Controlling what gets linked
Automatic linking earns trust through its exclusions, not its coverage. Four levels exist, and they answer different questions.
| Level | Question it answers |
|---|---|
| Keywords | Which phrases must never become an anchor? |
| HTML tags | Which parts of a page must be left alone? |
| URLs | Which pages must never receive links? |
| Per page | Which single page should be skipped entirely? |
Keywords
The Exclude Keywords field defines words that are never converted into anchor text, even when they match a stored focus keyword.
Enter one keyword per line. Each line must spell the keyword exactly as the rule stores it, case included: to exclude both WordPress and wordpress, add both lines.
Version note
Up to and including 2.0.11, a purely numeric keyword was also excluded by a line that wrote the same number differently. From 2.0.12, 0123, 123.0 or 1.23e2, and on PHP 8 a 123 followed by a space, no longer exclude the keyword 123: write the number exactly as the rule does.
Typical use: your brand name, which appears everywhere and would otherwise generate a link on every page; generic terms like contact or home; and words that appear in interface elements the tag exclusion does not cover.
This is the right lever when one phrase is creating noise across the whole site.
HTML tags
By default the plugin never creates a link inside an existing <a> tag. Beyond that, you can exclude HTML elements, CSS IDs and CSS classes.
Default exclusions:
h1
h2
h3
#adSyntax:
- HTML tag names without brackets:
h1,h2,h3,blockquote - CSS IDs with a hash:
#sidebar,#footer,#ad - CSS classes with a dot:
.skip-autolinks,.no-links
Everything inside a matching element is skipped by the injection engine.
Worth considering: navigation blocks, footers, author bios, and advertisement containers, where an automatic link would be inappropriate or distracting.
URLs
The Black List URLs setting names pages that should never have automatic links injected into them.
The settings screen offers a page picker: search for a page, select it, and the plugin records its post ID. When one of those pages renders, the plugin returns its content untouched, so no automatic link appears on it.
This is a source-side exclusion. A blacklisted page can still be linked to from elsewhere: the setting controls where links appear, not where they point. To exclude a page as a destination, use the metabox control described below.
Version note
Configurations saved through the older free-text field, one URL per line, are still honoured. In releases up to and including 2.0.11, a blacklist configured through the page picker was recorded but never applied at render time, so it excluded nothing. This is corrected in 2.0.12.
Typical exclusions: the homepage, the contact page, legal pages such as privacy policy and terms of service, and pages with custom layouts that conflict with injected links.
Per page
A metabox appears in the sidebar of the WordPress editor. It carries two independent controls, and they do opposite things.
| Control | What it does |
|---|---|
| Disable Internal Links On This Page | No automatic link is injected into this page. The plugin returns its content untouched during the the_content filter. |
| Disable Links To This Page | This page is left out of the destinations the automatic synchronisation collects. |
Both are Pro capabilities.
Use it for landing pages with a specific conversion goal, pages whose custom JavaScript conflicts with injected links, and pages where the editorial team wants full control of the link structure.
The two directions are not symmetrical
The URL blacklist and Disable Internal Links On This Page both act on the page being rendered: they stop links from appearing on it. Neither prevents that page from being used as a destination.
Disable Links To This Page is the destination-side control, and it works differently. It removes the page from the selection the synchronisation draws on. It is not a veto applied at render time: the rendering engine never re-checks it. A rule recorded before you ticked the box is therefore not guaranteed to disappear, and a manual link pointing at that page is unaffected.
To be certain a page stops receiving links, remove or change the focus keyword that points at it, or add that keyword to the keyword exclusion list.
Verified by reading the plugin source: the blacklist is compared against the identifier of the page currently rendering, and Disable Links To This Page is applied in the query that selects destinations for synchronisation.
After changing an exclusion
Exclusions are applied at render time, but query results are cached. After changing any of the four, clear the plugin's transient cache from the Sync tab so the change takes effect immediately. See cache.
Read next
- Overview — how detection and replacement work
- Matching rules — what gets matched in the first place
- Running sync — SYNC, AUTO LINKS, the log and the cache
- Manual links — links you define yourself