Pages you share

Every swap needs somewhere for the other side's link to live. Pages you share is that list: the pages on your site a partner may ask about. You keep one list per site, and it travels with every request you send, so you never retype it.

The page header states the boundary of what you are agreeing to: "The pages partners can ask to place a link in. You agree the exact wording of every link before it goes live — sharing a page just puts it on the menu."

Sharing is not promising

This is worth being precise about, because the word "share" does more work here than it looks like it does.

Adding a page to this list does three things. Partners can see the page's address. They can pick it when they ask you for a link. And you get asked. That is all. Nobody gets a link on that page by choosing it from a menu. Every single link is a separate conversation where you see the exact sentence and the exact words that would become the link, and you say yes, no, or "here is my version" before anything is placed. The empty state says the same thing: "sharing a page promises nothing on its own, and you agree the wording of every link before it goes live."

The practical advice that follows: be generous with this list. A long list makes you an attractive partner without committing you to anything, and a partner who picks a page you would rather not touch is one Decline away from picking a different one.

Four ways to add pages

Under Add pages are four tabs. They exist because page lists arrive in four different shapes in real life.

Read my sitemap

The default, and the fastest for most sites. A sitemap is a file most sites publish that lists their pages for search engines.

1. Check the field labelled Where is {domain}'s sitemap?. It starts at /sitemap.xml, and the hint says "Most sites keep it at /sitemap.xml. If yours lives elsewhere, change it here." You can paste a full address instead of a path.
2. Press Read it. The button changes to Reading….
3. Review what came back, then share the ones you want.

Rankbank reads the file, and if it turns out to be a sitemap index (a sitemap that points at other sitemaps, which is what WordPress and Yoast produce) it follows the children one level down, up to five of them, and collects up to 2,000 addresses in total.

When it cannot read the file it tells you exactly what happened rather than shrugging:

• "{url} answered with HTTP 404." The address is wrong. Try /sitemap_index.xml, or look in your robots.txt.
• "{url} loaded, but it doesn't look like a sitemap — no page addresses were found in it." Something is there, but not a page list.
• "{url} loaded, but it lists no pages."
• "{url} points at N other sitemaps, but none of them listed pages we could read."

Paste addresses

For when you already have the list somewhere, or you only want a handful.

1. Paste into Paste the page addresses. The hint is exact: "One per line. Only full addresses starting with https:// are used."
2. Press Use these.

If nothing in the box looks like a web address you get "Paste at least one full web address, starting with https://".

Upload a spreadsheet

For lists that live in Excel or a CSV export. The panel says "Excel or CSV — whatever layout your list is already in. We'll show you the columns and you point at the one holding the page addresses." Files ending .xlsx, .xls, and .csv are accepted.

1. Choose the file. You will see "Reading your file…" while it parses.
2. A card appears: Which column has the page addresses? with the note "We've guessed the one with the most links in it. The first few values from each column are shown so you can tell them apart." Each option shows its header, how many web addresses it holds, and a few sample values.
3. Optionally set Column with page titles (optional). Leave it on "Skip — we'll use the address" if your sheet has no titles.
4. Press Use this column, or Cancel to start over.

Pick the wrong column and you get "That column doesn't hold web addresses. Pick the one whose samples start with https://". Rows that are not addresses are quietly dropped with a count: "N rows skipped — they weren't web addresses."

A page I published elsewhere

This tab is for pages with your writing on them that are not on your site: guest posts, a Medium piece, a newsletter issue. The hint says exactly that: "A guest post, a Medium piece, a newsletter issue — anywhere your writing already lives."

1. Paste the address into Address of the page you published.
2. Answer Who can change that page?. The two options are "I can edit it directly" ("You can log in and edit it yourself.") and "The publisher makes changes" ("You'd ask them to add the link. Partners are told this up front.").
3. Press Add this page. You will see "Added. Partners can now ask for a link on that page."

Answer that question honestly. It is not a formality. A partner considering the page sees a chip that says either "On {domain} · you edit it directly" or "publisher applies changes", and if it is the second, the person asking is warned before they send and the request runs through a separate publisher flow afterwards. See when the page is published somewhere you can't edit.

If you got that page through Rankbank in the first place, guest posts is the module that produced it, and your Content Library is where the addresses are.

The review step

The first three tabs never share anything directly. They find candidates and hand them to you as a tick-list, with everything ticked by default, because people import a sitemap when they want most of it.

The header shows "N pages found" and underneath "M selected — untick anything you'd rather not offer." Select all and None are there for the extremes. Untick your checkout page, your privacy policy, anything thin, and anything you would be embarrassed to have a stranger read.

Press Share N pages to save. Pages already in your list are filtered out before you see the tick-list, so re-reading your sitemap after publishing three new posts only offers you the three. If everything was already there you get "Every page we found is already in your list."

The saved list

Below the tabs is Pages you're sharing, with a count line: "Partners can see X of these Y pages. Anchors and wording are agreed per link."

Each row shows the page title, its address, and for pages published elsewhere the origin chip. Three controls sit on the right.

• Hide takes a page out of what partners see while keeping it in your list. Hidden rows are marked Hidden.
• Share puts a hidden page back.
• Remove takes it off the list entirely.

Why an empty list blocks you

You cannot send a swap request with nothing shared. The Send the request button stays disabled and the line next to it reads "Add at least one page above first — that's what you're offering in return."

Rankbank does not make you leave the page to fix it. When your inventory is empty, the request form embeds this whole manager inline under What they'd get from you, with the nudge "You haven't listed any pages yet, and a swap needs somewhere for their link to live. Add some below — reading your sitemap takes a few seconds."

The first 25 shared pages travel with each request you send, so the site owner sees what they would be getting before they decide.