Contextual link: A link written into the body of a page, inside a sentence about the thing it points to. The words around it give both readers and search engines context a menu link cannot.
Why they carry more weight with readers
A contextual link appears where the reader is already thinking about the subject. On a SaaS help centre, a link from “if the import fails, check that your CSV uses UTF-8” to the encoding guide arrives at the exact moment someone needs it. A link to the same guide in the sidebar arrives on every page, for every reader, whether they need it or not.
For search engines, the difference is context. The anchor text and the sentence around it describe the target in your own words, and Google’s link guidance notes that the words around a link matter as well as the link text itself. A navigational link in a menu has only its label.
How to measure them on WordPress
Most crawlers count every link, menus included, so a post can look well linked while no other post mentions it. To count contextual links only, use a tool that reads post content — Rank Math’s link counter and Yoast SEO’s text link counter both count links in the post body — or a crawler set to the main content area. A post with dozens of inlinks but zero from post content is effectively an orphan page for readers.
What to do
- Link from a sentence that already exists, wrapping the words that describe the target.
- Prefer the body over “related reading” blocks at the end, which few readers reach.
- Give important pages links from several related posts, each describing them a little differently.
The guide to contextual and navigational links explains how the two work together and why contextual links are the ones most sites are short of.