Internal & external linking
How Frase helps you build a well-connected article.
Links matter more than most people realize. Internal links help search engines understand how your content is organized and pass authority between your pages. External links signal that your content is well-researched and grounded in credible sources.
Frase assists with both during content generation. Here's what that looks like in practice and what you can do manually when you want more control.
Internal Linking
When you generate content in Frase, internal linking happens automatically as part of the writing process. Frase weaves relevant links to other pages on your site directly into the article as it's written — not as an afterthought.
What to Expect
You need a site audit first. Internal linking requires audit data to work. Without it, Frase has no map of your existing pages and nothing to link to. If you haven't run an audit yet, that's the prerequisite. → See: Audit My Site
Frase targets five to eight internal links per article. These are distributed naturally across sections, and the same URL won't be linked more than once in the same article. If five to eight links don't fit naturally given the content, Frase will use fewer rather than force links in where they don't belong.
Links are part of the writing process, not added afterward. Frase doesn't generate your article and then inject links at the end. They're woven in during generation, which means they read as part of the content rather than feeling tacked on.
Frase links to related pages based on relevance, not specific ones you choose. If you want to ensure a particular page gets linked, the best approach is to edit the generated article and add those links manually before publishing.
Adding or Adjusting Links Manually
Frase's automatic linking is a strong starting point, but you always have full control to add, change, or remove links in the editor after generation.
A few situations where manual linking is worth doing:
You want to link to a page that's new and wasn't included in your last audit
You have a high-priority page — a pillar page or a key commercial page — that you want to make sure gets linked
You want to adjust anchor text to be more descriptive or specific
How many internal links should an article have? Five to eight is a solid target for 1,500-2,500 word articles. More important than the number is relevance — every link should make sense in context and give the reader a genuine reason to follow it.
External Linking
External links in Frase come from the Research phase of content generation. When Frase researches your topic, it identifies credible sources and citations and incorporates them into your article as supporting evidence.
The goal is content that's grounded in real data and authoritative sources — which is both good for readers and a meaningful signal for AI citation.
What to Expect
External links are research-driven. Frase pulls citations from the sources it finds during the research phase and includes them where they're relevant. Links aren't invented or added arbitrarily — they come from actual sources that informed the content.
Frase only links to authoritative sources. Every external link is evaluated for credibility before it's included. Sources below a minimum authority threshold are filtered out automatically, and government, educational, and established industry sources are prioritized. You won't find links to low-quality or unreliable sources in Frase-generated content.
Competitor domains are never linked. Frase maintains a blacklist of competitor domains associated with your account and will never link to them in generated content, regardless of their authority level.
The same source won't be over-cited. Frase tracks which sources have already been cited across sections and avoids repeating the same reference throughout the article, keeping your external links diverse and credible.
Frase aims for strong fact density. External links typically accompany statistics, data points, and specific claims. This isn't just good practice for readers — it's one of the signals that improves your GEO score and increases the likelihood that AI systems will trust and cite your content.
Adding or Adjusting External Links Manually
You can add, edit, or remove external links in the editor after generation. A few things worth keeping in mind:
Prioritize linking to original sources — the actual study, report, or publication — rather than an article that references it
If you're adding a statistic or data point manually, link to the source it came from
Avoid linking to competitor domains, even if the content is relevant
How many external links should an article have? Rather than targeting a specific number, a more useful rule is to cite a credible source for every major claim, statistic, or data point. A well-researched 2,000 word article may have six to eight external citations — and that's a good thing. What matters is that each is an authoritative original source and supports something unique.
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