Getting Started

What you'll accomplish

By the end of this guide, you'll have:

• A verified domain registered in SEO by Daniel
• Your pages auto-discovered from your sitemaps
• A completed first scan with a scored SEO report
• A prioritized list of issues to fix

Step 1: Add your domain

From your dashboard, click Add Domain or navigate to the Domains page. Enter your website's domain (e.g., example.com) and give it a name you'll recognize - this is useful if you manage multiple client sites.

You'll also set two configuration options:

• Scan frequency: How often your pages are re-scanned. Daily is recommended for actively managed sites. Weekly or monthly works for stable content.
• Pages per batch: How many pages SEO by Daniel scans at once. The default (10) works for most sites. Increase it for larger sites if you want faster initial results.

Optional: If your site uses a non-standard internal URL structure (e.g., www2.example.com), set an Internal URL Prefix. This tells SEO by Daniel which links count as internal vs. external.

Step 2: Sitemap auto-discovery (happens automatically)

After you add your domain, SEO by Daniel automatically:

1. Fetches yourdomain.com/robots.txt
2. Extracts any Sitemap directives listed there
3. Parses each sitemap (including nested sitemap indexes and gzipped files)
4. Creates a Page record for each URL found

Timeline: Sitemap discovery typically takes 30-90 seconds for small-to-medium sites. Large sites with multiple sitemaps may take a few minutes. The domain status page shows progress.

If pages aren't appearing:

• Check that your robots.txt is accessible and contains valid Sitemap directives
• Add sitemaps manually from the domain page if auto-discovery didn't pick them up
• Wait for the job queue to process - discovery runs asynchronously

Step 3: Your first scan runs

Once pages are discovered, SEO by Daniel begins scanning. Scans run automatically according to your configured frequency. The first scan starts immediately after pages are discovered.

During a scan, SEO by Daniel:

• Fetches each page (following up to 5 redirect hops)
• Parses the HTML for on-page SEO elements (titles, meta tags, headings, images, structured data)
• Extracts all internal and external links
• Measures load time and page size
• Assigns a 0-100 SEO score based on issues found

Each scan creates a new set of analyses. You can view the current state from your domain's report page. Historical analyses are preserved so you can track changes over time.

Step 4: Read your first report

Navigate to Domains → [Your Domain] to see the overview, or click Full Report for the detailed breakdown. The report includes:

• Average Score across all pages, with minimum and maximum values
• Critical / Warning / Info issue counts, grouped by severity
• Grouped Issues showing which pages are affected by each problem
• Health Overview with average title length, word count, load time, page size
• Score Trend chart showing 14-30 days of history

Start with the critical issues - these are the problems that most directly impact crawlability, indexability, or core content understanding (missing titles, H1 tags, robots.txt blocks).

Step 5: Fix issues and re-scan

After fixing issues on your site, SEO by Daniel will re-scan on the next scheduled cycle. You can also trigger an immediate scan from your domain settings. As you fix issues, your score should improve.

Score expectations: A score of 40-60 is common for sites without active SEO management. 70+ is solid. 85+ is excellent. Scores vary by page type - product pages, blog posts, and landing pages have different baseline expectations.

What to do next

• Add more domains if you manage multiple client sites
• Set up scan schedules appropriate for each site (daily for active sites, weekly for stable ones)
• Export CSV reports for offline analysis or client delivery
• Use the Executive Summary for client-facing monthly reports
• Check the Domain Health page for infrastructure-level issues (SSL, robots.txt, sitemap)