How it works
From signup to your first ranking report
The whole setup is five steps, most people finish it inside ten minutes, and step one is free — so you can follow along for real as you read.
Step 1 — it's free
Create your account
Sign up with your email or a Google account. The free plan needs no credit card and never expires: 1 domain, 10 keywords, automatic checks (weekly, then fortnightly), and the site-audit summary. Paid plans (from $9) add more keywords, full audits, and downloadable reports.
A short onboarding wizard walks you through the next steps the first time; the rest of this page is the same walk with more commentary.
Step 2
Add your domain and keywords
Tell PicoRank which site to watch, then add the search terms that matter. Paste a list, or let the suggesters help: connect Google Search Console or GA4 and PicoRank proposes keywords from queries you already appear for and pages people already visit — or ask the AI suggester for fresh angles.
Organize as you go: group keywords into lists (per market, per product line) and tag them with labels you'll later filter reports by. Twenty well-chosen keywords beat two hundred vague ones — start with the terms a customer would actually type.
Step 3
Pick your countries and devices
Create a scan: choose which keyword lists to check, in which of 150+ countries, and on which devices. Each engine, device, and geography you add uses one of your plan's keyword slots — so you pay only for the markets and devices you actually watch. We doubled every plan's included slots when devices started counting, so a keyword on desktop and mobile costs the same as before.
You can run several scans per domain: one for your home market on both devices, another for an export market on mobile only. Enable or pause them anytime.
Step 4
Get your first positions
The moment you add your keywords, PicoRank fetches your current Google positions automatically — no waiting for the first scheduled run. From then on, every keyword refreshes automatically each week, and the history starts building: sparklines per keyword, movers up and down, position distribution over time.
Patience pays here: rankings normally wobble (we write about why), so trends over weeks tell you more than any single Tuesday.
Step 5
Read the report — and share it
The SEO Results view brings it together: current positions, best and worst movers, share of voice against the competitors you've added, breakdowns by country and device, and backlink data. Filter by label to see just one campaign; annotate changes so future-you remembers what happened in week 12.
Share the report as a live link or embed it — clients see progress without an account. And CSV export means your data is never stuck with us.
After setup: two things worth doing
Add competitors
Add the domains you lose deals to and every future check records their positions on your keywords too. See competitor tracking.
Run a site audit
Let the crawler run its 26 SEO checks and hand you a fix list. The background theory is in our guide to optimizing your site.
Setting up is step one
The newsletter covers what to do with the data — reading trends, spotting problems, small SEO wins. About once a week.
Step 1 is free — start it now
Ten minutes from account to first positions. No credit card, and 10 keywords stay free forever.