read and written identically. Each has its own storage path, and each is documented per plugin and per version below.
Auto Focus Keyword for SEO
| SEO plugin | Status |
|---|---|
| Yoast SEO | ✓ Fully supported |
| Rank Math | ✓ Fully supported |
| All in One SEO | ✓ Supported from Auto Focus Keyword 1.0.8 |
| SEOPress | ✓ Supported from Auto Focus Keyword 1.0.8 |
| The SEO Framework | Not supported |
Automatic Internal Links for SEO
| SEO plugin | Status |
|---|---|
| Yoast SEO | ✓ Fully supported |
| Rank Math | ✓ Fully supported |
| All in One SEO | ✓ Supported from Automatic Internal Links 2.0.7, reads keyphrases from the aioseo_posts table |
| SEOPress | ✓ Supported from Automatic Internal Links 2.0.7 |
| Integration | Status |
|---|---|
| WooCommerce products | ✓ Pro only |
| Custom post types | ✓ Pro only, the free admin allows posts and pages only |
| WPML | ✓ Same-language filtering from 2.0.8, see below |
| Polylang | ⚠ Not tested, see below |
| Advanced Custom Fields | ✗ Not supported |
Themes, page builders and the render path
Automatic Internal Links works through the the_content filter. That single fact decides most compatibility questions, because it means the plugin only sees content that actually passes through the standard WordPress render path.
Compatibility therefore depends on:
- what your theme outputs, and whether it renders post content through
the_content; - how your page builder stores and emits content;
- which HTML tags and containers you have excluded;
- whether the text you expect to be linked is really in the filtered stream.
Page builders that store content in their own post meta rather than in post_content fall outside the filter. If links do not appear on builder-made pages, that is usually why, and troubleshooting covers how to confirm it.
Known limitations
WPML and Polylang
Since version 2.0.8, Automatic Internal Links filters out links that would cross a language boundary. The check runs at render time, immediately before a link would be injected: if the source page and the destination page report different languages, the link is skipped.
The plugin obtains the language through the wpml_element_language_code filter. WPML provides it. Where it is available and both languages are known, cross-language links are prevented.
The check is deliberately fail-open. If no plugin supplies that language signal, or if the language of either side cannot be determined, the link is allowed rather than blocked. So the protection applies where the language is known, and the older behaviour remains where it is not.
Polylang has not been tested. Whether it exposes the same filter in a given configuration is not established here, so treat it as unverified rather than as supported or broken.
Verified by reading version 2.0.11 of the plugin, not by running it on a multilingual installation. What this means in practice is covered in multilingual sites.
Advanced Custom Fields
ACF values are stored in postmeta and are not processed by the_content. Text inside ACF fields will not receive automatically generated links. There is no setting that changes this.
The SEO Framework
Not supported by Auto Focus Keyword. What your options are.
Hosting
Both plugins run on shared hosting, VPS and dedicated servers. SYNC and AUTO LINKS process content in batches specifically so that a site-wide run stays inside typical PHP memory and execution time limits, including on shared plans.
The batch size and frequency are configurable in Pro, which is the lever to pull if your host is particularly constrained. See running sync.
Read next
- Quick Start — install both plugins and run the first sync
- Multilingual sites — working around cross-language matching
- Troubleshooting — when something does not behave
- FAQ — the short answers