Has anyone actually seen consistent gains from AI-assisted internal linking at scale?

[mercer]

I’ve been testing AI-assisted internal linking on a few niche sites over the last couple of months, and I’m still not convinced it’s the “easy win” some people make it out to be.

On paper, it sounds great: feed the tool your content, let it identify contextual opportunities, and automate the linking process. In practice, I’m seeing a mixed bag.

What I’ve tested so far:
– A 120-article affiliate site in the home improvement niche
– A smaller WordPress site with around 40 articles
– Manual linking vs. semi-automated linking suggestions
– A couple of different workflows using AI to suggest anchor text and target URLs

What seems to work:
– Deep, relevant links between closely related articles
– Updating older posts first, especially pages that already have some impressions
– Using AI for suggestions, but manually reviewing anchors before publishing
– Keeping link density conservative so the content still reads naturally

What hasn’t impressed me:
– Generic “related post” style links that don’t really move the needle
– Over-optimized anchors that feel forced
– Tools that suggest too many links just because a page has a lot of text
– Any workflow that ignores search intent and just matches keywords

My current impression is that AI can speed up internal linking, but it doesn’t replace judgment. The sites where I’ve seen the best results still had a human deciding:
1. which pages deserve links,
2. what the primary topical clusters are,
3. which anchors look natural,
4. and whether the target page actually deserves more authority.

I’m also wondering if some of the “wins” people report are really just from better site structure overall, not the AI itself.

Has anyone here run a proper test with:
– AI-assisted internal linking
– a control group or before/after comparison
– enough pages to matter
– and a clear ranking or traffic change?

Would be interested to hear real examples, especially from people using this in WordPress + affiliate setups. If you’ve found a workflow that is actually repeatable, I’d like to compare notes.

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