Setup and dashboard
Getting Started With RankTracker: Set Up Your First Project
Create your first RankTracker project, choose domain or exact-URL matching, and set the market, language and device. Covers the initial keyword import and first refresh cycle.
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RankTracker · Setup and dashboard
Stage 1
Creating a project
Stage 2
First import
Stage 3
Choosing a refresh schedule
Creating a project
Open RankTracker and click 'New Project'. You are asked for a domain, a tracking mode (domain or exact URL) and the market you sell in. Domain matching tracks whichever page ranks; exact-URL locks tracking to one page, which suits landing-page work.
Set the country, language and device together — a UK, English, desktop configuration returns a very different SERP to a US mobile one. Get this wrong and every later number is meaningless.
- Click New Project from the workspace switcher
- Choose domain matching for whole-site tracking, exact URL for single pages
- Confirm country, language and device before saving
First import
After the project shell exists, you land on the import screen. Paste keywords line by line or upload a CSV with one keyword per row. RankTracker dedupes automatically and shows a preview count before it spends any credits.
Review the preview table, remove anything irrelevant, then confirm. The first check runs immediately so you have a baseline rather than waiting for the next scheduled refresh.
- Paste or upload keywords
- Review the dedupe preview
- Confirm to trigger the baseline check
Choosing a refresh schedule
Under project settings you set how often positions refresh — daily or weekly. Daily suits volatile, competitive terms you act on quickly; weekly is enough for long-tail or informational keywords where movement is slower.
Where to go next
Once the baseline check completes, head to the Overview Dashboard to see the project summary, then the Rankings tab for the full table. Both are covered in the next guides in this chapter.
Why this matters
Incorrectly configuring your project's market, language, or device settings can lead to severely skewed and actionable-deficient data. Imagine tracking a UK-based e-commerce site for 'men's trainers' but setting the RankTracker project to 'United States' and 'Desktop'. Your reported rankings would likely reflect US-centric search results, which often differ significantly due to regional content, local SERP features, and even different algorithm weightings. This would misrepresent your actual performance in the target market, leading to misguided optimisation efforts and wasted resources.
Similarly, failing to differentiate between 'domain' and 'exact URL' tracking during project setup can obscure critical insights. If you're running an outreach campaign targeting a specific landing page, but your project tracks at a domain level, you might miss the direct ranking impact of your efforts on that precise URL. Conversely, if you're tracking overall brand visibility for core terms, but set up exact URL tracking for every keyword, you risk over-complicating data analysis and missing the broader picture of your site's authority across multiple ranking pages.
Refining Project Scope: Domain vs. Exact URL Tracking
The initial decision between tracking your entire domain or specific URLs is foundational to the relevance of your rank data. Domain-level tracking provides a holistic view of your site's visibility for a given keyword, aggregating ranking signals from whichever page performs best. This is ideal for broad keyword strategies, competitive analysis across a site, or monitoring overall brand presence. It implicitly acknowledges that different pages on your site might rank for the same term at different times, or that Google might choose an unexpected page.
Exact URL tracking, conversely, locks the monitoring to a single, specified URL for each keyword. This precision is invaluable for highly targeted campaigns, such as measuring the impact of optimisations on a specific landing page, A/B testing page variations, or monitoring the performance of content clusters. It ensures you know precisely which page is (or isn't) ranking for a particular query, eliminating ambiguity when diagnosing performance issues or validating content updates. The choice must align with your immediate SEO objective.
- Use domain tracking for general site visibility and competitive landscape analysis.
- Opt for exact URL tracking when measuring specific page performance or campaign impact.
- Avoid exact URL tracking for broad terms where multiple pages could legitimately rank.
- Review and adjust this setting if your SEO goals shift significantly.
Do it now
Before proceeding, take a moment to review the 'Settings' tab within your newly created RankTracker project. Verify that the market (country), language, and device type precisely match your primary target audience and strategic focus. This immediate check prevents any foundational data inaccuracies and ensures that all subsequent analysis is built upon relevant data.
- Navigate to your new project in RankTracker.
- Click the 'Settings' icon (often a cogwheel) in the top right.
- Confirm the selected 'Country', 'Language', and 'Device Type' are correct.
- Save any changes if adjustments were necessary.
Key takeaways
- ✓Match country, language and device to your real audience before importing keywords
- ✓Use domain matching unless you specifically need to pin one URL
- ✓Preview and dedupe imports before confirming
- ✓Reserve daily refreshes for keywords you will act on daily
Do it now
Get a project live and learn the screens you will return to daily. Track the keywords from this lesson.