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Publishing to WordPress

Action Plan drafts can be published straight to a brand's WordPress site — no copy-paste. This page covers connecting a site, what a publish actually writes, the optional BD Connector plugin, and how wins are detected afterward.

Publishing is included on all paid tiers. The publish itself costs nothing against your plan — only generating the draft is metered.

Connect a site

Each brand connects to its own WordPress site (an agency running 5 brands can hold 5 separate connections). You'll find the connection card on the brand's Published page — sidebar → your brand → Published.

  1. In WordPress, go to Users → Profile → Application Passwords, name a new password "Geotally", and copy the generated value. (Application Passwords are built into WordPress 5.6+ and require your site to use HTTPS.)
  2. In Geotally, open the brand's Published page, enter the site URL, your WordPress username, and the application password, and click Connect WordPress.
  3. We verify the credentials against your live site before saving anything, detect whether you run Yoast SEO or Rank Math, and check whether their SEO fields are writable (see BD Connector below).

The application password is encrypted at rest (AES-256-GCM) and never displayed again. Revoke it anytime from your WordPress profile — the connection card will prompt you to reconnect.

What a publish writes

From the Action Plan, any generated draft has a Publish to WordPress button with two modes: create as Draft (for review inside WP) or Publish live now. Every publish includes:

  • The article — converted from the draft to clean HTML
  • SEO fields — SEO title, meta description, and focus keyword written to Yoast or Rank Math (requires BD Connector — see below); the excerpt is set either way
  • Featured image — a branded 1200×630 hero card generated automatically and uploaded to your media library with keyword alt text (first publish only; re-publishes keep whatever image the post has)
  • A short URL slug derived from the target query, capped at 60 characters
  • Internal links — the draft's link placeholders are matched against posts already published on your site; a placeholder with no good match becomes plain text, never a broken link
  • FAQPage JSON-LD — embedded when your WordPress user has permission to post scripts (unfiltered_html); otherwise use the Copy button and paste it via your SEO plugin

Re-publishing a draft updates the same WordPress post rather than creating a duplicate.

The BD Connector plugin (for SEO fields)

WordPress ignores Yoast/Rank Math meta fields sent over its REST API unless a plugin has registered them — and neither SEO plugin does. Without help, an external tool can create your post but not its SEO title, description, or focus keyword.

BD Connector fixes exactly that. It's a free, single-file plugin that registers the six Yoast + Rank Math fields for API writes, guarded by the same edit-post permission WordPress itself uses. No settings page, no cron jobs, no data collection, no front-end output.

  1. Download BD Connector
  2. In WordPress: Plugins → Add New → Upload Plugin, then activate it
  3. Back in Geotally, click Test connection on the brand's Published page — the card should now show "SEO fields writable ✓"

If you skip it, articles still publish fine; the publish result will honestly say "SEO fields skipped" instead of pretending they were written.

The Published page and win detection

Everything you ship lands on the brand's Published page: article title (linked), engine, Live vs Draft-in-WP status, and publish date.

After publishing, Geotally keeps running the target prompt on your plan's normal cadence. When the engine starts citing your brand, the item flips to Won automatically, stamped with the citing run's date — the Published page shows "🎉 Cited" and the Action Plan's Wins tab shows "cited N days after publishing." No manual bookkeeping.

Troubleshooting

  • "WordPress rejected the username or application password" — re-generate the application password and reconnect. Some security plugins disable Application Passwords; check the site's login protection settings.
  • "REST API not found at that URL" — confirm the site URL is exact (including any subdirectory) and that the REST API isn't blocked by a firewall rule.
  • "SEO fields skipped" — install BD Connector (above) and re-test the connection.
  • No internal links in a published article — internal links only resolve against posts on the connected site, and only for drafts generated after the feature shipped. A brand connected to an unrelated site will rarely find matches.
  • Site URL must be HTTPS — WordPress requires HTTPS for Application Passwords; we enforce the same.

Other platforms

WordPress is the only direct-publish target today. The connection layer is platform-agnostic, and Ghost, Shopify blogs, and Webflow are next on the roadmap — email support@geotally.ai to vote for the one you need; the queue is ordered by real requests.

Publishing elsewhere in the meantime: every draft has Copy Markdown, Copy HTML, Copy JSON-LD, and Copy meta description buttons, so you can paste into any CMS and use Mark published to keep win tracking working.

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