Rank Engine manages the work between a campaign brief and a live editorial placement. These answers cover targeting, content, approvals, delivery, pricing and guarantees. For a visual walkthrough, see How It Works.
About Rank Engine
Rank Engine is a managed content, outreach and publishing platform for marketers and agencies. It produces new editorial placements on real websites to support organic visibility, AI search visibility, brand reputation and authority.
Depending on the goal, an article can feature a brand or expert, answer a useful question, compare relevant options or strengthen a chosen page with a contextual link. Learn more about Rank Engine and see the managed workflow.
Rank Engine is designed for marketers, agencies and growth teams that need scalable placements with expert oversight. Agencies can organise work by client, use approval steps where needed and deliver client-ready reporting without building an outreach operation in-house.
See how other teams use Rank Engine in the case studies.
Rank Engine has four main solution paths:
Reputation Management — shape what users find first around a brand or person.
Brand Awareness — create credible brand mentions across relevant websites.
Thought Leadership — publish useful articles around an expert's experience, either in their own voice or written about them.
Category Authority — build topic authority with non-branded informational articles or branded competitive listicles.
These are four ways to use the service, and each can be tailored during Order Setup. If different placements need different goals, set the goal for each placement individually within the order. Compare the solutions.
Yes. Set the goal for each placement individually within the order. For example, one order can combine Brand Awareness articles, non-branded Category Authority guides and Thought Leadership placements.
You can also choose the article type, writing voice, brand prominence, approvals and other available options for each placement.
Yes. For Thought Leadership about an individual, Rank Engine can produce an Editorial story or Informational guide in that person's voice, with an Author Bio generated from the supplied Background. The Thought Leadership guide shows how the two writing approaches work.
Other articles use third-person writing, so the article can feature the person, brand or company within a wider story or guide.
You can connect your company with a wider story through a branded Editorial, or explain a useful topic and support a relevant target page through an unbranded Informational article. Branded Informational guides are available too. Standard coverage develops one focused example, while Expanded coverage can draw on several examples or initiatives. The brand coverage guide and Order Setup guide explain when to use each choice.
Custom Quotes are exact quotes or comments you provide for the article.
Generate Quotes asks Rank Engine to research and develop an informed comment for the person you identify. You can guide the point and tone, then review the finished commentary with the article.
Choose one quote option for a placement: provide the exact wording, or ask Rank Engine to develop it. The Thought Leadership guide includes examples.
It can. Category Authority supports two types of informational article:
- A non-branded informational article that answers a useful question and supports a target page through natural context.
- A branded competitive listicle that features a Company/Brand first alongside other relevant options in a researched comparison.
The comparison remains useful, balanced and category-led. Brand mentions may be unlinked or use nofollow links; websites may also add a sponsored label. This applies to Competitive Listicles across all placement tiers.
Every placement includes content planning, research, a publication-ready long-form article, outreach, coordination with websites and delivery of the live URL into your dashboard. Articles are typically around 1,500 words and include appropriate sources, citations and media.
The placement price covers the managed path from brief to publication; there is no separate fee for outreach or for coordinating with websites. See the complete delivery scope.
Yes. Rank Engine is built for agencies as well as in-house teams. You can manage multiple client campaigns, use shareable review links and provide client-ready placement reports under your own brand. See Rank Engine for agencies for the full agency workflow and volume pricing.
Campaign setup and targeting
Rank Engine follows a managed workflow:
Set up the order — choose the campaign, its goal, audience, placement targeting, brand background, article choices, approvals and delivery pace.
Campaign creation — Rank Engine handles research, content production, prospecting, outreach and coordination with websites.
Managed delivery — review approvals where enabled, monitor progress and receive live placement URLs and reporting in your account.
Follow the complete brief-to-report workflow.
A campaign is your plan for a client, site or brand, together with the orders you place for it. It saves your details so you can reuse them, keeps placement history together, helps avoid using the same website twice and makes future orders faster to set up.
A campaign is not an order, and a new order is not a new campaign: one campaign can hold many orders. You select or create a campaign when you set up an order, then review and place the order separately. The Order Setup guide explains each step.
Choose DA Targeting when a campaign or client requires a set authority range: DA40+ (DA40 to 49) or DA50+ (DA50 to 59).
Choose Smart Select™ when you want Rank Engine to optimise across relevance, verified traffic, editorial quality and authority at the available budget. A higher DA is not automatically the stronger result when a more relevant or better-trafficked website offers the better campaign fit.
Choose Prime Select when you want established websites: DA50 and higher, with demonstrable readership, substantive editorial content and a natural fit for your campaign.
You can mix them in one campaign; an order containing Prime Select has a 30-day delivery timeframe for the whole order. Compare the current targeting and pricing options or read the deeper guide to DA Targeting, Smart Select and Prime Select.
Rank Engine covers most legitimate niches and currently produces articles in English. It does not accept orders for adult, gambling, pharmaceutical, racist or illegal websites, and it may decline other briefs where placement fit, legal risk or brand safety would be poor.
The full restrictions are in the Terms of Service.
No. Rank Engine creates new editorial placements built around the campaign brief. It does not add paid links to older articles of uncertain quality, where the surrounding content and future outbound links may be outside your control.
Standard editorial and informational placements use contextual dofollow links. You set the anchor text and destination during Order Setup, and Rank Engine places the link where it fits the article naturally.
For Competitive Listicles, brand mentions may be unlinked or use nofollow links; websites may also add a sponsored label. This format-specific rule applies across all placement tiers. See the Competitive Listicles guide for how the format works.
No. Rank Engine delivers the agreed content, placement and reporting, but no provider can guarantee a specific keyword position, traffic increase, AI citation or reputation outcome on a third-party platform.
The service is designed to build stronger visibility signals over time. See the case studies for examples of measured outcomes and the Terms of Service for the complete performance terms.
Content, approvals and delivery
Rank Engine uses an AI-assisted production process with human editorial oversight. Each article moves through research, source review, thesis and outline development, staged drafting and editorial quality assurance before publication.
It is not a single-prompt article service. The Editorial Method explains how research, critique and editorial review shape the finished work.
Yes. Enable Content Approval to review finished articles in Revision Desk and Placement Approval to review proposed websites before Rank Engine commits to them. Both review steps are optional.
Content Approval is free on every order. Placement Approval is €5 per placement and is waived on your first order. Orders without approvals move directly from production into coordination with websites and therefore use the faster delivery lane. See How It Works for the approval path.
Most articles can be approved as delivered. If you choose Content Approval and want a messaging refinement, edit manually or tell Revision Desk what to change. It applies your instructions with the original research and the other articles in your order in context. Clients or colleagues can leave comments through a shared link without an account; you decide which feedback to incorporate.
Manual editing and comments are free. Each article includes 10 free AI assistant requests. Additional requests average about €0.25 each, charged from Account Balance with the estimate shown before submission.
If you are unhappy with an article's angle, we will replace the article free of charge while your order brief stays unchanged. This replacement does not use your AI assistant allowance or Account Balance.
Reprocessing fees apply only when you change requirements after articles have been generated and those changes require new articles. Examples include changing the background information, article brief or regional focus. We explain the fee before reprocessing begins.
Read the Revision Desk guide for the review workflow and the Terms of Service for the detailed edit and reprocessing terms.
Standard estimated delivery is one week without approvals and up to two weeks when Content Approval, Placement Approval or both are enabled. A 30-day drip-feed option is also available when placements should be spread across a campaign window.
These are estimated active-order timeframes rather than guaranteed deadlines. Time spent waiting for customer approval or information is not counted. See the delivery workflow for what happens at each stage.
Rank Engine sources a replacement that still meets the agreed order specifications. A placement is not marked delivered until its live URL is available in your dashboard.
If Rank Engine cannot reasonably fulfil or remedy an active order within the circumstances described in the Terms, the applicable replacement or refund provisions apply. See the Terms of Service for the complete remedy policy.
Pricing, guarantees and getting started
Pricing is per placement. Choose DA40+ (DA40 to 49) or DA50+ (DA50 to 59), use Smart Select to prioritise the website with the strongest overall fit, or choose Prime Select for established websites with demonstrable readership and editorial standards. Automatic volume discounts of 5% to 15% apply as monthly spend grows and are tracked in your dashboard.
See current placement pricing for the included delivery scope and current amounts.
No. There is no subscription or lock-in contract. You can order the placements you need when you need them.
Yes. A first-time customer's first order includes complimentary Content Approval and Placement Approval. If you are not satisfied during those approval stages, you can cancel that first order for a 100% refund of the order value.
The first-order guarantee ends once the content and placements have been approved, or if the order becomes dormant. Payments made through Account Balance are ordinarily reinstated to Account Balance; other eligible payments are ordinarily returned to the original payment method. Review the complete money-back and refund terms.
Every live placement has a 730-day uptime guarantee. If a placement is removed during that period, Rank Engine will restore or replace it free of charge and may use a comparable website when a like-for-like replacement is not reasonably available.
The guarantee does not cover removals caused by a customer's breach of the Terms or by the customer's later actions, requests or complaints to the website. See the complete uptime terms.
Create an account, then open Order Setup to build and review your first order.
If you would rather talk through the campaign goal, targeting and likely placement mix first, Book a Discovery Call.