Matching rules and link appearance

Six settings decide what gets matched and what the link looks like once it is rendered. They apply to links created by SYNC and, unless you say otherwise, to manual links too.

Each link stores its own value for every setting below. Turning on Global Override replaces all of them with the global value.

Case sensitivity

When Case Sensitive is enabled, the plugin only matches keywords with exactly the same capitalisation as the stored keyword.

If the keyword is WordPress with Case Sensitive enabled, the text wordpress in lowercase will not be matched. With it disabled, both forms trigger a link.

Default: disabled. The plugin matches regardless of capitalisation, which produces more links on most sites.

Two keywords differing only in case collide

While case sensitivity is off, the engine indexes its searches in lower case. Two rules whose keywords differ only in capitalisation, Internal Linking and internal linking, therefore collapse into one. Whichever comes last in the priority order takes every occurrence, and the other renders nothing at all.

Note that this is not simply the newer rule: an older rule at priority 2 displaces a newer one at priority 1, because the order is what decides. If you need both destinations, give them distinct keywords.

Partial match

When Partial Match is enabled, the plugin matches a keyword even when it appears inside a longer word or in a different grammatical form.

If your focus keyword is robot, Partial Match will also match robots, robotics and robotic. With it disabled, word-boundary mode applies: only robot surrounded by spaces or punctuation matches.

Enable it for languages with rich inflection, where plurals and verb forms would otherwise be missed. It increases the number of links created across the site.

Disable it when you need precise anchor control. The standard counter-example: car should not match carbon or scar.

This setting widens matching. It does not rephrase anchors. If you want a different wording, create a manual link.

Priority

Priority decides between rules that claim the same keyword. The higher value takes over: priority 1 beats priority 0. Two rules sharing a priority are separated by creation date, and the most recently added one wins. Only the elected rule renders; the others stand aside for that keyword on that page.

Default: 0 for all links.

So raise the value on the pages you want to win, rather than lowering it. A link left at the default loses to any competing link that names a value above it, and loses to a newer link that names the same one.

An earlier version of this page stated the opposite. The rule above is the one the plugin's own settings screen states, and the one its code applies.

It does not arbitrate between different keywords

Two different keywords whose matches overlap in the same sentence are not separated by this setting. Priority never reaches the replacement engine, which keeps the longer match instead. If you want a phrase to win an overlap, make it the more specific one.

Limits per rule

Max Links caps how many times one rule may be applied within a single page, not how many links that page ends up carrying in total.

Default: 3.

The distinction matters and is easy to get wrong. If three different keywords each match on the same page, each one is capped separately: with Max Links at 2, that page can render up to six links, not two. The setting limits repetition of a single keyword, which is what makes an anchor read as spam; it is not a global density ceiling.

To control total density on a page, reduce the number of destinations that share vocabulary with it, use the keyword exclusion list, or exclude the page itself.

Verified by reading Automatic Internal Links 2.0.11, where the counter is kept per rule identifier.

Appearance: bold anchors

When Bold Anchor is enabled, the linked text is wrapped in <strong> inside the <a>:

<a href="/destination" title="Page Title"><strong>keyword</strong></a>

Use it on content-heavy pages where links would otherwise be overlooked. Avoid it on pages with little text or a clean design, where bold anchors feel heavy, and anywhere the extra emphasis would compete with genuinely important content.

Link attributes: new tab and nofollow

New Tab adds target="_blank" to generated links.

Nofollow adds rel="nofollow".

WARNING

Using nofollow on internal links is generally not recommended. It tells search engines not to pass authority through the link, which defeats the purpose of internal linking. Reserve it for external links.

Where these settings live

All six appear in the Global settings block of the Settings tab, and individually on each link in the Manual Links interface.

Read next

• Overview — how detection and replacement work
• Controlling what gets linked — keywords, tags, URLs and pages to skip
• Manual links — defining anchor and destination yourself
• Anchor text guide — what makes a good internal anchor