Entity Link Engine

Automatic internal linking for WordPress — with entity mapping, fan-out retrieval queries and explainable, score-ranked links. Not random links.

Entity Link Engine builds your site's internal link structure the way a retrieval system would: it maps the entities in your content to the posts that answer them, expands every post into fan-out queries, scores the retrieved candidates, and only then inserts internal links.

Post content
   │  1. Entity mapping  → controlled vocabulary + auto-extracted entities
   ▼
Fan-out queries  → title, headings, entities, taxonomies, n-grams
   │  2. Retrieval  → candidates from the entity index
   ▼
Scoring  → taxonomy, terms, entity overlap, fan-out coverage, editorial links
   │  3. Score ≥ 2.5 → top 3 candidates
   ▼
Insertion  → word boundaries, no headings/code/tables, one link per paragraph

Download

The ready-to-install plugin ZIP is attached to every GitHub Release (entity-link-engine.zip). Install it under /wp-content/plugins/entity-link-engine/ and activate it in WordPress.

Screenshots

The dashboard leads through a four-step workflow (configure → build index → review entities → suggest in the editor), the settings stay grouped and readable, and the integrated help explains mapping, retrieval, scoring and the undo workflow on one page.

Why not just a keyword list?

A keyword list finds a phrase. It doesn't know whether the link makes sense. Entity Link Engine blocks the classic mistakes before insertion:

• never inside headings, code, pre, tables, blockquotes, figures or images;
• never inside a word or an existing link (no "audit" inside "GEO-Audit");
• at most one auto link per paragraph, three per post by default;
• each target URL at most once;
• existing editorial links are never modified.

No candidate above the score threshold? The plugin inserts nothing. An empty suggestion is better than a weak link.

Features

• Entity mapping — controlled vocabulary (phrase + aliases + target) plus auto-extraction from titles, headings, tags and categories.
• Fan-out retrieval — one post becomes many queries; a candidate gains score when several query types lead to the same target.
• Explainable scoring — every suggestion shows its score and the reasons behind it (shared tags, term overlap, fan-out coverage, link signals).
• Preview → apply → undo — editor meta box suggests, you approve; a snapshot restores the exact previous content.
• Onboarding dashboard — a four-step workflow that shows exactly where you are: settings, index, vocabulary, editor.
• Bulk run — process all posts via WP-Cron batches.
• Link report — dashboard with outgoing/incoming links and orphans.
• Integrated help — documentation for mapping, retrieval, scoring, insertion safeguards, undo, bulk workflow and privacy.
• Optional semantic layer — opt-in embeddings via any OpenAI-compatible endpoint; disabled by default, fully local otherwise.
• Local by default — no external service, no account, no data leaves the site unless you enable the semantic layer.

Requirements

• WordPress 6.0+
• PHP 7.4+

Installation

1. Download entity-link-engine.zip from the latest release, or copy this repository's plugin files into /wp-content/plugins/entity-link-engine/.
2. Activate the plugin.
3. Go to Entity Links → Bulk run and click Rebuild entity index.
4. Optionally add manual entities under Entity Links → Entity vocabulary.
5. Open a post — the Entity Link Engine meta box previews suggestions.

Documentation

• English documentation
• Deutsche Dokumentation
• WordPress.org readme

Demo content

demo/ contains a German demo dataset (50 blog posts + 20 pages, topic: Industrie-Klimageräte) as a WXR import file plus 28 manual entities:

wp import demo/demo-content.xml --authors=create
wp eval-file demo/demo-entities.php

All figures in the demo content are fictional.

Testing

The plugin is verified against a local WordPress 7.0.4 (SQLite) install:

• tests/test-engine.php — 30 functional checks (mapping, scoring, insertion, undo, auto-run, report)
• tests/test-admin.php — 27 admin/REST/UX checks (screens, settings, sanitization, onboarding, help, author attribution)

wp eval-file tests/test-engine.php
wp eval-file tests/test-admin.php

Official Plugin Check: "No errors found."

Repository layout

Path	Purpose
entity-link-engine.php, includes/, assets/admin.*, readme.txt, uninstall.php	Plugin code (the WP.org zip = exactly these files)
assets/screenshots/	Admin screenshots (WebP)
docs/	Documentation (EN + DE)
demo/	Demo content + entity importer
tests/	Functional + admin test suites
tools/	Asset generator (GD)
wp-assets/	Directory assets (banner/icon) for the WP.org SVN assets/ folder

License

GPLv2 or later · © Eugen Ullrich