Another way to think of cornerstone content is the content that makes up the core of your site that your audience should see.

Tutorial Video

Why Should You Use Cornerstone Content

Cornerstone content is used by the ​Link Assistant feature in All in One SEO to help provide internal linking suggestions.

Search engines look at which content that has the most internal links to it as this typically tells them that this content is the most important.

For example, if you have a post that provides the most comprehensive and definitive information about a subject then it would be very important for your visitors to read it so you’re likely to link to it from many other places on your site. These internal links tell search engines that you consider this post important because you’ve linked to it from many other places on your site.

Cornerstone content can be either a post, a page, or another type of content, and you can have more than one piece of content that’s cornerstone.

Whatever this content is, you should make sure it’s very well written and very comprehensive when it comes to the subject matter. You should also update this content regularly so that it doesn’t become stale and it always has the most definitive information available.

Using Cornerstone Content with ​Link Assistant

To enable the Cornerstone Content setting for any post, page, or other content, edit the content and scroll down to the AIOSEO Settings section.

Click on the Cornerstone Content toggle to set this content as cornerstone.

Click Publish or Update to save the change.

When you look at the internal link suggestions in ​Link Assistant you’ll see that links to cornerstone content have an icon next to them as shown below:

When you see this Cornerstone Content icon, you’ll know that these internal link suggestions to this content is more important and can add the internal link by clicking on Add Link in the right-hand column.

Ever wanted a simpler way to manage your website’s internal and external links, without hiring an SEO expert?

We’ve got you covered with Link Assistant, the latest feature we added to AIOSEO 4.1.6.

Tutorial Video

Build Better Internal Links for Your Site

Want to get more website visitors?

Strategic internal linking can boost your organic traffic by as much as 40%.

To give you an easier way in managing your internal links, Link Assistant comes with a Links Report dashboard that helps you optimize your internal link-building strategy.

By giving you data on the types of links you have and how your web pages are linked together, the Links Report helps you build internal links faster and better.

Worried that you need to spend a lot of time manually generating a report on your site’s internal links?

You don’t need to — AIOSEO’s Link Assistant addon automatically generates an internal links report with its Links Report dashboard.

The Links Report dashboard also gives you insight into:

• Linking Opportunities: Link Assistant crawls all your pages and offers suggestions on relevant pages you can link to, as well as anchor text you can use — without needing to audit your site manually.
• Orphan pages: Link Assistant finds all the orphan pages (pages with zero internal links) on your site and offers linking suggestions to bolster your internal linking strategy.

Creating internal links is super easy with Link Assistant. For one, Link Assistant offers link suggestions that help you speed up the process of finding internal linking opportunities. 

Just click “Add Link,” and it automatically adds the link to your post. No need to open the post separately.

With this feature, you get to save time and effort while optimizing your site links for higher rankings.

Want to change your anchor text or link placement?

In the past, you had to open your blog post separately and revise your anchor text or link placement on a different page.

Now, with the Link Assistant, all it takes is just one click. Simply hover over the link suggestion, click on the edit icon and change your anchor text or link placement as needed.

Since it’s quicker for you to manage your links, you can easily add relevant links to your website to boost your chances of ranking your content higher.

Domains Report: Organize External Links to Rank Higher

Did you know that external links are considered the third most important ranking factor?

That’s why with this latest feature, we’ve made it simpler for you to manage your external links so you can help your website rank higher.

With Link Assistant’s Domains Report, you can easily have greater control over your site’s external links, without touching a single line of code.

For example, the Domains Report will help you delete external links that don’t add value to your content with just a few clicks.

Plus, you can edit all your external links right from within Link Assistant — no need to open each post individually.

As a result, you can organize your site’s external links in much less time. So, you’re free to invest that saved time back into your business.

With this latest feature, you can easily improve your user experience and build trust in your content to increase your site traffic.

Use the Settings Page to Define the Data You Want to See 

Too much data is crippling. That’s why we created the option to refine the information you see in Links Assistant. You can define the criteria for suggestions using the “Settings” page. 

Defining your ranges this way enables you to easily zero in on the posts, pages, and links that matter to you most. You can also exclude certain words from being suggested as anchor text, thereby improving anchor text suggestions.

As a result, it becomes easier for you to audit and optimize your internal and external links, thereby helping you boost your SEO.

Further Reading

You can find more information and articles about Link Assistant here.

The Link Assistant addon for All in One SEO Pro enables you to do just that.

Here we’ll provide an introduction to the features in Link Assistant.

Tutorial Video

To get started with Link Assistant, click on Link Assistant in the All in One SEO menu.

Overview Dashboard

The first screen you’ll see in Link Assistant is the Overview which is a dashboard that shows information about the content and links on your site.

The Overview includes the following information:

• Posts Crawled – This is a count of how many posts have been crawled by Link Assistant so far. This includes content in all post types you’ve included in the Post Types setting under Link Assistant » Settings. You’ll also see an indicator in the top right corner of the Overview that shows the percentage of links scanned on your site. If you have a large site with a lot of links, the scan may take some time. You can safely leave the screen or log out of your site and the scan will continue processing links in your content.

• Orphaned Posts – This is a count of how many posts on your site are orphaned. Orphaned posts are content that have no inbound internal links yet and may be more difficult to find by search engines. You can filter the Links Report by Orphaned Posts.
  
• External Links – This is a count of how many external links you have on your site. External links are links that go to sites other than your own. They help your visitors by linking them to related content on other authoritative sites which they would find helpful.
  
• Internal Links – This is a count of how many internal links you have on your site. Internal links are links within your site. They help you route visitors around your site to related content or build a path towards a destination such as a contact form or an eCommerce checkout process.
  
• Affiliate Links – This is a count of how many affiliate links you have on your site. Affiliate links are links to sites where you participate in an affiliate marketing program to earn money from sales that you refer to that partner. If you don’t participate in affiliate programs then you can ignore this feature in Link Assistant.

The Internal vs External vs Affiliate Links area on the Overview shows the balance of links on your site. This helps you easily see whether you’ve got a good balance.

The Most Linked to Domains area shows the external sites which you link to the most, and the number of links you have to each of these sites. For a full list of external sites you link to, click on the Domains Report tab or the See a Full Domains Report link.

The Linking Opportunities area shows the top opportunities for internal linking in your content. Click on the See All Linking Opportunities link to see the full report.

Links Report

The Links Report shows a table of your content with columns for Post Title, Publish Date, Internal Links, Affiliate Links, External Links, and Link Suggestions.

You can filter the report by clicking on the Linking Opportunities or Orphaned Posts links above the table.

Use the Linking Opportunities filter to focus on the content where Link Assistant has suggestions for improving your internal linking. Internal links tell search engines how important each item of content is. The more internal links to a post or page show that it’s more important than one with fewer links.

Use the Orphaned Posts filter to focus on content where there are no internal links to that content. Orphaned content is harder for search engines, and visitors, to find and can result in that content not getting indexed and not appearing in search results.

You can also filter the report by post type. Click on the All Post Types drop-down and then select the post type. If you select Post, then you’ll see an additional drop-down to filter by post categories.

The report is paginated with ten entries per page. Use the arrows above the top right of the table to navigate to each page of the report.

Within the Links Report table, you can click on the arrow to the right of each post to expand that post and see details of the Internal Links, Affiliate Links, External Links, and Link Suggestions.

To learn more about using the Links Report, check out the articles below:

• Internal Links in the Link Assistant Links Report
• External Links in the Link Assistant Links Report
• Affiliate Links in the Link Assistant Links Report
• Link Suggestions in the Link Assistant Links Report

Domains Report

The Domains Report shows a table of all the external sites that you link to. There are columns for Domain, Posts, and Links.

This helps you understand where you’re linking to so you can better manage outbound links.

Good outbound (external) links can help your visitors find related information from reputable sources, and show search engines that you’ve provided your visitors with further reading and research.

However, outbound links also share your page ranking with the site you link to, so you need to carefully manage your outbound links. The Domains Report helps you do this by providing a single location for this information.

To learn more about using the Domains Report, check out our Using the Domains Report article here.

Further Reading

You can find more information and articles about Link Assistant here.

Here we’re going to look at the Internal Links feature in the Links Report.

Accessing the Links Report

To get started, click on Link Assistant in the All in One SEO menu and then click on the Links Report tab.

The Links Report shows a table of your content with columns for Post Title, Publish Date, Internal Links, Affiliate Links, External Links, and Link Suggestions.

Within the Links Report table, you can click on the arrow to the right of each post to expand that post and see details of the Internal Links, Affiliate Links, External Links, and Link Suggestions.

Internal Links are separated into Inbound Internal and Outbound Internal links.

Inbound Internal Links

Inbound Internal links are links to this post from other content on your site.

Click on the Inbound Internal tab to view a table that shows the list of links for this post.

If there are more than five inbound internal links for this post, then you’ll see a link to See All Inbound Internal Links below the table. This will open a screen that shows the full list.

The Inbound Internal links table shows the Post Title for the post that’s linking to this post. It also shows the Phrase that contains the link.

You can hover over the post title to see quick links for View Post and Edit Post.

You can click on the delete icon to the right of each row to delete that link. This will only remove the link itself, it doesn’t delete the text.

You can also click Delete All Inbound Internal Links to delete all inbound links to this post.

There’s a Refresh button that will scan this post again and refresh the content in all tabs.

Finally, click on the Inbound Link Suggestions button to be taken to the Link Suggestions for this post.

Outbound Internal Links

Outbound Internal links are links from this post to other content on your site.

Click on the Outbound Internal tab to view a table that shows the list of links for this post.

If there are more than five outbound internal links for this post, then you’ll see a link to See All Outbound Internal Links below the table. This will open a screen that shows the full list.

The Outbound Internal links table shows the Post Title / URL for the post that’s being linked to from this post. It also shows the Phrase that contains the link.

You can hover over the post title / URL to see quick links for View Post and Edit Post.

You can click on the delete icon to the right of each row to delete that link. This will only remove the link itself, it doesn’t delete the text.

You can also click Delete All Outbound Internal Links to delete all outbound links from this post.

There’s a Refresh button that will scan this post again and refresh the content in all tabs.

Finally, click on the Outbound Link Suggestions button to be taken to the Link Suggestions for this post.

Further Reading

You can find more information and articles about Link Assistant here.

Here we’re going to look at the External Links feature in the Links Report.

Opening the Links Report

To get started, click on Link Assistant in the All in One SEO menu and then click on the Links Report tab.

The Links Report shows a table of your content with columns for Post Title, Publish Date, Internal Links, Affiliate Links, External Links, and Link Suggestions.

Within the Links Report table, you can click on the arrow to the right of each post to expand that post and see details of the Internal Links, Affiliate Links, External Links, and Link Suggestions.

External Links

External links are links from this post to other websites on the Internet.

If there are more than five external links for this post, then you’ll see a link to See All External Links below the table. This will open a screen that shows the full list.

The External links table shows the Phrase that contains the link. Click the link in the phrase to open that site.

You can click on the delete icon to the right of each row to delete that link. This will only remove the link itself, it doesn’t delete the text.

You can also click Delete All External Links to delete all outbound external links from this post.

There’s a Refresh button that will scan this post again and refresh the content in all tabs.

Further Reading

You can find more information and articles about Link Assistant here.

Here we’re going to look at the Affiliate Links feature in the Links Report.

Links Report in Link Assistant

To get started, click on Link Assistant in the All in One SEO menu and then click on the Links Report tab.

The Links Report shows a table of your content with columns for Post Title, Publish Date, Internal Links, Affiliate Links, External Links, and Link Suggestions.

Within the Links Report table, you can click on the arrow to the right of each post to expand that post and see details of the Internal Links, Affiliate Links, External Links, and Link Suggestions.

Affiliate Links

Affiliate links are links from this post to other websites on the Internet that use your affiliate link format.

You can set which affiliate links to scan for by clicking on the Settings tab and entering the format in the Affiliate Link Prefix field.

You can enter multiple formats and these can be in either format shown below:

• /refer/
• https://amazn.to

Link Assistant will look for links that match these formats and list them on the Affiliate tab for the post.

The Affiliate links table shows the Phrase that contains the link. Click the link in the phrase to open that site.

You can click on the delete icon to the right of each row to delete that link. This will only remove the link itself, it doesn’t delete the text.

You can also click Delete All Affiliate Links to delete all outbound affiliate links from this post.

There’s a Refresh button that will scan this post again and refresh the content in all tabs.

Further Reading

You can find more information and articles about Link Assistant here.

Opening the Links Report

To get started, click on Link Assistant in the All in One SEO menu and then click on the Links Report tab.

The Links Report shows a table of your content with columns for Post Title, Publish Date, Internal Links, Affiliate Links, External Links, and Link Suggestions.

We’re focusing on the Suggestions column in this article. You can view only posts with link suggestions by clicking on Linking Opportunities above the table.

The Suggestions column shows a number, this is the number of suggestions for new links that All in One SEO Pro has for each post.

Click on the arrow to the right of each post to expand that post and see details of the Link Suggestions.

The Link Suggestions are separated into two tabs – Inbound Internal Suggestions and Outbound Internal Suggestions.

Inbound Internal Link Suggestions

Click on the Inbound Internal Suggestions tab to view a table that shows a list of link suggestions for links to this post from other content on your site.

If there are more than five link suggestions, then you’ll see a link to See All Inbound Internal Suggestions below the table. This will open a screen that shows the full list.

The Inbound Internal Suggestions table shows the Post Title for the post that AIOSEO suggests linking to this post. It also shows the Phrase where AIOSEO suggests the link be placed.

You can hover over the post title to see quick links for View Post, Edit Post, and Dismiss Suggestion.

There is a Dismiss All Inbound Internal Suggestions link below the table you can click to dismiss all suggested links to this post.

To learn about Adding Suggested Links, Editing Suggested Links, Dismissing Suggested Links, and Refreshing Link Suggestions see the sections below.

Outbound Internal Link Suggestions

Click on the Outbound Internal Suggestions tab to view a table that shows a list of link suggestions for links from this post to other content on your site.

If there are more than five link suggestions, then you’ll see a link to See All Outbound Internal Suggestions below the table. This will open a screen that shows the full list.

The Outbound Internal Suggestions table shows the Post Title for the post that AIOSEO suggests linking to. It also shows the Phrase where AIOSEO suggests the link be placed.

You can hover over the post title to see quick links for View Post and Edit Post.

There is a Dismiss All Outbound Internal Suggestions link below the table you can click to dismiss all suggested links for this post.

To learn about Adding Suggested Links, Editing Suggested Links, Dismissing Suggested Links, and Refreshing Link Suggestions see the sections below.

Adding Suggested Links

To add a link that’s been suggested by AIOSEO, click on Add Link to the right of the link suggestion.

You can also use the check boxes to the left of each suggestion to select multiple suggestions, then click the Bulk Actions drop down, select Add Link, and click the Apply button.

The link will be added to the phrase shown in your content.

If AIOSEO has multiple suggestions, then click on “more phrases” to view them. You’ll see radials next to each phrase so you can select which phrase you want to add the link to.

Editing Suggested Links

You can edit the position of where a link is added by mousing over the phrase and clicking on the pencil icon.

This will open a small edit panel with a button bar that has buttons for bold, italic, underline, and link.

To move the link to a different part of the phrase, select the text with your cursor and click the link button on the button bar. Now the link will appear on the text you selected.

Click Save Changes to apply this change and then click Add Link to add the link to that content.

You can’t change where the link points to because that’s suggested by AIOSEO. You can only control which text is linked.

You can use the bold, italic, and underline buttons to format your link.

Dismissing Suggested Links

You can dismiss links suggested by AIOSEO in three ways:

• You can mouse over the post title on the Inbound Internal Suggestions tab and click Dismiss Suggestion, or you can mouse over the phrase on the Outbound Internal Suggestions tab and click Dismiss Suggestion.
  
• You can use the check boxes to the left of each suggestion to select multiple suggestions, then click the Bulk Actions drop down, select Dismiss, and click the Apply button.
  
• You can click Dismiss All Inbound Internal Suggestions or Dismiss All Outbound Internal Suggestions below the table.

Dismissed suggestions can be undismissed. Contact our Support team for help with this.

Refreshing Link Suggestions

You can refresh link suggestions by clicking the Refresh button to the right of the tabs.

Understanding How Links Suggestions Work

All in One SEO suggests links based on phrases that appear in multiple areas of your website.

If text on your site matches words in the title of other content on your site, then AIOSEO will suggest you link that phrase to the content.

For, example if you have a product on your site with the Product Title of “Apple iPhone 13 Pro” and you have text in posts, pages, or other content on your site that refers to the phrase “Apple iPhone 13 Pro”, then AIOSEO will match the phrase to the product and suggest a link.

The order of the words doesn’t need to match for a suggestion to be made.

Note that words in the Word to Ignore field on the Settings tab will be ignored.

Further Reading

You can find more information and articles about Link Assistant here.

Good outbound (external) links can help your visitors find related information from reputable sources, and show search engines that you’ve provided your visitors with further reading and research.

However, outbound links also share your page ranking with the site you link to, so you need to carefully manage your outbound links. The Domains Report helps you do this by providing a single location to see what sites you’re linking to.

To get started, click on Link Assistant in the All in One SEO menu and then click on the Domains Report tab.

The Domains Report shows a table of the sites you link to with columns for Domain, Posts, and Links.

Within the Domains Report table, you can click on the arrow to the right of each domain to expand it and see details.

You’ll see columns for Post Title, Phrases with Links, and Publish Date.

This shows which posts link to this domain, the phrase where the link appears, and the date the post was published.

If there’s more than one phrase that links to the domain from a post then you’ll see the text “more phrases“, click this to see the other phrases in this post that link to the domain.

You can hover over the post title to see quick links for View Post and Edit Post.

You can click on the delete icon to the right of each row to delete that link. This will only remove the link itself, it doesn’t delete the text.

There’s pagination with five entries per page. Use the arrows above the top right of the table to navigate to each page.

Finally, if you want to delete all links to a domain from all of your content site-wide, then mouse over a domain and click Delete All Links.

Further Reading

You can find more information and articles about Link Assistant here.

In This Article

You can access the settings for the Link Assistant addon by clicking on Link Assistant in the All in One SEO menu and then clicking on the Settings tab.

Post Types

The first setting is Post Types which lets you control which post types you want Link Assistant to work with.

Click on the Include All Post Types check box to select individual post types.

Post Statuses

The next setting is Post Statuses which lets you control which post statuses you want Link Assistant to work with. For example, Draft, Scheduled, Pending, Published, etc.

Click the Include All Post Statuses check box to select individual post statuses.

Number of Sentences to Skip at Beginning

The next setting lets you control whether to skip any sentences at the beginning of your content when suggesting links.

For example, if you don’t want to receive link suggestions from All in One SEO for the first two sentences of your content then enter the number 2 in this field.

Affiliate Link Prefix

Use this setting to set which affiliate links to scan for. Enter the format in the Affiliate Link Prefix field.

You can enter multiple formats and these can be in either format shown below:

• /refer/
• https://amazn.to

Link Assistant will look for links that match these formats and list them on the Affiliate tab for each post in the Links Report.

Exclude Posts / Pages

You can use the field to exclude content from being scanned by Link Assistant and from link suggestions.

Type the name, slug, or ID for a post, page, or other post type content in the field and select it from the list of matches that are displayed.

You can enter more than one post in this field.

Words to Ignore

This field contains a list of words that Link Assistant will ignore when suggesting links.

You can edit the field to add or remove words. Make sure to list one word per line.