How to Create Your First SEO Project in Workexe
Create your first project, connect your domain, and unlock every module in one onboarding flow under 10 minutes.
How to Create Your First SEO Project in Workexe
- Before you start, the 3-minute checklist
- Step 1, Create the project and verify domain ownership
- Step 2, Connect Search Console and Analytics
- Step 3, Seed your tracked keywords and competitors
- Step 4, Run the first Site Audit
- Step 5, Invite teammates and set the first alert
- Overview
- Step-by-step setup
- Advanced tips
- Frequently Asked Questions
Before you start, the 3-minute checklist
A clean project setup saves you weeks of confused data later. Have these ready before you click New Project so Workexe binds the right property, country and competitor set on the first try.
- Owner or full-user access to Google Search Console for the exact domain or property
- Decision on www vs non-www and http vs https (Workexe follows your canonical, not both)
- Primary target country and language (drives SERP location and AI prompt locale)
- 2 to 4 real organic competitors (the brands you actually lose clicks to, not aspirational ones)
Step 1, Create the project and verify domain ownership
Click New Project, paste the canonical URL (https + www if that is your live version), pick the country and language. Workexe runs a lightweight crawl on the homepage to confirm the site responds, detects the CMS, and pre-fills hreflang signals if found.
- Domain-property is preferred over URL-prefix (it captures all subdomains and protocols)
- If you serve multiple countries, create one project per ccTLD or per /country/ folder
- Staging or password-protected sites will fail verification, point to the live URL
Step 2, Connect Search Console and Analytics
Workexe pulls 16 months of GSC history on first sync, so the rank, CTR and impression baselines are populated within 5 to 10 minutes. GA4 is optional but unlocks conversion attribution per landing page.
- OAuth in two clicks, no service-account JSON needed
- Read-only scope, Workexe never publishes or changes anything in GSC
- If you manage the property as a delegated user, you must have Full or Owner permission
Step 3, Seed your tracked keywords and competitors
You can paste up to 2,500 keywords, import a CSV, or let Workexe auto-suggest seed keywords from your top GSC queries. Add 2 to 4 competitor domains for share-of-voice and gap analysis from day one.
- Use one row per keyword, optional columns: location, device, tag
- Tag keywords by funnel stage (TOFU, MOFU, BOFU) for cleaner reports later
- Competitors locked in now feed the Backlink Gap and Content Gap modules automatically
Step 4, Run the first Site Audit
Trigger a full crawl right after setup. The first audit usually finishes in 30 minutes to 4 hours depending on URL count. Findings are sorted by Impact score (traffic loss potential), not by alphabetical category.
- Crawl budget defaults to 10K URLs, raise it in Settings if your sitemap is bigger
- Mobile-first user-agent is used by default, matching Googlebot Smartphone
- JavaScript rendering can be toggled per project for SPA-heavy sites
Step 5, Invite teammates and set the first alert
Add at least one teammate as Read-only for accountability, then create a rank-drop alert (e.g. position drops more than 5 for any TOFU keyword) so you stop checking the dashboard manually.
- Read-only seats are unlimited on every plan
- Slack and email destinations supported, weekly digest enabled by default
- Pin your most important saved view as the team default for one-click access
- 1Open Project
Launch the how to create your first seo project in workexe module from your project panel.
- 2Connect Sources
Add GSC, GA4 and any required CSV imports.
- 3Set Scope
Choose location, language, device and alert thresholds.
- 4Validate
Confirm the first scan against a known page or query.
