Getting started

Rankira runs inside your Shopify admin — there’s no separate account to create and no password to remember. Setup is a one-time walkthrough of six steps. Once it’s done, the app starts researching keywords and filling your calendar on its own.

Before you start

Have these ready and setup will take about ten minutes:

• Your store’s public domain — the address customers actually visit, like yourstore.com.
• At least three competitors — other stores selling something similar. Their homepage URLs are enough. Three is the minimum the app accepts; you can add up to seven.
• At least three customer types you sell to, in plain words (“first-time dog owners”, “home baristas”). Same limits — three minimum, seven maximum.
• A Google Search Console account, if you have one. Optional, but it makes keyword research noticeably sharper.

Install the app

1. Add Rankira from the Shopify App Store

   Open the Rankira listing and click Install. Shopify shows the permissions Rankira needs — reading your products and pages, and writing to your blog.

2. Start your free trial

   Shopify asks you to approve the subscription before the app opens. You aren’t charged during the trial, and billing runs through Shopify itself — see Billing & plans.

3. Land in setup

   Rankira opens on the Onboarding screen. Until all six steps are done, that’s the only screen the app will show — it needs this information before it can write anything useful.

The six setup steps

The steps run in order and each one saves as you go. If you close the app halfway through, you’ll come back to the step you were on.

1. Website & blog

   Confirm your website address, then pick the blog articles should publish to and the author name they’ll appear under. You can create a new blog or a new author right here if you need one.

   There’s also a business description — a short paragraph about what your store sells and what makes it different. Rankira can draft this from your store for you; read it over and adjust anything that sounds off. Every article is written against this description, so it’s worth a minute of your attention.

2. Target audience & competitors

   Choose the country and language you want to rank in, then add your competitors and target audiences — three of each at minimum, seven at most. You can’t save this step below three, because keyword research leans on both: competitors show what’s already ranking, audiences shape who each article speaks to.

3. Publishing settings

   Decide when and how articles go out: the six-hour window they publish in, whether they go live immediately or wait as drafts, and which weekdays are open for scheduling.

   Two toggles on this tab are on by default and worth leaving that way — they keep your keyword calendar stocked and your internal links up to date without you touching either. Both are explained in the settings reference.

   Not sure about the rest? Save as draft and three or four active days is a comfortable start. Both are easy to change later.

4. Article customization

   Pick the writing tone, how many internal links each article gets, the image style, your brand color, and a handful of on/off extras like table of contents and call-to-action. Every option is explained in the settings reference.

5. Internal links

   Choose which of your pages, products, collections, and existing articles Rankira may link to from new content. Click Add all to start broad, then mark your best-selling collections as priority so they get linked more often.

6. Google Search Console

   Connect your Search Console account and select the property that matches your store. This feeds real search data into keyword research and powers the performance charts on the Home screen.

   You can skip this and connect later from Settings › Google Search Console — but do connect it eventually. It’s the difference between guessing at keywords and knowing which ones you’re already close to ranking for.

What happens right after setup

Three things, without you doing anything:

• Your first content plan is prepared. Rankira researches an initial batch of keywords and places them on your calendar. This runs in the background and can take a little while — check the Content Scheduler shortly after.
• 100 backlink credits land in your account, plus 3 more every day from then on. See Backlink exchange.
• The full app unlocks. The sidebar now shows Home, Content Scheduler, Content History, Link Management, and Settings.

Where things live

Your first week

A reasonable way to ease in:

• Day 1. Finish setup. Open the Content Scheduler and look over the keywords Rankira picked — delete any that don’t fit your store.
• Day 2. Your first article appears in Content History. Read it end to end. This is the moment to adjust tone or length in Settings › Article Customization.
• Day 3–7. Skim each new article. Once two or three in a row need no changes, switch publishing from drafts to direct and let it run.