11 Aug 2026 · 7 min read · All posts
Here is a link an automated tool produced on a real site: "…for more information see best-running-shoes-2024-guide."
That is a URL slug wearing a link's clothing. No human would write it. And it is the single most common failure mode in automated internal linking.
The words inside a link are a description of the destination, written in your voice, that search engines weigh heavily. If ten pages link to your pace guide using the phrase "marathon pace strategy", that phrase becomes strongly associated with the page.
That is genuine power. It is also why getting it wrong costs you twice — once in the signal you fail to send, once in the reader who sees a machine-shaped phrase and lowers their guard.
The slug. Using the URL as the visible text. Instantly recognisable as automation, and it describes nothing.
The generic. "Click here", "read more", "this article". Search engines learn nothing, and screen reader users navigating by link list get a page full of identical entries.
The exact-match repeat. Same keyword, every time, across four hundred pages. This was effective in 2011 and has been a spam signal since roughly 2012.
The forced insert. The keyword did not appear in the sentence, so the tool jammed it in anyway. The sentence stops making sense and the reader notices.
Anchor text should be a phrase that describes the target page and reads naturally where it sits. Those two constraints are usually satisfiable. When they are not, the honest move is to skip the link.
That last part is the important one. A link you skip costs you nothing. A bad link costs you reader trust. Most tools are built to maximise link count, so skipping is never an option they consider.
Two clean cases, and only two.
Wrap — the phrase already exists in your text. Put the link around it. Nothing else changes. This is always the best outcome, because the sentence was written by a human for human reasons.
Rewrite — the phrase is not there, but the paragraph is genuinely about the subject. Rewrite one sentence so the phrase belongs, then link it. This is legitimate, and it is also where most automation goes wrong, because rewriting requires judgment about whether the paragraph was ever about that subject at all.
If neither applies, there is no link to add. Say so and move on.
Link to the same page from several articles using related but different phrasing — "marathon pace strategy", "race pace", "pacing for a marathon". You cover more of how people actually search, and you avoid the exact-match pattern.
Different, not random. Every variant still has to describe the destination accurately.
Prakam does this automatically. Crawl your site, see every suggested link in its real sentence, approve the ones you agree with. Free for one site.
FAQ
A phrase that accurately describes the destination page and reads naturally in the sentence where it sits. Both constraints must hold. When they cannot both be satisfied, the honest move is to skip the link entirely.
Using the identical keyword every time across hundreds of pages is a recognised spam pattern. Vary the phrasing between related terms that still describe the destination accurately — different, not random.