Link Count

Hello,

Thanks for your question. We’re happy to help you with the Content AI feature.

The Content AI feature is a tool that helps you optimize your content for SEO, readability, and user engagement. It analyzes your content and gives you suggestions and scores based on various factors, such as keywords, links, images, headings, and more.

One of the factors that the Content AI checks is the link count, which is the number of internal and external links in your content. Internal links are links that point to other pages or posts on your website, while external links are links that point to other websites or sources. Links are important for SEO because they help search engines and users navigate and understand your content better.

The Content AI gives you a recommended range of internal and external links to use in your content, based on the length and topic of your content. For example, if your content is about 1000 words long, the Content AI might suggest that you use 5-8 internal links and 4-13 external links. These numbers are not fixed, but rather guidelines to help you improve your content.

In your case, it seems that the Content AI is telling you that you have too many links (197) in your content (you can share a screenshot of this recommendation so we have a clearer picture). This might affect your SEO score and user experience negatively. To fix this, you should try to reduce the number of links in your content. You can do this by:

• Removing any unnecessary or irrelevant internal links that do not add value to your content or users.
• Making sure that your links are relevant, descriptive, and natural, and that they use proper anchor text.

You can use the Content AI feature to check your link count and see if it is within the recommended range. You can also use the Rank Math SEO Analysis tool to check your overall SEO score and get more suggestions on how to improve your content.

We hope this helps you understand and use the Content AI feature better. If you have any other questions or concerns, please don’t hesitate to reach out to us. We’re always happy to help.

Thank you for choosing Rank Math!

Hello,

The link count shows the links present in your content, not the backlinks to your site. The top-ranking pages for your researched keyword using the number of links that are suggested by Content AI. That’s why the AI is suggesting you use the same number of links. However, if the links that you have in your content are essential to it, you can ignore the suggestion.

Hope that helps. Let us know if you need any other assistance.

Hi again,

Thank you for your reply and your interest in Content AI. Let me try and explain this in more detail.

LINK COUNT: This is the total number of links that you have on your page, both internal and external. Content AI thinks you have 110 links on your page, which is quite a lot compared to other pages that rank well for the keyword you entered in Content AI. That’s why it suggests that you use only 5 – 8 links. This is not a strict rule, but a general guideline based on what Content AI has learned from analyzing other pages. Looking through the source code of the page, it does looks like you have a lot of links:

EXTERNAL: These are the links that point to other websites that have a different domain name than yours. For example, if your website is example.com, then any link that starts with something else than example.com is an external link. Content AI detects 97 external links on your page, which is also very high compared to other pages. It recommends that you use only 1 external link. This is because too many external links can distract your readers and make them leave your page.

INTERNAL: These are the links that point to other pages on your own website. For example, if your website is example.com, then any link that starts with example.com is an internal link. Content AI finds 13 internal links on your page, which is not too bad, but it advises that you use only 4 internal links. This is because too many internal links can also dilute their value and make them less effective for SEO.

Please note that these suggestions are not mandatory or fixed. They are just based on what Content AI has observed from other pages and what it thinks might work best for your page and targeted keyword. You can always use your own judgment and experience to decide how many links you want to use on your page. For example, Content AI’s suggestion of using 12 to 18 words for the article’s total word count is probably not very realistic, so you can ignore it if you want.

In addition, I see that I have 4\13 Internal – What does it means? Should I add more internal links to be 13\13?

As we explained above, this means that Content AI suggests that you use only 4 internal links out of the 13 that you have on your page. You don’t need to add more internal links to match the number 13. In fact, you might want to reduce them to avoid over-diluting their value. You can read more about this concept here: https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-cautions-against-using-too-many-internal-links/412553/

Why not to provide more details in the UI what should be done to improve the score, so It will be easier to address the issues.

We do provide some explanations in the UI when you click on the question mark next to “Content AI”. The question mark linked to a guide on how to use Content AI: https://rankmath.com/kb/how-to-use-content-ai/. However, we understand that some users might want more details and explanations next to the suggestions themselves. We appreciate the feedback and I’ll pass them to the appropriate team.

We hope this helps you understand Content AI better and use it to create amazing content. If you have any other questions or feedback, please feel free to contact us anytime. We are always here to help you.

Have a fantastic day! 😊

Hello,

We are super happy that this resolved your issue. If you have any other questions in the future, know that we are here to help you.

If you don’t mind me asking, could you please leave us a review (if you haven’t already) on https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/seo-by-rank-math/reviews/#new-post about your overall experience with Rank Math? We appreciate your time and patience.

If you do have another question in the future, please feel free to create a new forum topic, and it will be our pleasure to assist you again.

Thank you.