RankControl publishes each approved article as a native post on your Ghost site, on Ghost(Pro) or self-hosted. Posts use your theme, your tags, and your domain. Updates to an article revise the same post.
You need a Ghost Admin login with permission to add integrations. On Ghost(Pro), custom integrations need the Publisher plan or above. The Starter plan has no Admin API. Self-hosted Ghost has no plan requirement.
1. Create a custom integration in Ghost
In Ghost Admin, go to Settings → Integrations and click Add custom
integration. Name it, for example RankControl, and click Create.
Ghost shows the integration’s keys. Copy the Admin API key. It has two
parts joined by a colon, in the form 65ab…:7c9d…. Copy the whole value.
2. Copy your site URL
Use the address of your Ghost site, including https://. On Ghost(Pro) with
a custom domain, use your yoursite.ghost.io admin address here instead.
3. Connect in RankControl
Go to Brand Control → Publishing, open Add a destination, and choose Ghost. Enter a name, the Ghost site URL, and the Admin API key. Click Test connection. On success, RankControl shows your site title.
Under Publish as, choose Published post (posts go live) or Draft for review (posts wait as drafts in Ghost). Click Save destination.
Only one destination serves articles at a time. Open the saved row and click Make active if new articles must go to Ghost.
If your site sits behind Cloudflare Access
Some self-hosted sites protect /ghost with Cloudflare Access (Zero Trust).
If the connection test reports this, RankControl shows two more fields.
- In Cloudflare Zero Trust, go to Access → Service Auth and create a service token.
- Add that token to the Access policy of the application that covers your Ghost admin.
- Paste the CF Access Client ID and CF Access Client Secret in RankControl and click Test connection again.
What arrives on your site
- The article as a post, with your slug, title, and body.
- The meta title and meta description in the post’s SEO fields.
- The hero image as the feature image.
- Tags: the article’s topic first, so it becomes the primary tag, then the article’s keywords. Tags you add yourself in Ghost stay on republish.
RankControl does not set the author. Change the author in the Ghost editor if you want another one. If you delete a post in Ghost, RankControl archives the article and tells you.
Analytics
Nothing to install. Page views and visits from AI answers report on their own for articles published this way.
Troubleshooting
“Ghost rejected the Admin API key.” The key is wrong, was deleted, or belongs to another site. Open the integration in Ghost (step 1) and copy the Admin API key again.
“Invalid Ghost Admin API key, expected the id:secret format.” Only half of the key was pasted. Copy the whole value, including the colon.
Test connection fails on Ghost(Pro) with a custom domain. Use the
yoursite.ghost.io admin address as the site URL (step 2).
“Cloudflare Access blocked this before it reached your CMS.” Add a service token as described above, or a Bypass policy for the API path.
Posts are published but visitors cannot see them. Ghost’s private site mode hides posts behind a password. Turn it off in Settings → General.
No integrations option in Ghost Admin. On Ghost(Pro), the Starter plan has no Admin API. Custom integrations need the Publisher plan or above.