Advice and answers from the Advanced Web Ranking Team
Search for articles
New to AWR? Here’s How to Set Up Your First Project
A complete guide to setting up your first AWR project. Add keywords, configure search engines, track competitors and start monitoring your rankings in minutes.
Whether you're an agency managing SEO for clients or handling SEO in-house, you've decided to give AWR a try. Maybe you've just signed up for a trial to see what AWR is all about or you've already picked a plan and are ready to get started.
Either way, the next step is setting up your first project so you can start tracking performance and getting meaningful SEO insights.
What this article covers
After creating and verifying your account, you'll be guided through the process of setting up your first AWR project by adding your website, brand names, location, search engines and keywords.
Choosing the right website URL is one of the most important parts of the setup process, as AWR uses it to determine which rankings belong to your site. In most cases, tracking your main domain will provide the most complete view of your SEO performance.
Once your project is configured, click "Start Tracking" and AWR will begin collecting your initial ranking data. When the Initial Ranking Update is complete, you'll receive an email notification and can start analyzing your rankings, reports and SEO performance insights.
Step 1: Activate Your Account
To get started, you can either subscribe to a plan right away or sign up for a free trial.
If you've already made up your mind and are ready to get started, click the "Subscribe" button on your preferred plan on our Pricing page:
Or, if you'd like to try AWR first and see how it fits into your workflow, click the "Sign up" button on the sign-in page to start a free trial.
Next, you'll be prompted to create your account by entering your credentials.
Once your credentials have been set up, we'll send a verification email to the address you provided. To activate your account and gain access to AWR, simply click the "Confirm my email address" button in the email.
Verifying your email address is a required step to activate your trial. To ensure your account remains active, please complete the verification within 48 hours of registration.
After confirming your account, you'll be redirected to the project setup page, where you can create your first AWR project.
Step 2: Choose the Website You Want to Track
The first step when setting up your project is to enter the URL of the website you want to track. AWR will use this URL to identify your rankings for the keywords you add to the project.
As you continue setting up your project, you'll see a live preview on the right side of the screen showing how your website's report will be displayed.
Tracking Your Entire Domain
If you enter your main domain, AWR will recognize rankings from across your entire website, including subdomains and subfolders.
For example, if you enter website.com, AWR will track rankings for URLs such as blog.website.com, shop.website.com and website.com/en. This ensures that all relevant pages associated with your website can be identified when they appear in search results.
Tracking a Specific Website Subfolder
If you enter a more specific URL, such as website.com/products or website.com/en, AWR will only collect rankings for that section of the website.
This means that rankings from other parts of website.com will not be counted as rankings for your website. For example, if you track website.com/products, pages under website.com/blog or website.com/about would fall outside the tracking scope.
Best Practice
We recommend tracking your main domain so AWR can include rankings from across your entire website.
Don't worry if you need to change your website's main URL later. You can update it at any time by going to Settings > Overview and clicking the "Edit" button to open the "Edit Main Website Settings" wizard.
Add Your Brand Name
Next, you’ll need to add your brand name. Once you've entered your website URL, AWR will automatically suggest names that can be considered Brand names for your website.
These brand names are used to identify when your brand is mentioned in AI responses across search engines such as Google AI Overviews, Google AI Mode, ChatGPT and Perplexity. This allows AWR to track your brand's visibility in AI results.
If your brand is also known by other names, abbreviations or variations that aren't included in the suggested list, you can add them during project setup. You can also manage your brand names later by going to Settings > Overview and clicking the "Add brand name" button.
Step 3: Choose Your Search Engines and Location
Select the country and search engines you want to track rankings for based on your SEO goals and target audience.
AWR supports tracking across multiple countries and search engines, allowing you to track performance in the markets that matter most to your website.
For more precise rank tracking, you can also enable custom location tracking. Once enabled, simply enter a city, street address, or ZIP/postal code and AWR will automatically validate the location for you.
To see which countries, search engines, and locations are supported in AWR, refer to this article.
Search engines can be later added or deleted from the Search Engines section of your project settings.
Once you're happy with your selection, click "Start tracking" to finish setting up your project and begin collecting ranking data.
Step 4: Add Your Keywords
AWR will automatically generate a list of keyword suggestions based on your website.
Select the keywords you'd like to track or add your own manually. The keyword list can be modified at any time after the project has been created in the Keywords & Groups section of your project settings.
Once you're happy with your selection, click "Start tracking" to finish setting up your project and begin collecting ranking data.
Step 5: Completing Your Initial Ranking Update
Once you click "Start Tracking", AWR will begin collecting ranking data for the keywords and search engines you've selected.
The time required to complete the Initial Ranking Update depends on the size of your project. Smaller projects are typically completed within an hour, while projects with a larger number of keywords or search engines may take longer.
As soon as the update is complete, you'll be able to access your project and start exploring your rankings and reports.
Once the initial ranking update is complete, you'll receive an email with a preview of your project's ranking data.
Need Help Getting Started?
Your first AWR project is now fully set up and your initial ranking data is ready to explore.
As you become more familiar with the tool, you may want to look into how your projects are structured, especially if you're tracking multiple websites, countries, languages or clients. For more guidance on how to structure your projects, check out our article here.
If you need help setting up projects, configuring your tracking or getting familiar with AWR, our support team is always available. Simply click the chat icon in the bottom-right corner of the screen to get in touch.
Do you have any questions? Don’t hesitate to get in touch and we will keep building the FAQ.
Frequently Asked Questions
Do I need to stay on the Initial Ranking Update page?
Can I access my project before the Initial Ranking Update is complete?
Can I create new projects later?
Should I track my entire domain or a specific subfolder?
stay in the loop