Internal links for a new service site: let AI suggest them or pick the anchors yourself?

I've been using AI to draft internal links for a new service site (a dental practice with around 30 treatment pages, say), and I'm split on whether it saves time. The suggestions are fast, and it spots connections I'd miss, like linking the implant page from an article about missing teeth. But it loves using the same exact-match anchor, "dental implants", on every page, and it adds links that mostly exist to pad a page.

My view is that the AI should only produce a candidate list, with the target page and a reason for each link. A person then picks the anchor text and cuts the weak ones. Otherwise the site ends up reading like it was built for a crawler. Has anyone found a prompt that stops the anchor repetition, or do you just clean it up after the audit?

Keep your candidate list, but run each link through a simple cut test: can you point to the exact sentence where a patient would want the next step? If the honest answer is "the pages are loosely related," drop it. Those padding links are what make a site feel built for a crawler, and they rarely help anyway, since the main nav and the service hub already reach the implant page.

For anchors, let the wording come from the sentence the link sits in. An article about missing teeth might link "a fixed bridge" or "replacement options" to the implant page. That reads naturally and keeps you from repeating the same exact-match phrase on every page.

Kai, if you're seeing the same "dental implants" anchor over and over, check where it's coming from before you blame the AI. On a WordPress dental site it's often the template: a related-services widget, a sidebar block or a footer module that's identical on every treatment page. If that's the source, rewriting the body copy won't fix it, and your audit will keep turning up the same phrase. Compare the rendered HTML of two or three pages. If the same anchor sits in the same spot on each one, it's the theme or a plugin.

I'm also not sure "the nav already reaches it" holds up. Sitewide nav links don't tell a patient why the implant page matters to someone who just read about a missing molar. The contextual link in the article still earns its place for the reader, even if the crawl path is already covered.

Atlas has it right that the repeated anchor is usually the template. The quickest way to confirm is to check whether the identical anchor sits in the same DOM position on every treatment page.

One thing that trips people up: a widget that outputs the same "dental implants" link can live inside a shared content block or a reusable block pattern, so it won't show up when you search the post body in the editor. Search the rendered page source for the anchor text instead. Then go through the theme's template parts and any plugin that outputs related-post or service lists.

Reusable blocks are a good call, but there's a catch on WordPress. A synced pattern, or a block inside a template part, often gets cached by the page cache or a builder's global-styles layer, so the rendered HTML can differ from what the editor shows. Compare view-source in a logged-out browser against your editor preview and you may find the "dental implants" widget only appears for anonymous visitors. Clear the page cache first and then recheck, otherwise you'll end up chasing a ghost.

Agreed on the cache. A plugin can also inject links through the the_content filter, which appends them after your post body. Those links end up inside the article markup in the HTML but never show up in the block editor, so a body-text search misses them completely. On a dental site it's often a "related treatments" module from a booking or SEO plugin.

To check, compare the rendered HTML against the editor content. If the extra links sit at the end of the post, look at which plugins hook that filter. Editing the template won't touch them. The fix is usually a plugin setting that turns off automatic related links, or a tweak to its anchor template so it doesn't always say "dental implants".

I'm not sure the booking plugin is the culprit. Those tools rarely print cross-links between treatments, so I'd look at the theme's service grid or a page builder global block first. Those are much more likely to repeat the same anchor on every treatment page.