You have signed up for SE Ranking, or you are about to start the trial, and the dashboard shows a dozen menus. Where do you begin? This guide takes you through the first hour step by step, so that by the end you have accurate rank tracking, a prioritised list of fixes and one quick win already done.
In this article
Before you start
Have these ready to save time:
- Admin access to your website, in case you need to fix something the audit finds.
- Access to Google Search Console and Google Analytics for your site. If you have not set up Search Console yet, do that first: it is free and takes about ten minutes.
- A list of your important pages: your homepage, main category pages and your best articles.
- A rough keyword list: the main phrase each important page targets. If you do not have one, Search Console’s Performance report shows the queries you already appear for.
- Three competitors: websites that rank for the topics you want.
If you do not have an account yet, start the SE Ranking free trial; the setup below works the same on trial and paid plans.
Account setup
- Create your account and confirm your email address.
- Create a new project and enter your domain exactly as visitors see it (for example
https://www.yoursite.com). Choose whether to track the whole domain or a specific subfolder; most sites track the whole domain. - Choose the search engine and location. Pick Google and the country your audience lives in. If you are a local business, add the city or region as well. If your readers are worldwide, start with the country that sends you the most traffic, then add others later.
- Choose devices. Track mobile if most of your visitors use phones, which is true for most sites. Add desktop as a second setting if your audience is office-based.
- Connect Google Search Console and Google Analytics when prompted. This lets SE Ranking import keywords you already rank for and show traffic next to rankings.
Core setup steps
Step 1: Add and group your keywords
Add 50 to 150 keywords to start. Good sources are the main keyword of each important page, queries from Search Console where you rank between positions 5 and 30, and a few keywords you want to win in the next six months.
Put keywords into groups that match your site structure, for example “WordPress speed”, “web hosting reviews” and “beginner guides”. Groups make it easy to see whether a whole topic is rising or falling.
Tip: assign each keyword its target URL, the page you want to rank. SE Ranking will then flag when Google ranks a different page instead, a common sign of two articles competing for the same keyword.
Step 2: Add competitors
Add the three competitors you prepared. SE Ranking will track their positions for your keywords, so you can see whether a drop is happening to everyone (often a Google update) or only to you.
Step 3: Run the website audit
Start the audit and let it crawl your site. Depending on size, this takes from a few minutes to an hour. When it finishes, sort issues by severity and look at errors first:
| Issue | Why it matters | Typical fix |
|---|---|---|
| Pages returning 4xx errors | Visitors and Google hit dead ends | Fix the link or redirect to the right page |
| Noindex on important pages | Page cannot appear in Google | Remove the noindex setting in your SEO plugin |
| Duplicate titles | Pages compete or look identical in results | Write a unique title for each page |
| Redirect chains | Slower pages, wasted crawling | Point links directly to the final URL |
| Very slow pages | Visitors leave, rankings suffer | Compress images, use caching |
| Orphan pages | Google may not find or value them | Link to them from related articles |
Warnings and notices can wait. Many sites have hundreds of minor notices that never affect rankings.
Step 4: Set up reports and alerts
Create a weekly email report for rankings and a monthly one for the audit. Turn on alerts for big position changes so you hear about drops quickly instead of discovering them weeks later.
What to do in week two
Once the basics run, spend about an hour in the second week on two more features:
- Keyword research for your next three articles. Enter each topic and look for related questions with low difficulty. Add the best ones to your content plan and to the rank tracker so you can watch them from the day they publish.
- Competitor pages. Open a competitor’s top pages report and note which of their articles bring them the most search traffic. If they rank for a topic you cover better, improve your page; if they rank for a topic you have not covered, write it.
These two habits, planning with keyword research and learning from competitors, are where an SEO tool pays for itself over time.
Your first win in 30 minutes
The fastest improvement comes from pages already close to the top:
- Open the rank tracker and filter for keywords in positions 8 to 20.
- Pick the one with the highest search volume whose target page you know well.
- Search the keyword in Google and read the top three results. Note what they cover that your page does not: a step, a comparison table, an FAQ, a fresher example.
- Add those missing parts to your page, improve the introduction so it answers the question immediately, and check the title starts with the main keyword.
- Add two internal links to the page from related articles.
- Ask Google to recrawl the page using URL Inspection in Search Console.
Mark the date in your notes. Over the next two to six weeks, the rank tracker will show whether the change worked.
Tips and mistakes
- Do not track everything. Hundreds of irrelevant keywords make the data noisy and can raise your plan cost.
- Check the location. Tracking the wrong country or city is the most common reason rankings in the tool do not match what you see.
- Do not panic over daily moves. Positions wobble by a few places every day. Look at the weekly trend.
- Fix errors before chasing scores. A perfect audit score is not the goal; fixing what stops pages from being indexed and found is.
- Revisit monthly. Add keywords for new articles and remove ones you no longer target.
- Use the keyword gap report. After a month, compare your keywords with your competitors’ to find topics for new articles.
If your main goal later becomes improving article content, Surfer SEO works well alongside SE Ranking.
Frequently asked questions
Why do my rankings in SE Ranking differ from what I see in Google?
Google personalises results by location, device and history. SE Ranking checks from a neutral setting for the location you chose, which is more reliable than checking manually.
How long does the first audit take?
From a few minutes for a small site to an hour or more for a large one.
Should I track mobile or desktop?
Track mobile if most of your visitors use phones, which is true for most websites. Add desktop if your audience mainly uses computers.
How often should I log in?
A quick weekly look at rankings and a monthly audit review is enough for most small sites.
Can I add my clients’ websites?
Yes. Each website is a separate project; your plan decides how many projects you can have.