Search, research, authority, and reporting

Once your site is audited, these tools help you grow: track where you rank, find keywords worth targeting, improve individual pages, check that Google can index them, and share results. This guide is for marketers and agencies running SEO week to week.

Before you begin

• Create your SEO project and set the right domain active. See SEO overview.
• Run at least one crawl. Content Optimizer and Content Map only work on crawled pages. See Site Audit and crawler.
• For live rankings, keyword data, competitors, backlinks, or AI visibility, connect DataForSEO. For Google clicks and impressions, connect Search Console. See Connect search data and providers.

How paid requests work

Tools that use DataForSEO always pause for a confirmation, such as Confirm provider-charged research. It tells you what will run and the estimated maximum. Select Cancel if something looks wrong. Don't click again while a request is running. When it finishes, the actual provider cost is saved with the result, and you can reuse the saved result later without paying again.

Track rankings

1. Open SEO → Track search → Rank Tracking.
2. Check the market shown (for example Google · United States). Select Change market to pick another country and language.
3. Under Add keywords, paste keywords separated by commas or one per line, then add them. Adding keywords is free (up to 25 per domain).
4. Select Check all ranks, or tick some and select Check selected (the button shows how many).
5. Read the confirmation and select Confirm and check.

What you should see: each keyword shows its Position, Movement, Previous, Best, and Last checked. The summary shows how many are in the Top 3, Top 10, Top 20, and Top 100. Keywords outside the checked depth show Not in top 100.

Select a keyword to open Ranking history (you need at least two checks for a trend). Use Pause to stop checking a keyword, Export CSV to download, and Filter by position to focus.

Rankings vary by location, device, and search layout. Look at the trend over several checks, not one result.

Research keywords

• Keyword Explorer: enter 1 to 10 seed keywords, confirm, and get ideas with Search volume, Difficulty, Intent, and SERP features. Save a shortlist and send the best ideas to Rank Tracking.
• Keyword Research: research one topic in more depth for a chosen market and language.
• Organic Keywords and Organic Pages: see which searches and pages bring your domain traffic, according to your provider.
• SERP Analysis: see the current results page for a search, so you know what you're competing with.

Pick keywords your business can genuinely answer. Avoid making near-identical pages for every variation.

Research competitors

1. Open SEO → Find keywords → Competitor Research.
2. Select Find SEO competitors and confirm with Confirm and discover. This finds the domains that most often compete with you in search.
3. Save the competitors you care about.
4. Run a comparison of your tracked or saved keywords with Confirm and compare.

The results show each Keyword, Your rank, the Best competitor, and the Opportunity. Search competitors aren't always business competitors. Keep a small list you can explain.

Improve a page

Content Optimizer

1. Open SEO → Improve content → Content Optimizer.
2. Choose a Crawled page and enter a Target query.
3. Select Analyze page. This is free.
4. Review On-page SEO, Content quality, and GEO readiness checks marked Passed or Needs work.
5. Use the Content brief (Suggested title, Suggested H1, Suggested sections) as a starting point.
6. Select Add recommendations to workstream.

GEO readiness checks whether a page is easy for AI assistants to answer from. It isn't a prediction of AI citations or rankings.

Content Map

Content Map lists each crawled page with its Primary keyword, Topic cluster, Intent, Inbound links, and search numbers. Assign one main keyword per page so pages don't compete with each other. Add suggested internal links to the SEO Workstream.

Index Status

1. Open SEO → Track search → Index Status.
2. Select Run indexing scan. This is free.
3. Compare Observed URLs, Sitemap URLs, Sitemap only, and Not in sitemap, plus Robots and sitemaps.

Google's own status appears only after a Search Console inspection. An inspection shows what Google has stored; it doesn't ask Google to index the page. Submit sitemaps in Google Search Console.

Backlinks, AI Visibility, and traffic

• Backlinks: see Referring domains, Anchor text, and Broken backlinks from your provider. A missing link in the data doesn't prove the link doesn't exist.
• AI Visibility: checks how often your brand is mentioned or cited by assistants such as ChatGPT, Google AI Overview, Claude, Gemini, and Perplexity for a set of prompts. Report it as "mentions in this run", not market share.
• Traffic Analytics: visits and bot traffic from Cloudflare.
• Core Web Vitals: page speed scores from PageSpeed Insights.

Schedule SEO checks

1. Open SEO → Monitor SEO → SEO Automations and select Create SEO automation.
2. Choose the check: Site crawl, Search Insights sync, Core Web Vitals, or Rank tracking.
3. Pick Daily, Weekly, or Monthly, the day, and the UTC hour.
4. For rank tracking, tick Allow my DataForSEO account to be charged and set a Per-run cost guardrail (USD).
5. Select Create automation.

Crawl schedules never use a paid provider. SEO alerts show measured drops; select Add to Workstream, Acknowledge, or Resolve. Recent runs list each run and its provider cost.

Share a report

1. Open SEO → Reports → All Reports.
2. Under Create a client-ready snapshot, enter a Report title, optional Client name (optional) and Executive summary (optional).
3. Choose when the link expires: Link expires in 30 days, 60 days, or 90 days.
4. Select Create shareable report.
5. Under Shared reports, select Copy link, Open / Save PDF, or Revoke.

A report is a snapshot of the data saved when you created it. It doesn't update. Anyone with the link can open it until it expires or you revoke it, so don't include private notes.

SEO Progress compares your latest crawl with the one before (Issues fixed, New issues, Recurring) and shows improving keywords. SEO Activity lists every crawl, sync, report, and scheduled check, with Review and retry for failures.

If something goes wrong

FAQ

Does a shared report update automatically?

No. It's a point-in-time snapshot. Create a new one for current numbers.

Why don't my Rank Tracking and Search Console positions match?

Rank Tracking checks one market and device at one moment. Search Console averages positions across all searches over time.

Can I revoke a report link?

Yes. Select Revoke under Shared reports. The link stops working immediately.

Next step

Share progress with clients alongside Social Media reports, or plan follow-up work in Tasks.