Create Your First Project# Link to this article
A project pairs one domain with its crawl settings, keywords, integrations and history. Creating one takes a domain, a name, and — for features that write data — domain verification.
A project is how Rankato groups everything about one domain: crawls, keywords, backlinks, integrations, reports and history. Most product features are scoped to a project.
Create the project# Link to this section
- Open Projects from the dashboard and choose New project.
- Enter the domain. Use the hostname you actually serve on — if your canonical site is
www.example.com, enter that rather thanexample.com. - Give the project a name your team will recognise. This is cosmetic and can be changed later.
- Pick the workspace. If you belong to more than one, the project's usage is metered against the workspace you choose here.
Rankato runs a short preview crawl as soon as the project is created, so the overview has something in it before your first full audit finishes.
Verify the domain# Link to this section
Read-only research works without verification. Verification is required for anything that writes on your behalf or reads private data — URL submission, Search Console ingestion, and scheduled crawling at higher rates.
Three methods are supported:
- DNS TXT record — add the record Rankato shows you to your domain's DNS. Most reliable; survives redeploys.
- HTML file — upload the verification file to your site root.
- Google Search Console ownership — if you already own the property in GSC and connect it, Rankato accepts that as proof.
DNS changes can take a few minutes to propagate. Rankato re-checks automatically; you do not need to keep the page open.
After it is created# Link to this section
Run a Site Audit, then add keywords to Rank Tracker. Both are covered in the next articles.
Written by Rankato