Site levels and XP

Every site in RankYak has a level and an XP total. The site earns XP each time it reaches a milestone, such as its first published article, an article that Google indexes, or an article that passes 1,000 impressions. The XP sets the level, which runs from Starter to Diamond, so you may follow the progress of your site at a glance. The level does not change your plan, your price, or what RankYak does for your site.

Where you see your level

The Site level card on Home shows the level of your site, its XP, and how far the site is on its way to the next level, with the XP it still needs. Next to it, the Recent achievements card lists the latest milestones of the site.

Each article shows its own milestones too. On the article page, the Summary tab of the sidebar shows the milestones the article reached, the XP each one earned, and the milestones it may reach next. The article overview shows the latest achievement of each article, and the report emails show the achievements of the period, the XP they earned, and the XP to the next level.

The levels

For example, a site with 560 XP is Silver, and it needs 940 XP more to reach Gold.

Earning XP

A site earns XP from achievements, and each achievement counts once. The setup milestones count once for the site, and the article milestones count once for each article. So a site earns more XP as it publishes more articles and as those articles gain ground in Google.

These milestones count once for the site:

These milestones count once for each article:

An article also earns XP for its impressions and its clicks in Google. The first impression earns 5 XP, and the first click earns 10 XP. After that, each milestone earns more than the one before it. For example, 100, 500, 1,000, and 5,000 impressions earn 10, 15, 25, and 50 XP, and 10, 50, 100, and 500 clicks earn 15, 25, 50, and 100 XP. The milestones continue upward from there.

The indexing, ranking, impression, and click milestones come from Google, so an article reaches them only while your site has a Search Console connection. The backlink milestone counts when the first site in the backlink exchange links to the article, so later backlinks to the same article earn no more XP.

Raising your level

Typically, a site gains most of its XP from the work RankYak already does: every published article earns XP, and every article that Google indexes, shows, and ranks earns more. So you should connect your CMS, so that your articles publish to your site, and connect Search Console, so that RankYak can record the milestones that Google reaches for your articles.