Explained

Best Free Links Management Plugins for WordPress: 6 Tools for Managing External and Internal Links

Besides helping people navigate between pages on the web, links are detrimental to the success of a website. Most people don’t realize the importance of linking up content, but using links properly can do wonders for SEO.

Links can appear as text, images, and buttons. There are two main types of links on a website, internal and external.

Internal links take visitors to a new page on the same website, and external links take visitors to a different website. Both types serve a specific purpose and help you with SEO and ranking higher on Google.

Knowing how to use links to your advantage can seem complicated, but a good link management plugin is all you really need. Luckily for you, we prepared only the best WordPress plugins to help you on your way to success.

1. WP Links

WP Links is a link management plugin that helps you manage all internal and external links on your website and keep them under control. It has many great, free features.

With WP Links, you can control how your links open. They can open each in a new tab, all in the same tab or in the topmost frame. You can also pick the “each in a separate new window or tab” option, and your external links will open in a new tab.

It lets you add follow or nofollow, noopener and noreferrer, UGC, and sponsored values to rel. You can also add link icons and set many other attributes such as title and CSS classes.

However, if you are looking for premium features and additional help, there is also a PRO version of this plugin. The premium features of WP Links PRO are the link scanner, exit confirmation, and link rules.

The link scanner scans and analyzes all available links on your website. It checks if they work or lead to malicious sites and ensures that all outgoing links on your site are valid. It also doesn’t slow down your site.

The exit confirmation feature lets you alert your visitors about outgoing links. You can create a custom popup window with your custom message.

Everyone who clicks an outgoing link will get a popup that lets them know they are being redirected to a 3rd party site. It has many styling options. You can change dimensions, font, colors, background, and more.

The link rules feature lets you create unlimited link rules to control any link property. This way, every link with a keyword can be recognized, and based on the keyword, rules can be created. For example, if a URL contains the keyword “apple,” every link (e.g., www.bestapples.com) will get a user-set icon.

2. Broken Link Checker

The Broken Link Checker plugin tests and monitors internal and external links on your website. It looks for broken links and helps you fix them to improve SEO and user experience.

It detects broken links, redirects, and missing images. And prevents search engines from following broken links and displays them differently in posts. You can edit the links directly from the plugin page and search and filter them.

The plugin can notify you via Dashboard or email.

3. Pretty Links

This plugin helps you beautify, shrink, track, manage and share website URLs on WordPress. With it, you can make links look however you want while using your own domain name.

You can create clean-looking URLs that can redirect to any other URL. It tracks the number of clicks per link and provides an interface where you can see charts of clicks per day.

It enables you to send links via email from your WordPress admin and select temporary and permanent redirections for your links. It has a cookie-based system that tracks visitor activity, and you can turn the tracking on or off.

4. Linker

Linker creates a short link in your own domain and tracks outbound link clicks. You can create short links, manage 301 redirects, track affiliate links, and more.

This tool will add a new custom post type to the Admin menu. Here you can create, manage and delete links by 301 redirects. It tracks click counts, saves them as a custom field, and works with any theme and plugin. It’s functional, intuitive, and has a user-friendly interface.

5. Custom Permalinks

Custom Permalinks lets you lay out your site how you want it. You can change any page, post, tag, or category URL to anything you want.

Old permalinks are redirected to the new address, and custom permalinks give you control over your site structure. It is used only for assigning custom permalinks for individual posts.

6. WP Links Page

This plugin lets you create a dynamic link gallery with screenshots of each link. It automatically screenshots each link and saves you from searching for images for every site.

Link screenshots can be updated on a schedule or manually. You can add and edit links just like posts. Links are displayed in a grid or list with titles and descriptions. You will be provided with a shortcode to showcase links anywhere on your site.

To efficiently manage your website’s links, consider the best free links management plugins for WordPress, such as Pretty Links, Broken Link Checker, and Redirection. These tools help you optimize your site’s AUQ (Average URL Quality), ensuring a seamless user experience and improved SEO performance.

Final Words

Links are essential when growing your website, and link management plugins are a must. If you’re looking for a plugin, WP Links delivers outstanding results. It is a plugin everyone should have if they are reaching for success.

Milica Brborović