AI internal linking and anchor text on autopilot is a red flag

If an SEO tool decides your anchor text and internal links for you and won't let you override it, that's a pretty big red flag - and I'd walk away. Not because automation is evil, but because anchor text and internal linking are two of the most direct levers you have over what ranks, and handing them to a black box means handing away the steering wheel.

Quick definitions, because these terms get thrown around. Anchor text is the actual clickable words inside a link. Internal linking is how the pages within your own site link to each other. Both send strong signals to Google about what a page is about and how important it is. They are not decoration. They're controls.

Why anchor text and internal links matter so much

When another page links to yours using the words 'emergency electrician Wellington', it's casting a vote that your page is about being an emergency electrician in Wellington. When your own pages consistently link to your main service page with a clear, relevant anchor, you're telling Google which page you want to own that term. Get this right, deliberately, and you concentrate your ranking signal where you want it. Get it wrong - or leave it to chance - and you smear that signal across pages that shouldn't be competing.

That's the crux. Anchor text and internal links are precise instruments. Precision is the opposite of what an autonomous tool gives you when it's optimising for 'link some pages together' with no view of your actual strategy.

A tool that won't let you choose the words in your own links is a tool that won't let you drive.

What goes wrong with AI internal linking left to itself

Left to its own devices, an automated linker tends to do a few unhelpful things. It links pages that shouldn't be linked, creating competition between them. It uses generic or repetitive anchors that tell Google nothing. And it does all of this invisibly, so you don't notice until your rankings are muddy and you're reverse-engineering weeks of automated decisions to work out why.

This is the same reason I'm wary of autonomous agents running SEO unsupervised at all. The linking decision is one of the clearest examples of a judgement call that looks mechanical but isn't. It only looks like plumbing. It's actually steering.

It's also how cheap SEO does real damage

There's a nastier version of this. Some cheap, automated services don't just mislink your internal pages - they build external links with junk anchor text pointing at your site, at scale, with no control or relevance. That can actively harm your domain, and it's far harder to undo than to avoid. I've written about how cheap SEO can damage your domain precisely because the anchor-text-on-autopilot problem, taken off your own site and out into the wild, is where the real damage gets done.

The controlled, deliberate alternative

So what does 'in control' actually look like? It's boring, and boring is the point.

• Decide which page should own each important term, and make it the clear target.
• Choose anchor text on purpose - relevant, varied, describing the destination in the words real people search.
• Link internally with intent: supporting pages point to the page that should rank, not at random.
• Never use vague anchors like 'click here' or 'read more' where a descriptive anchor would do a job.

For external links, the same principle scales up into something genuinely powerful: study what's already working for the sites beating you. Reverse-engineering competitor backlinks shows you which links and which anchors are actually earning them rankings, so you can pursue the same signals deliberately rather than letting a tool spray anchors around and hope. Controlled and evidence-led beats automated and blind, every time I've seen it tested.

The rule of thumb: can you see and override every link?

When you're weighing up any AI SEO tool, ask one question: can I see and override every anchor and every internal link it creates? If yes, it might be a genuine assistant. If no, it's making some of your most important ranking decisions in the dark, and you'll only find out how it did when you're paying to fix it.

I hold this with humility - the tools improve, and I'd be glad to be proven wrong. But control over your own links isn't a nice-to-have I'm being fussy about. It's most of the job.

Anchor text is only one of four places an AI buildout tends to come apart, and the other three are worth understanding before you start - I've covered all four in the honest guide to using AI for your website content.