Implementing Recommendations

Generating the plan is the easy part. This page covers the day-to-day loop: filter down to the work you want, get an AI-written anchor and placement for a link, add it on the live site, and confirm it. RankNest verifies every completion by fetching the page, so the plan always reflects what is genuinely live.

Where to find it

Open the Linking Plan for a link map (Link Mapping → open a map → Plan) and scroll to the Pages list below the tabs. If you haven't generated a plan yet, see Linking Plan Overview.

How the work is organized

Recommendations are grouped by the page that has to change, because that's how the work actually gets done. You open one page in your CMS and make every edit it needs at once.

• The list header shows Pages (N) and which page of results you're on.
• Each row is a source page: its title and URL, a page-type chip, its topic cluster, a small progress bar, and either N to add or a green Done.
• Click a row to expand it and see the individual recommendations inside.
• Open page opens the live URL in a new tab so you can start editing.
• At the bottom, use Previous / Next and the Show … per page selector (10, 25, or 50) to move through long lists.

The first page with outstanding work is expanded for you, and a page collapses itself once nothing on it is pending.

Filtering to the work you want

The controls above the list narrow what's shown:

• Type tabs give you All, Reciprocal, One-Way, Hygiene, and Anchors, each with a live count. See Recommendation Types for what each one contains.
• Level appears only on the Reciprocal tab: All, Same cluster, or Same category.
• Show ignored brings dismissed recommendations back into view so you can restore them.
• Filters opens a panel with a Status dropdown: Pending (the default), All Statuses, Implemented, or Ignored.

The Hygiene tab adds two things of its own: a summary line counting broken and duplicate links across how many pages, and a Check for removed pages button that probes the pages your links point to and flags any that have since been taken down.

Getting an AI placement suggestion

Recommendations are created without AI text so the plan itself generates quickly. The writing happens when you ask for it.

1. Expand a page card, then click the chevron on an individual recommendation.
2. The first time you expand it, AI suggestions load. You'll see Generating AI suggestions... for a few seconds. After that they're cached and reopen instantly.
3. Under Placement suggestions you get, for each option: the section of the page to edit, the paragraph as it stands today (Before), and the same paragraph rewritten with the link worked in (After), with the anchor text highlighted.
4. If the page has no natural spot, the suggestion comes back as new copy instead: Why add new content explains the reasoning, and Add this gives you the paragraph to insert.
5. Click Copy to put the edited paragraph on your clipboard. Formatting and the link are preserved, so it pastes straight into a rich-text editor.

Use the refresh icon (Regenerate AI suggestions) if a suggestion doesn't fit your page. The map icon (View on map) jumps to the source page on the link map canvas.

Hygiene recommendations have no AI suggestions by design; the fix is to remove or repoint an existing link, so the card just lists the anchors involved.

Generating suggestions in bulk

If you'd rather not expand cards one at a time, click Generate AI for all (N) in the plan header. A Generate AI placements confirmation appears first, stating how many suggestions will be written. On plans with a monthly AI allowance, it also shows how many generations you have left and where the run will stop if the allowance can't cover everything (see Pricing). Confirm with Generate N.

While it runs, the header shows Generating AI placements… X of Y with a progress bar and a Cancel button. Cards fill in as it goes, so you can start working before the run finishes, and cancelling keeps everything generated so far.

Adding the link and marking it done

1. Open the source page in your CMS and add the link, using the suggested anchor text and placement, or your own judgment. The suggestion is a starting point.
2. Publish the change and make sure it's visible on the live URL.
3. Back in RankNest, click Done on that recommendation.

RankNest fetches the source page and looks for the link. If it finds it, the recommendation flips to implemented and you'll see a confirmation naming both pages. If it doesn't, you get a Link not found message instead and the recommendation stays pending. Nothing is marked complete on trust alone.

Two card types verify something slightly different:

• Missing link pairs show both directions in one card. Use the check icon on a single direction to verify just that link, or the check icon in the card header to verify both links were added at once. A direction that's already live is marked Discovered and greys out. If only one direction is found, the message tells you which one is still missing, and the remaining direction becomes a reciprocal recommendation.
• Hygiene cards verify a removal rather than an addition. On a duplicate card the check button confirms the extra links are gone and updates the count; if you remove every link to the target, the card warns you and asks you to add one back. On a removed-page card the check button confirms the dead link is gone from the source page.

Bulk actions on a page

Mark all done on a page card header verifies every pending recommendation on that page in one pass. The button shows Verifying… while it works.

If some links are found and others aren't, RankNest tells you how many of how many were verified and leaves the rest pending. For a page whose outstanding items are all duplicate-link hygiene, the page is checked once and every card on it updates together.

The button is unavailable while a rescan or a bulk AI run is in progress. Finish or cancel that first.

Dismissing recommendations

Click the eye icon on any card to Dismiss it, and the same icon to Restore it later. Dismissals stick across sessions and rescans, so a recommendation you've judged wrong for the site won't come back. Use Show ignored or the Ignored status filter to review what you've set aside. On a missing link pair, the header icon dismisses both directions; the per-direction icons dismiss one side only.

Links you've already added

You don't have to mark anything manually. When you run Rescan & Refresh with Recrawl site first ticked, RankNest recrawls the site and any recommendation whose link now exists is marked implemented automatically, including links you added before the plan was ever generated. Duplicate-link recommendations resolve the same way in reverse: they clear once the extra links are gone.

The reverse also gets caught. If a link that was previously marked done can no longer be found on the page, the card shows a Link no longer detected warning chip. Your completion history is preserved either way. The chip is a prompt to look, not an undo. Dismiss the card once you've decided the removal was intentional.

Both rescan paths and the confirmation that appears on unusually large rescans are covered in Linking Plan Overview.

Auto-implementation with the Site Connector

If the client's site runs WordPress, you can skip the manual edit. Install the RankNest WordPress plugin, save WordPress credentials on the client's Site Connector, and RankNest can write approved internal links into post content for you. The plugin creates a revision before every content change, so any edit can be rolled back from WordPress, and it works alongside Yoast SEO, Rank Math, and AIOSEO.

Setup, credentials, and connector health are covered in Site Connector & WordPress Plugin.

Tips

• Work top-down. Pages are ordered so the highest-impact work surfaces first.
• Do a page at a time, not a recommendation at a time. Open the page once, add every link it needs, then use Mark all done.
• Treat the AI paragraph as a draft. It knows the page's existing copy, but you know the client's voice; edit the sentence before you publish it.
• Dismiss aggressively. A plan you trust is more useful than a complete one, and dismissals are reversible.
• Use Export in the plan header when someone outside RankNest is doing the edits. The workbook carries the recommendations with it.

Troubleshooting

"Link not found" even though the link is on the page. The verifier reads the live URL and only counts in-content links. Links added in a navigation menu, sidebar, or footer don't count. Confirm the link is in the body copy, that the page is publicly reachable, and that any cache has cleared.

Clicking a card's refresh icon says the plan is still refreshing. A rescan or a bulk AI run is in flight. Wait for it to finish, then try again.

A card says AI placements are already generating. The card is part of a running Generate AI for all batch, and it's in the queue. Its suggestion will fill in on its own.

A duplicate-link card says no links remain. The recommendation is to keep exactly one link and remove the rest, but every link to that page was removed. Add one back, then check the card again.

The plan says it was updated and refreshes itself. A recommendation you were working on was replaced by a regeneration elsewhere. The list reloads automatically; reopen the card and continue.

Related

• Linking Plan Overview
• Recommendation Types
• Site Connector & WordPress Plugin
• Working with the Canvas