Publish Programmatic SEO to Webflow Automatically

PageFactory is fully integrated with Webflow, allowing you to publish programmatic content directly to your site.

Below are the steps you'll need to complete to set PageFactory up with your Webflow website.

Before You Start

Make sure you publish the latest version of your website on Webflow before getting started with PageFactory. Any subsequent changes made in Webflow (such as new collection fields) will appear in PageFactory approximately 5 minutes after they are published.

It's also suggested you start with a small sample of data in your spreadsheet initially, and test creating a handful of pages before processing your full spreadsheet. It's much easier to fix things if something goes awry with three pages, than a thousand.

Special considerations for Webflow:

  • Publishing to Webflow can take some time. Because of Webflow's API rate limiting, we publish collection items at a rate of 1 per second. This means it will take 60 seconds (or one full minute) to publish 60 collection items.
  • Webflow limits the number of collection items you can create based on your pricing plan. See their pricing page for more information.

Step 1: Create a Template

Login to PageFactory, and click "New Template" in the left hand sidebar. Choose the template type "Webflow", and click the "Create" button. You'll be taken to the template editor.

Webflow step 1 create template

Step 2: Add Spreadsheet Column Names to PageFactory

Click the "Settings" tab. Enter the name of each spreadsheet column that should be accessed in the template. These will be used as placeholders (aka "variables") in your template. Make sure the column name in the spreadsheet is an exact match of what you enter here!

Example Spreadsheet:

bird data spreadsheet

How these columns would appear in PageFactory:

bird fact variables

Step 3: Build Your Content Template

Return to the template editor by clicking the "Template" tab. Begin creating a template for your content in the Template field.

Click the green plus sign in the editor to access your spreadsheet data. When PageFactory builds your pages, the spreadsheet column names will be replaced with data from the spreadsheet.

bird facts template populated

Step 4: Grant PageFactory Access to Your Site

Click the "Settings" tab to return to the settings page. Scroll down to the Webflow Settings section and click the green "Grant Access" button. This will direct you to Webflow, where you can grant PageFactory access to your Webflow account.

Webflow step 4 grant access

Once access has been granted, you will see a success message in PageFactory.

Step 5: Fill Out the Settings Fields

Now that PageFactory can access your Webflow account, you can choose which site and collection should receive published content.

The field "Template Field" tells PageFactory which collection field should be associated with the main content generated from this template. Only fields with the type "Rich text" can be selected for this.

In the example below, we've designated the "Bird Details" field for the "Birds" collection as the Template Field. This means the content we create from Step 3 above, will be placed in the "Bird Details" field when it is published to Webflow.

Webflow step 5 settings

Once you choose and save a Template Field, the remaining fields associated with your chosen collection will appear. At this time, PageFactory only supports collection fields with the type Link, Image, Rich Text, Switch, Reference, Video Link, or Option.

Some fields, such as "Slug" and "Name", have a green plus sign above them. Just like the template editor, clicking the green plus sign will allow you to add variables to that field.

This is important because some fields, such as the "Slug" field, must be unique for each collection item. Use spreadsheet data to ensure that the slug generated for each item is unique.

Step 6: Publish to Webflow

Click the "Publish" tab, and choose the spreadsheet you want to apply to your template in the CSV File field. Note: The spreadsheet must be saved in CSV format and can not be bigger than 50 MB.

Click the Publish button and PageFactory will begin creating your content and syncing it with Webflow.

publish wait message

During publishing, PageFactory will check if a page already exists on your Website by looking at the page's slug. If it finds that a page already exists, it will update that page with any changed settings or content. If it does not find a page with a matching slug, it will create a new page entirely.

During publishing, you can refresh the page to check the status of your publish. In order to circumvent certain limitations with Webflow, we publish at a rate of 1 item per second. If you're processing a lot of data, it could take several minutes for your publish to finish.

Webflow FAQ

What does this error code mean?

Sometimes, Webflow will reject publishing a collection item. This can happen for several reasons, which are identified using error codes. Some common error codes and their meanings:

  • 400 - Validation Error. This means the value we sent Webflow for a collection field did not meet Webflow's validation standards. For example, this error could be thrown if we try to publish content to a collection with a Link field, and put a partial URL (such as "/documentation/") instead of a fully qualified URL (such as "https://pagefactory.app/documentation/") as the value for that field in the settings.
  • 404 - Resource Not Found. This means Webflow was instructed to find a certain resource (such as a collection or field), but it could not. Often, this occurs after making changes to a collection, such as creating or changing a collection field. The best way to troubleshoot this error is to publish the latest version of the site, then wait 5 minutes and try again.
  • 409 - Conflict. This error occurs when you have maxed out the number of collection items you can create with your current Webflow plan.
  • 429 - Too Many Requests. Webflow has strict standards for how many http requests it will accept in a certain amount of time. If it receives to many requests at once, it will begin returning this error code. If you are getting this error, it's best to take a break and give Webflow some time to "cool off." We recommend 1 hour.