Changing the schedule

Your site does one thing a day, and the schedule decides what each day of the week is for. If you would prefer a different rhythm, fewer days per week, a specific time of day, or a pause, you may change the schedule at any time. The schedule settings live under Settings, then Automation, in the Schedule section. There is no monthly total to size against: a day that is switched on produces one thing, and a day that is switched off produces nothing.

Auto scheduling

The section leads with the Auto scheduling toggle, which controls whether RankYak plans new articles on your calendar at all. It is enabled by default, so the content plan keeps itself filled month after month. When you disable it, RankYak stops planning articles automatically, and articles are only written for keywords you schedule yourself on the calendar. The day and time settings below apply to automatic planning, so they are shown only while the toggle is on.

Choosing what each day does

What RankYak does each day is a grid: the days of the week across the top, and two rows beneath them.

• Write article. The day writes a new article for the next keyword on your topical map.
• Optimize article. The day rewrites a published article that is losing ground, picked from your Search Console data. See automatic content optimizations.

A day may have either row on, both, or neither. With both on, the optimization wins when there is an article worth optimizing, and the day writes a new article when there is not, so nothing is wasted on a young site with nothing to optimize yet.

The Optimize row needs a Search Console connection to have anything to judge by; without one it is switched off, and a day marked for both simply writes.

For example, if you would rather not publish on weekends, switch both rows off for Saturday and Sunday. The content plan skips those days and continues normally on the days you keep on.

Choosing a time of day

Below the grid, you may pick the hour and the timezone that each day's work is scheduled for. The finished article typically goes live around the time you chose.

Rescheduling the calendar

Schedule changes apply when the plan is next generated, so articles that are already planned keep their original dates. To apply your new settings right away, click Reschedule in the same Schedule section.

Rescheduling clears every planned article that has not been started yet, including ones you planned manually, and generates a fresh calendar from your current settings and keyword pool. Articles that have already been written or published are not affected.

Pausing new articles

Sometimes you may wish to stop new articles entirely rather than thin out the schedule. Switching every day's Write row off does exactly that: planned items stay on the calendar, but no new articles are written until you switch a day back on.

Disabling Auto scheduling stops new articles in a different way: it stops the planning itself, while an empty Write row leaves the plan in place and pauses only the writing.

Publishing has its own toggle in the same section, so you may also keep the writing schedule running while reviewing and publishing the articles yourself.