What each article status means

Every article in Articles carries one of five labels, Writing, Stopped at its checks, Ready for your OK, Scheduled or Published, saying where it is and whether it needs you.

Written By Damian

Last updated About 2 hours ago

Every article has one of five labels: Writing, Stopped at its checks, Ready for your OK, Scheduled or Published. The label says where the article is, and only two need you: Ready for your OK waits for you to press Publish, and Stopped at its checks waits for you to look at what failed. CitedSEO works the label out each time you open the page, from the article's versions, its checks and its publish, so it's always current.

You see the label on each card under In the works in Articles, on the article cards on Home, and at the top left of the article's own page. Published articles are listed under Published instead.

An article page's top: its Ready for your OK label, with Ask for changes, Copy and Publish

The five labels

Label	What it means	What you can do
Writing	CitedSEO is writing it, checking it, or fixing what a check found.	Nothing yet. "Writing now. It’s yours to review when it’s done."
Stopped at its checks	Its latest check failed at least half an hour ago, and no fix has made a newer version since. Nothing went live.	Open it to see what didn't pass, then Ask for changes.
Ready for your OK	It passed its checks and waits for your approval.	Open it with Review and press Publish.
Scheduled	It passed its checks and it's approved, by you or by autopilot, and waits for its daily slot.	Nothing, or Publish now on its page to send it at once.
Published	It's live on your site.	View on site opens it.

Writing

An article is Writing from the moment CitedSEO starts it until its latest version passes its checks. That covers research, the brief, the draft and the rounds of fixes. While it shows Writing, its card isn't a link, since there's nothing to review yet, and Ask for changes and Copy wait until it's done.

A change you ask for on an article that isn't live also shows it as Writing again, until the new version is checked.

A Writing card in In the works: the search it's for and "Writing now. It’s yours to review when it’s done."

Stopped at its checks

When a check that must pass still fails after CitedSEO's fixes, the article is marked Stopped at its checks. Its card says "It stopped at its checks. Open it to see what didn’t pass." It's never published that way, and the sidebar's Needs you list names it until a version passes. See An article stopped at its checks.

Ready for your OK

The article is written and passed its checks, and it's waiting for you. Its label is the only one highlighted, and its card says "Written and ready to publish" with Review. Publish on its page approves it, and it moves to Scheduled.

New articles stop here when New articles is off in Autopilot.

Scheduled

The article passed its checks and it's approved: you pressed Publish, or New articles is on in Autopilot. It goes live at a daily slot, one article or update a day. Until its slot is set, the card says "Goes live at the next free publish time"; once it is, the card says the day it publishes ("Publishes Thu, Oct 22"). See When articles go live.

Published

The article is live on your site. It moves from In the works to the Published list, which shows how far it's got with Google and its Search Console numbers. Its page has View on site, and its side panel starts with Since it went live.

A published article stays Published while CitedSEO works on a change to it. Your live page keeps the version that's live until the new one goes live. See Article versions and what changed.

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