by Matt Zimmerman
The link pack feature in ZimmWriter is one of the most powerful linking tools in the world for creating both internal and external links.
It allows you to create virtually unlimited “packs,” with each pack containing up to 1,000 URLs that serve as link candidates when ZimmWriter writes your articles. The links in a link pack can be internal links or external links, it doesn’t matter.
To get started, you’ll need to click the Link Toolbox button on ZimmWriter’s main menu.
The link toolbox is where you create your link packs.
Let me take a moment and explain the flow of creating a link pack:
At this point, your link pack is ready to use in the Bulk Writer, SEO Writer, and Penny Arcade.
You’re probably wondering why creating a link pack takes so long. For instance, I’ve made one with about 200 links, and it took ZimmWriter around an hour to process all of the links.
The time-consuming nature of this process is actually what makes ZimmWriter’s linking solution so powerful.
ZimmWriter tries to scrape and summarize each URL you add. This step’s crucial because it’s how the system determines relevance when deciding which links to insert. It’s also how it figures out how to seamlessly inject the link into the subsection’s text.
One cool thing to keep in mind: creating a link pack can rely on ZimmWriter’s built-in scrape cache. If you’re not familiar with it, ZimmWriter stores the scrape and summary of the last 5,000 URLs scraped.
Imagine you want to create 5 link packs, and they all share some of the same links. In that case, ZimmWriter will pull from the cache as it creates those packs, dramatically speeding up the creation process!
When you just input URLs, the URLs will need to exist for published articles + ZimmWriter will need to find enough information on the page to create a summary. But…
What if you want to add to a Link Pack a URL that doesn’t yet exist? Or what if you want to add to a Link Pack a URL to a page with not enough information to summarize (e.g., a category page)?
All of that is possible now with the magical pipe.
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That is a pipe symbol. Append it onto a URL in the Link Toolbox window along with a one line summary. Here is what it looks like:
ZimmWriter will use your user provided summary instead of scraping the URL. It’s a fantastic way to build links that would otherwise be impossible.
In addition, you can mix-and-match in the input box. Some links can have pipes + summaries, and other links can have none and will be scraped normally.
Let’s finish discussing the rest of the options in the link toolbox menu.
The update pack button lets you add new links to your pack later. You’d simply load your pack, add the new links at the bottom of the URL list displayed, and then press the update pack button.
The overwrite button allows you to re-scrape the URLs in an existing link pack which can be useful if you are using Scrape Owl and had to configure some settings for the domains to enable scraping.
The dofollow domains box lets you list specific domains. When ZimmWriter’s about to create a link, it’ll check if the link’s domain matches any in the box. If it does, ZimmWriter will make it a dofollow link. If not, it’ll be a nofollow link. Note: the domains are not tied to a link pack, but instead are universal and can apply to all link packs.
One final note that is super important:
Each link pack’s saved as a separate database file in your /database/linkpacks/ folder, which has a couple of important implications.
First, it’s wise to occasionally close ZimmWriter and back up your entire database folder. Creating each link pack can be time-consuming, and you wouldn’t want to accidentally lose that valuable data.
Second, you can easily share your link packs with others. If someone gives you a valid link pack, simply paste it into your /database/linkpacks/ folder, and you’ll instantly have access to those processed links.
The Link Pack menu is accessible through the Link Pack button in the Bulk Writer, SEO Writer, and Penny Arcade. It’s where you’ll tell ZimmWriter which links or link pack you’d like it to use when writing your articles.
Let’s explore the options.
The first thing you’ll see on the menu is an input box that says you can input up to 5 non-link pack links.
What’s this for?
Let’s say you don’t want to use a link pack. Instead, you just have a few links that you want to use as link candidates for the current writing job.
The input box here allows you to do just that.
You can enter up to 5 URLs and those will be used as the candidate URLs for linking instead of a link pack
Use the load link pack dropdown to load one of your already created link packs.
Use this setting to set the maximum number of links you want added to an article.
Remember, it’s not guaranteed you’ll get that exact number of links.
For example, if you specify a limit of 10, you might only end up with 3 links added, as ZimmWriter inserts links based on relevance.
ZimmWriter inserts links into H2 subheadings. If you’d like them added to H3 and H4 as well, select this option.
ZimmWriter automatically sets all links to nofollow, except those matching dofollow domains specified in the Link Toolbox.
You’re able to override this default nofollow behavior by checking the box, which’ll make any inserted links dofollow.
We’re now diving into the really good stuff. I know a LOT of you’ll love this mode.
By default, ZimmWriter asks the AI which links might be relevant to a particular subheading. If the AI can’t find any, that subheading won’t get a link.
Linking based on relevance can be good, but sometimes you just want to force links into the article.
(Enter linknado)
Instead of giving the AI the option to skip inserting a link if it can’t find a relevant one, Linknado will force a link about 90% of the time.
I can see a million use cases for this in all types of niche sites, whether it’s e-commerce, local SEO, or national SEO.
The model you choose here determines which model is used for inserting the actual link.
However, the model that decides which model to insert (e.g., for relevancy) is set by your Ancillary model in the ZimmWriter options menu.
The final feature I’d like to share is the ability to specify link packs in two additional locations.
You can designate a link pack for an article at the end of a title in the bulk writer’s title input box. For more details, check out the bulk writer guide.
Additionally, you can assign a link pack in a custom outline by placing it at the end of a specific subheading. To learn more about this option, refer to the custom outline guide.
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