Publishing articles

An article only starts working for your SEO once it is live on your website. RankYak supports two ways of getting it there: automatic publishing through an integration with your CMS, and manual publishing for everything else. This page explains both, along with publish status, publishing errors, and how to push edits to an article that is already live.

Automatic publishing

The path you should reach for first is connecting your CMS under Settings, then Integrations. RankYak connects directly to WordPress, WordPress.com, Shopify, Wix, and Webflow. For other platforms, you may publish through Make, Zapier, the API, an RSS feed, or webhooks.

Typically, an article is written in the early morning of its scheduled date, and shortly after it is finished, RankYak publishes it to your site with everything in place: the content, meta title, meta description, slug, and header image. There is nothing to click.

Articles that were generated before you set up the integration are not published automatically. You may publish each of those yourself with the Publish button on the article page. If you would like to pause automatic publishing entirely, you may disable Publish new articles in your project's settings, under Content automation.

Publishing as drafts

Sometimes you may wish to review each article before it goes live. Every integration offers a Publish articles as draft option: go to Settings, then Integrations, and click Edit settings next to your connection. New articles then land in your CMS as drafts, and you publish them from there on your own terms.

Publish status

The article page shows where an article stands. Once it is published, a badge names the platform it was published to, and a View button opens the live article on your site. The articles overview also lets you filter by Published, Needs republish, and Unpublished.

Publishing errors

Sometimes a publish attempt fails, for example when your site is temporarily unreachable or the connection's credentials have expired. When that happens, RankYak emails you the error and automatically tries again later. Of course, you may also retry immediately with the Publish button on the article page.

When a publish cannot start at all, RankYak tells you why right away instead of appearing to succeed. Typically the reason is an integration that is disconnected or whose setup was never finished; reconnecting or completing the setup under Settings, then Integrations, clears it. Pushing edits with Publish changes still delivers to your webhook even while the integration is unavailable.

Republishing after edits

When you edit an article that is already live, RankYak marks it with an Unpublished changes badge, and a Publish changes button appears on the article page. Clicking it pushes your edits to your site through the integration. Articles that RankYak refreshes or rewrites itself are republished automatically, as long as Republish updated content is enabled in your project settings.

Manual publishing

Without an integration, articles simply collect in RankYak, and publishing is a copy-and-paste routine.

1. Open the article and click Copy article, then choose a format. Rich text suits most editors, and HTML and Markdown are available too.
2. Paste the content into a new post in your CMS.
3. From the same menu, copy the article title, meta title, meta description, and slug into the matching fields.
4. Publish the post, copy its URL, and click Mark as published in RankYak, pasting the URL so RankYak knows where the article lives.

You do not need to do this every day; it is often more convenient to publish several articles in one sitting, and RankYak keeps writing daily in the background either way. If your platform is not on the integration list, see unsupported platforms for the full set of options.