Articles and the score
Where articles come from, what each status means, how to review and publish them, and what the optimization score measures.
Where articles come from
- Your content plan. Once you start content automation, each keyword in Content Ops is written on its date, following your publishing schedule. Click Generate to start the next one early.
- The Write page. Start an article on demand, outside your plan. These always arrive as a draft for you to review.
The Write page has five kinds of article:
| Card | What you get |
|---|---|
| Blog article | Enter a keyword and get the article searchers expect, whether that's a guide, a how-to, a comparison or a list. |
| Brand vs Competitor | A fair side by side of your product and one competitor, built only from facts on both websites and checked before it reaches you. |
| Competitor alternatives | A list of the best alternatives to a competitor you name, with your product included, each described from its own website. |
| Use-case page | How your product solves one specific job, written only from what your website says it does. |
| Industry page | A page for one industry, written in that industry's language. Compliance claims appear only where your website makes them. |
Each card shows its price before you start. Credits lists them all.
Article formats
Every article gets the format its keyword calls for, chosen from what already ranks for it. You'll see the format in Content Ops and Blog Posts:
| Format | Best for |
|---|---|
| Guide: Comparison | Choosing between two or more options. |
| Guide: Explainer | What something is and why it matters. |
| Guide: How-to | Step by step instructions for a task. |
| Guide: Reference | Definitions and facts people look up. |
| List: Round-up | The best options in a category. |
| List: Examples | Real examples of something in practice. |
Articles are written in English. Each one gets a featured image and an image inside the article, in the style you choose under Setup → Brand Knowledge → Images: Realistic, Sketch, Watercolor or Illustration.
What each status means
| Status | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Queued, Researching, Writing and similar | The article is being made. This usually takes a few minutes. |
| Draft | Finished and waiting for you (the Write page calls it Ready). Edit it, then click Mark Reviewed. |
| Scheduled | Approved, and publishes on its date. You can still edit it. |
| Publishing | On its way to your site. |
| Published | Live on your site. View post opens it. |
| Paused | Stopped, usually because your balance ran out. It goes back on the schedule once you have credits. |
| Failed | Something went wrong and your credits were returned. Try again starts it over. |
Blog Posts also marks a post that is Removed from your site or Not public on your site, so you can see when one was deleted or unpublished in your CMS. Zivooo checks this once a day.
Reviewing and publishing
Open an article from Content Ops or Blog Posts to edit it. Changes save as you type.
- Mark Reviewed approves a draft. It publishes on its date, or within a few minutes if it has no date, or as soon as you connect your site.
- Publish now, in the editor's settings menu, sends a draft or scheduled article to your site straight away.
- Back to Draft, in the same menu, takes a scheduled article off the schedule. It stays a draft until you mark it reviewed or publish it.
- SEO Meta Information, in the same menu, edits the meta title and description.
Once an article is publishing or published, the editor becomes read only. Whether drafts wait for you at all is set by Review and approval settings on Setup → Publishing (Getting started explains both options).
Exporting
The editor's settings menu has Download HTML and Download Doc (Word). Each downloads a zip with the article, its images and its metadata, so you can publish anywhere. When an article has structured data, Download Schema gets its JSON-LD on its own.
The research report
The research report (the Research button on Blog Posts, or the report icon in the editor) shows the research behind an article, step by step: who ranks in Google today, what AI assistants answer, what the top pages have in common, what the article needed to cover, how it was written, the facts it's built on (for fact based pages), and how it scores.
The optimization score
Every article gets a score out of 100. It isn't a fixed checklist: the article is compared with the pages that rank on page one for its keyword today, so the bar moves with your competition. We aim for 90 or more before an article is ready.
The score covers three things, which have their own tabs in the editor:
| Tab | What it checks |
|---|---|
| SEO | Set up to rank in Google: length against the top pages, keyword use, structure and readability, and structured data. |
| AEO | Ready to be the direct answer: a clear answer at the start, question headings, and the questions people also ask, answered. |
| GEO | Likely to be cited by AI assistants: topic coverage, named sources, sourced facts and the subtopics AI answers bring up. |
The Phrases and Words tabs show the terms the top pages use and how your article compares. The cards down the left (word count, readability, keywords, headings, paragraphs) show each measure against the range of the ranking pages. A green mark means you're in range, and an arrow shows which way to move.
Facts count only when they're sourced. Articles cite where their numbers come from, and we never invent statistics to raise a score.
Refreshing published articles
With Refresh articles that drop in rankings on (Setup → Publishing, Automation settings), an article that loses its Google position or clicks is researched again and rewritten, and if the new version scores at least as well, it's republished in place, at about 149 credits each and at most four a month per website. It needs Search Console connected. Refreshes keep the post's address and the category or tag you chose, and don't wait for review. Articles from the Write page aren't refreshed.