A project is one website. Almost every other tool asks which project you mean, so this is the first thing to create — audits, tracked keywords, backlinks and reports all attach to a project.
Best for: Anyone starting out, and agencies keeping client sites separate.
How to use it
Click New Project
Top right of the Project Manager screen.
Enter the domain
Use the form your site actually resolves to. If your site is https://www.example.com, do not enter example.com — rankings and audits follow the domain you give.
Give it a display name
Optional, but with more than a handful of client sites it is the difference between a readable dashboard and a wall of domains.
Open the project
From here the sidebar tools all operate on the project you have selected.
Common mistakes
Creating a second project for the same site with and without www. That splits your history across two records, and neither tells the whole story.
Deleting a project to "start fresh". Deletion is permanent and takes the ranking history with it — history is the one thing you cannot re-fetch.
The overview screen: current visibility, recent movement, and whatever needs attention across your projects. Built for scanning, not for detail — every card links through to the tool that owns the number.
Best for: The first thing to open each week.
How to use it
Pick a project
The dashboard is per-project. Switch with the project selector.
Read the summary cards first
They are ordered by what usually needs attention, not alphabetically.
Follow a card into its tool
Every number is a link. The dashboard summarises; the tool underneath explains.
Common mistakes
Treating the dashboard as live. Most figures come from the last scheduled run, not from this instant — check the timestamp on a card before reacting to it.
Technical audit
Find what is technically broken before you spend money on content or links.
In the app this screen is headed “Website Audit Tool”.
Crawls your site page by page and reports what is broken: dead links, redirect chains, missing or duplicate titles, canonical problems, thin pages and the rest. This is the tool to run first on any new site.
Free1 crawls per monthMid20 crawls per monthPro10 crawls per monthAgency30 crawls per month
Best for: Every new project, and a re-run monthly or after a site change.
How to use it
Enter the URL
Full domain including https://. A subfolder works too if you only want to audit one section.
Set Max Crawl Pages
Your plan caps this. Starting small on a large site gets you an answer sooner; you can re-run deeper once you know what you are looking at.
Set Crawl Depth Limit
How many clicks from the homepage the crawler will follow. Depth 3 reaches most of a normal site.
Decide on Crawl Subdomains and JS Rendering
Leave subdomains off unless you genuinely want them counted. Turn JS rendering on only if your content does not appear in the page source — it is slower and it is an Agency-plan feature.
Click Start Audit
It runs in the background. You do not need to keep the tab open.
Work the issues by severity
Critical first. The report groups by issue type, so one fix often clears many rows at once.
What it costs: One crawl from your monthly allowance, plus the pages crawled from your monthly page budget.
Common mistakes
Setting Max Crawl Pages to the maximum on the first run. Your monthly page budget is shared across every crawl in the month — one careless run can consume it.
Auditing http:// when the site redirects to https://. You will spend the crawl watching redirects instead of reading pages.
A small audit form you paste onto your own website. A visitor enters their domain, gets a report, and you capture the lead. The crawl runs on your allowance, which is what makes it a lead magnet rather than a free service you are donating.
Free — not includedMid — not includedPro1 widgetsAgency25 widgets
Best for: Agencies and consultants generating inbound leads.
How to use it
Click Create Widget
Give it a Widget Label for your own reference — visitors never see it.
Set the visitor-facing copy
Submit button label, title, subtitle, and a custom thank-you message or redirect URL.
Choose the form fields and layout
Fewer fields convert better. Ask for what you will actually follow up on.
Cap Max Pages
Between 5 and 50. This is the single most important setting — it decides how much of your page budget each stranger can spend.
Use Block Email Addresses and Block Domains
Blocks free-mail signups and competitors probing your widget.
Copy the embed code
Paste it into your site where you want the form to appear.
Common mistakes
Leaving Max Pages at 50 on a public page. Fifty pages × every visitor is how a month of page budget disappears in a weekend.
Not setting the block lists, then wondering why the leads are all free-mail addresses.
Keywords & rankings
Find the terms worth chasing, then watch what actually happens to them.
Records where you rank for the keywords you choose, day after day, per market and per device. Five views sit behind one screen: Overview, Keywords, Landing Pages, SERP Features and Reports.
Best for: Proving whether the work is moving anything. This is the tool clients ask about.
How to use it
Open Add Keywords
Three routes in: AI Keyword Suggestions, Add Keywords Manually, or Discover Ranking Keywords to pull terms you already rank for.
Set Target Country, Language and Device
Set these deliberately. A position only means something alongside the market and device it was measured in.
Add a City if you are local
Optional, and only useful when results genuinely differ by city.
Paste your keywords or upload a CSV
The manual box and bulk CSV upload both feed the same list.
Choose a Frequency
Auto (smart) checks the keywords that move more often than the ones that do not, which stretches your allowance further than Daily.
Read the Overview, then dig in
Overview for the trend, Keywords for the detail, Landing Pages for which URL is ranking, SERP Features for whether an AI overview or a snippet is taking your clicks.
What it costs: One rank check per keyword per run, from your monthly rank-check allowance.
Common mistakes
Comparing a desktop US position against a mobile UK one and calling it a drop. They are different measurements and were never comparable.
Tracking every keyword you can think of. Your allowance is per check, per keyword, per run — a hundred junk keywords crowd out the twenty that pay.
Setting everything to Daily. Most keywords do not move daily, and Auto (smart) spends the same allowance on the ones that do.
Search volume, difficulty, CPC and search intent for a keyword — plus the related terms worth considering. Two modes: Search By Keywords for a seed term, or Search By Domain to see what a site already ranks for.
Free10 searches per monthMid50 searches per monthPro150 searches per monthAgency500 searches per month
Best for: Deciding what to write before you write it.
How to use it
Pick a mode
Search By Keywords starts from an idea. Search By Domain starts from a site — yours or a rival's.
Set the market
Results are market-specific. The wrong country gives you the right numbers for the wrong audience.
Click Research
You get the seed term plus related keywords with volume, difficulty and intent.
Read intent before volume
A high-volume informational term and a low-volume commercial one are different businesses. Intent tells you which page type to build.
Select the winners and Track Selected
Pushes them straight into Rank Tracker so you start recording positions from today.
Save the report
Under Saved Reports, so you are not re-spending a search to look at the same data next week.
What it costs: One keyword search from your monthly allowance.
Common mistakes
Chasing the highest volume term on the page. It is usually the hardest, and difficulty is on the same row.
Re-running the same search instead of opening Saved Reports. That is an allowance spent on data you already own.
Folders for the keywords you track. Group by campaign, by client, by page, by whatever you actually report on. Organisational only — it costs nothing and fetches nothing.
Best for: Anyone past about fifty tracked keywords.
How to use it
Click New Folder
Name it after something you report on — a campaign, a service line, a client.
Move keywords in
Use the action menu on a keyword row.
Filter by folder elsewhere
The grouping carries through to the views you read and export.
Common mistakes
Building a folder tree that mirrors your site structure rather than your reporting. You will read these grouped the way you report, not the way the site is built.
Competitor intelligence
What your rivals rank for, who links to them, and where the gap is that you can close.
A full organic profile for any domain across seven tabs: Overview, Keywords, Ranking Changes, Competitors, Countries, Pages and Subdomains. Traffic trend, position distribution, keywords by intent, SERP features they appear in.
Free — not includedMidProAgency
Best for: Sizing up a competitor properly, or auditing a prospect before a pitch.
How to use it
Enter a domain
Yours or anyone else's.
Start on Overview
Organic traffic trend, top markets, position distribution and keywords by intent — enough to know whether they are worth studying further.
Open the tab that answers your question
Keywords for what they rank for, Pages for which URLs earn it, Countries for where, Ranking Changes for recent movement.
Unlock history if you need the trend
View history shows what is available; Unlock history extends it.
Export to PDF
Presentable as-is for a pitch.
Common mistakes
Opening every tab out of curiosity. The tabs load their data as you open them, so the ones you skip cost nothing — and the ones you open out of habit are not free.
In the app this screen is headed “Keyword Gap Tool”.
The keywords your competitors rank for and you do not. Two views: Keyword Gap for the missing terms, Ranking Battle for the ones you both hold. Filterable by Easy Wins, Medium and High Comp.
Free1 competitor searches per monthMid15 competitor searches per monthPro50 competitor searches per monthAgency100 competitor searches per month
Best for: Building a content plan grounded in what already works in your market.
How to use it
Enter Your Website Domain
And set Target Country / Region.
Add competitors
Use Suggest if you are not sure who they are — it proposes sites that rank for the same terms.
Click Analyze Competitors
Filter to Easy Wins first
Terms your rivals rank for that you could realistically reach. This is the list worth acting on.
Export
Keyword Gap CSV for working, or Export Premium PDF for a client.
What it costs: One competitor search from your monthly allowance. Refresh Data and Load Full 100 Results each cost 1 credit.
Common mistakes
Picking aspirational competitors instead of real ones. A site ten times your authority produces a gap list you cannot act on.
Clicking Refresh Data when the existing report is a day old. It costs a credit and the SERP has barely moved.
In the app this screen is headed “Competitive Backlink Gap Analysis”.
Sites that link to your competitors but not to you. A site already linking to two of your rivals has demonstrated it links to businesses like yours — that is the warmest outreach list available.
Free1 gap reports per monthMid15 gap reports per monthPro35 gap reports per monthAgency75 gap reports per month
Best for: Building an outreach list that is not cold.
How to use it
Enter your Primary Domain
Add Competitor 1, and optionally 2 and 3
Three competitors surfaces the domains linking to your whole sector, not just to one rival.
Click Run Gap Comparison
Prioritise the overlaps
A site linking to all three competitors is a far better prospect than one linking to a single rival.
Export the PDF or Copy Plan
For handing to whoever does the outreach.
What it costs: One gap report from your monthly allowance.
Common mistakes
Working the list top to bottom by authority. Relevance and the fact they already link to peers matters more than the highest number.
In the app this screen is headed “Find High-Yield Link Prospects”.
Ranked link prospects with the real link type, spam signals and placement for each — so you can judge whether a prospect is worth the effort before spending it.
Free — not includedMid10 reports per monthPro30 reports per monthAgency75 reports per month
Best for: Link building where your time is the scarce resource.
How to use it
Set your Primary Domain
Add competitor domains
Or enter an unrelated custom domain to mine a site you admire.
Click Find Opportunities
Filter before you export
Spam signals and placement are on every row. Screening here saves the outreach time later.
Export selected or Export CSV
What it costs: One report from your monthly allowance.
Common mistakes
Exporting everything and screening in a spreadsheet. The filters in the tool know the link type and placement; your spreadsheet does not.
In the app this screen is headed “Hijack Broken Competitor Backlinks”.
Dead pages on competitor sites that still have links pointing at them. Those links are live, they lead nowhere, and the site owner would generally rather they pointed at something that works.
Free — not includedMid5 reports per monthPro25 reports per monthAgency50 reports per month
Best for: Outreach with an actual reason to make contact.
How to use it
Set your Primary Domain and add competitors
Click Find Broken Links
Look for dead pages you can genuinely replace
The pitch only works if you have something equivalent to offer.
Export CSV and work the list
What it costs: One report from your monthly allowance.
Common mistakes
Pitching a replacement that is not equivalent. The whole approach rests on solving the linking site's problem, not yours.
Backlinks
Everything pointing at a domain — what it is worth, and what changed.
The full profile for any domain across eight tabs: Overview, Backlinks, Profile Insights, Toxic Links, Growth History, Top Pages, SEO Analysis and the AI report. Authority and toxicity scores, follow vs nofollow, anchors and referring-domain categories.
Free3 backlink searches per monthMid25 backlink searches per monthPro50 backlink searches per monthAgency100 backlink searches per month
Best for: Deep analysis of your own profile, or any domain you are evaluating.
How to use it
Enter a domain and click Analyze
Start on Overview
Authority score, toxicity, link velocity and profile health in one screen.
Open Toxic Links next
Adjust the Spam Score Threshold to match how conservative you want to be.
Use Backlinks for the detail
Filter, choose your columns, and open a row for the full picture on one link.
Export what you need
CSV (filtered rows) for analysis, or a Disavow file (.txt) if you are cleaning up.
Open Growth History and Top Pages only if you need them
They load on click, deliberately — leaving them closed costs nothing.
What it costs: One backlink search from your monthly allowance. Refresh Report costs 1 credit. Results are cached and shared with the rest of the app — a domain you have already looked at opens free.
Common mistakes
Disavowing aggressively. A disavow file is hard to reason about after the fact; a high spam score is a signal to look, not an instruction to remove.
Re-analyzing a domain you looked at last week. The cache would have served it free.
Watches a domain and tells you what changed — new links, lost links, links that turned nofollow. Runs on a schedule set by your plan; you do not trigger it.
Free — not includedMid1 monitored domainsPro10 monitored domainsAgency25 monitored domains
Best for: Noticing a lost link in days rather than at the next quarterly review.
How to use it
Click Monitor Domain and enter the domain
Let the first run establish the baseline
There is nothing to compare against until there are two runs.
Review changes as they arrive
Use Mark all read to clear the ones you have dealt with.
Investigate lost links promptly
A link removed last week is a far easier conversation than one removed last quarter.
Common mistakes
Monitoring competitors instead of your own sites when slots are limited. Losing your own link costs you something today.
AI intelligence
Whether AI assistants mention your brand when someone asks — and who they name instead.
Your share of AI voice against rivals: strength by engine, markets, who AI trusts about each of you, who you are named alongside, and head-to-head prompts they win.
Free — not includedMidProAgency
Best for: Knowing who AI recommends when it does not recommend you.
How to use it
Set Your domain, Market, Language and AI engines
Add competitors and click Compare
Read Share of AI voice first
Then Strength by engine — being strong in one engine and absent in another is common and worth knowing.
Open Rival's winning prompts
The specific questions where they get named and you do not.
Monitor the prompts that matter
Moves them into the Prompt Tracker for ongoing measurement.
What it costs: Each comparison costs 1 load.
Common mistakes
Comparing against the biggest brand in the category. AI answers favour established entities; pick rivals you are genuinely competing with.
What people actually ask AI about a topic, and which brands come up. Shows the prompt landscape, the brands winning it, and lets you test your own prompt ideas.
Free — not includedMid25 promptsPro100 promptsAgency250 prompts
Best for: Finding the questions worth being the answer to.
How to use it
Enter a Topic or keyword
Set market, language and engines.
Click Research
You get the prompt landscape for that topic.
Reveal brand leaderboard when it matters
It is a separate load — spend it when you want the competitive answer, not on every search.
Test your own ideas
Under Check your own prompt ideas.
Monitor the ones worth tracking
What it costs: Revealing the brand leaderboard costs 1 load; checking AI volumes costs 1 load.
Common mistakes
Researching keywords rather than questions. People type keywords into search engines and questions into assistants.
Content from brief to published and beyond, with a readiness score and a lifecycle status on every document: Drafting, In progress, Published, Live, Needs refresh, Retired.
Free — not includedMid10 reports per monthPro30 reports per monthAgency100 reports per month
Best for: Teams who lose track of what was published and when it last got attention.
How to use it
Create a document for the page you are working on
Work the readiness score
It tells you what is still missing rather than giving you a grade to admire.
Move the status as work progresses
The statuses only help if they reflect reality.
Watch for Needs refresh
This is the point of the lifecycle — content decays quietly, and this is what surfaces it.
What it costs: Optimisation reports and AI generations draw separate monthly allowances.
Common mistakes
Publishing and never returning. Needs refresh exists because updating a page that once ranked is usually cheaper than writing a new one.
Monitoring
Things you want to hear about without going to look.
Checks whether your site is reachable and alerts you when it is not. Downtime during a crawl or a rank check also corrupts that data, so this protects your numbers as well as your traffic.
Free — not includedMid5 monitorsPro10 monitorsAgency25 monitors
Best for: Any site earning money.
How to use it
Click Enable Monitoring for a project
Use Check Now to confirm it works
Investigate patterns, not single blips
One failed check is usually noise; the same window every day is a hosting conversation.
Common mistakes
Ignoring short outages. Repeated brief downtime during scheduled crawls quietly degrades your audit and ranking data.
Strategy & reporting
Turning the data into something to act on, and something to send.
Your Google Search Console data inside SignalSumo, broken down by query, page, country, device, date and search appearance — with an Untracked only filter that surfaces terms you rank for but are not tracking.
Free — not includedMid1 connected propertiesPro5 connected propertiesAgency20 connected properties
Best for: Real click and impression data rather than estimates.
How to use it
Click Connect Google
Then Add property for the sites you want.
Sync Now for the first pull
After that it syncs on a schedule.
Set a Date range and use Compare
Period over period is where the story is.
Filter to Untracked only
The fastest way to find keywords worth adding to Rank Tracker — you already rank for them.
Export to CSV or Excel
Common mistakes
Reading average position as a ranking. It is averaged across every impression, every device and every market at once.
In the app this screen is headed “Executive SEO Report”.
A white-label PDF pulling your project data into a client-ready document — your consultant name, accent colour, cover note, footer and an optional confidential notice. Can be scheduled and emailed on a recurring basis.
Free — not includedMid — not includedProAgency
Best for: Monthly client reporting without rebuilding a deck.
How to use it
Set the Report scope
Domain, market and report title.
Choose Sections in this report
Include what the client asked about. A shorter report gets read.
Set the Presentation
Consultant name, accent colour, cover note, footer. Mark it confidential if that matters.
Generate White-Label PDF, or Schedule instead
Scheduling sets frequency, day, hour and recipients.
Check Delivery history
Confirms it actually went out — worth checking after the first scheduled send.
Common mistakes
Scheduling before sending one manually. Send one to yourself first; a branding mistake is much cheaper to find before a client sees it.
Limits shown above are read from the live plan configuration, so they always match what the app enforces. Exact allowances for your account are on the pricing page, and your current usage is in your dashboard.
