How articles are written

Every Rankbox article, whether you click Write now or autopilot picks it from the queue, goes through the same pipeline: check the plan, research the live web for the keyword, draft the article in your brand voice, revise it against the SEO checks, add a video, and save it as published. This page explains each stage, what the finished article contains, and what happens when something fails.

Ways to start writing

Writing needs three things: a free trial or paid plan, an active site, and at least one article credit left on that site. The writer works from three fields of the article: the title, the Target keyword and the brief in Meta description. Edit those first to steer the result. If Target keyword is empty, the title is used as the keyword.

The pipeline, stage by stage

Research

Rankbox searches the live web for the article's keyword and reads the top 10 results. From the top 5 pages it collects the headings competitors use (up to 40), a short summary of each page, and their links. The writer is told to cover those subtopics, find the gaps they miss, and cite only those 5 pages. Because the sources are the pages that currently rank for your keyword, they can include competitors.

If research is unavailable for a run (the search fails or takes longer than 45 seconds), writing still goes ahead. The writer is then told to cite 3 to 5 well-known, authoritative sources it is confident exist.

Draft

One model call receives your brand brief, the blueprint below, the research and any exchange-link instruction. It returns the title, the body in Markdown, a meta description, tags, and its own traffic estimate. If the reply isn't in the expected format, the text is kept as the body and the original title is used, so check the meta description of that article.

Revision passes

The draft is scored with the same checks as the editor's SEO and GEO score. If it scores below 100, the model rewrites it with a list of only the failing checks, told to keep everything that works: depth, structure, citations and meaning. The loop stops as soon as the article scores 100, when a pass doesn't raise the score, when a reply can't be read (the last readable version is kept), or when the pass limit is reached. The stored score is recalculated after the video and links are added, so a finished article can score just under 100.

What the writer is asked to produce

The blueprint is the same for every article. It's written so the result reads well and gives search and answer engines clear passages to quote.

Rankbox stores the title up to 70 characters, the meta description up to 160 characters and up to 4 tags.

Length

The writer targets 2,750 words for every article written from the dashboard or by autopilot, and you can't change the target. Real length varies with the topic and the revisions. The score's depth check passes at 1,500 words.

Image notes

The writer doesn't create images. It marks where 2 to 3 images would help with a note in this exact format:

**[Image: Bar chart comparing setup time across five tools] (alt: "setup time comparison chart")**

In the editor, a note shows as bold text. When the article leaves Rankbox, through the REST API, Webflow or Shopify, every note is removed, so no placeholder text reaches your live page. Add your own images in your CMS.

Internal links

The writer suggests internal links where they'd help, in this format:

[pricing guide](#internal: pricing page)

These are suggestions, not links: Rankbox doesn't know your site's URLs. When the article leaves Rankbox, each suggestion is replaced by its anchor text alone. In the editor, a suggestion usually shows as plain text in brackets. To turn it into a real link, select the words and use the Link button. See Editing articles.

The YouTube video

Rankbox searches YouTube for the article's keyword and embeds the first suitable video. Titles that read like promotions (for example "lifetime deal", "coupon", "promo code", "giveaway", "sponsored" or "affiliate") are skipped. Each article gets at most one video, and an article without a suitable match simply has none.

The video goes in its own section, placed before the article's second H2 so the opening answer stays first. An article with fewer than two H2 sections gets the video at the end. The block looks like this:

## Watch: <video title>

<iframe src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/<id>" ...></iframe>

[<video title>](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=<id>) — <channel>

The plain link under the embed keeps the reference on sites that strip embedded frames. Some destinations remove the embed; see How publishing works.

The language model

Rankbox writes with large language models, called from Rankbox's servers. The same model also runs research and the editor's AI actions. The model can change as better ones become available; the blueprint, the research and the checks stay the same.

What you see while an article is written

1. The article's status changes to Writing. The panel shows Writing… and a placeholder, and the queue counts it under Writing.
2. When it finishes, the panel shows the article and you see "Written and published." (or the article's title "is written and published." with Open). From the Overview, you see the title followed by "is ready." and the article opens.
3. Est. traffic is replaced by the writer's own estimate for the finished article.

You can close the panel or move to another dashboard page while an article is written. Keep the Rankbox tab open until it finishes: when you start writing from the dashboard, your browser saves the finished article. Autopilot runs on Rankbox's servers and doesn't need a browser.

Credits

Balances, resets and the trial allowance are covered in Plans and credits.

When writing fails

If any stage fails, Rankbox returns the reserved credit, releases any exchange-link reservation, and puts the article back in the status it had. Nothing half-written is saved.

When autopilot fails to write an article, the article goes back to Scheduled, the credit is returned, and autopilot tries again on a later run.

Limits and edge cases

• Write now never overwrites text. It's offered only on articles with no text. Autopilot does replace the text of a scheduled article you started yourself; the editor warns you before that happens.
• Closing the tab mid-write. If you close or reload the tab before a dashboard write finishes, the article can stay in Writing. Contact support to reset it.
• Facts and sources. The writer is instructed to use real sources, but Rankbox doesn't fact-check the article. Review claims, numbers and quotes before publishing.
• Images. No images or featured image are generated or sent.
• Language. The blueprint is written in English, and the readability check uses an English formula.

Related

• Research: the questions buyers ask AI: where titles, keywords and briefs come from
• Editing articles: change, rewrite and publish what the writer produced
• The SEO and GEO score: the checks the revision passes optimize for
• Brand voice and writing settings: the brief the writer reads first
• Autopilot and the publishing schedule: writing on a schedule
• How publishing works: what happens to an article after it's written