Rankfender is an SEO and AI search platform. It audits your site for Google and AI engines, finds the keywords you can win, writes and publishes the articles, and shows whether ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini recommend you. To start, you need only your website address: setup takes two short steps, runs on its own for about five minutes, and a "Your first week" card then walks you to your first results.
This guide follows that path in order, from creating your project to your first audit, keyword, AI visibility check, article and report. Every step links to the matching page in the Rankfender documentation.
What Rankfender does, area by area
Everything in Rankfender belongs to a project: one website in one language. Each project has these areas in the sidebar.
| Area | What it does |
|---|---|
| Home | Status, setup, your Google and AI results, and what to do next |
| Optimizer (Site Health) | An SEO, GEO and AEO audit with one Site Health score and fixes page by page |
| Keywords | Up to 30 searches most likely to bring you customers, with volume, difficulty, intent and cost per click |
| AI Visibility | Asks AI assistants the questions your buyers ask and records whether you are named, where, in what tone and with which sources |
| Competitors | One measured picture of your competitors in six views |
| Content | Articles written from source evidence, cited to real pages and reviewed before they can be published |
| Traffic | Your Search Console and Google Analytics data, once Google is connected |
| Backlinks | Your link profile, and done-for-you link building on Business and Agencies |
| Planning | The task board and the editorial calendar |
| Reports | PDF, CSV and Excel reports, emailed on a schedule or shared by link |
| Assistant (RAISA) | An SEO agent that reads your project's data and acts after you confirm |
What it is not: Rankfender is not a daily rank tracker. Your Google positions come from Search Console, plus the keywords your site already ranks for. The full list is on the features page.
Step 1: Create your project
Open Rankfender on a computer; on a phone it asks you to switch to a desktop browser. You need no Google account, plugin or code to start. Setup has two steps.
"Your website". Type your domain. Rankfender reads your site while you watch and fills in the form. Check every field, because every keyword, AI question and article is built on it.
| Field | What to enter |
|---|---|
| Website | Your domain, with or without https:// |
| Brand name | The name customers know you by |
| Language of your site | The language your pages are written in (28 available) |
| Main market | The country you mainly sell in |
| What you do / Who buys it | One line each, drafted from your homepage; edit them if they miss the point |
| Competitors | 2 or 3 sites you know; more are suggested after setup |
"Choose your plan". Pick monthly or yearly billing and a plan. Plans differ in brands, AI questions, keywords, articles and seats; see pricing. There is also pay-as-you-go: no subscription, Essential features for one project, and credits that never expire.
The finish screen then lists what runs next: Rankfender reads your site and finds its keywords, competitors and buyer questions, and a few minutes later the first AI answers arrive. Each part appears on Home as soon as it is ready.
Step 2: Follow "Your first week"
New projects get a "Your first week" card on Home with seven steps. Each gets a tick when done, and the card stays for 30 days or until all seven are complete.
- Check what Rankfender understood about you and fix anything that is off in the Brand Book.
- Confirm your competitors: remove wrong ones, add the ones you know.
- See what AI assistants say about you: how many answers name you, and who is recommended instead.
- Pick your first keyword to target.
- Get your first article, then copy it, download it as a Word file or share a link.
- Fix your top site problem from the site check.
- Get a weekly report by email, sent every Monday.
The steps below cover the same ground in more depth.
Step 3: Run the Site Health audit
Open Optimizer, keep "Whole site" and click "Run site audit". It takes about three minutes on a small site. The audit runs about 60 checks across three pillars: Search (Google), AI Answers and Answer Boxes. They range from titles, canonicals and headings to AI-crawler access in robots.txt, llms.txt and schema for 8 types.
You get one Site Health score out of 100, weighted Search 45 %, AI Answers 35 % and Answer Boxes 20 %. If your homepage is set to noindex or robots.txt blocks the whole site, the score is capped at 20, because nothing else matters until that is fixed.
Start with the issues marked Critical. Each one explains why it matters and how to fix it, and "Add to tasks" sends it to Planning. Run the audit again after your fixes: the History tab shows what improved, and tasks whose issue is gone everywhere are marked done.
Two limits to know. The audit reads the HTML your server sends and does not run JavaScript. Core Web Vitals are checked only for sites connected to Search Console with enough Chrome visitors. Pages per audit depend on the plan. More on the SEO + GEO site audit page.
Step 4: Pick your keyword opportunities
Open Keywords › Opportunities. At setup, Rankfender reads your pages, measures real search demand and keeps up to 30 searches most likely to bring customers, each with monthly searches, difficulty, intent and cost per click. Searches stamped with a past year, such as "best crm 2024", are dropped.
Click "Generate" to add up to 30 more, or "Add Keywords" to add your own one at a time, as a list or from a CSV file. When a keyword is worth an article, click its target icon: it goes into your content plan in Planning. The Rankings tab shows the searches where Google already shows your site, from Search Console.
Step 5: Check your AI visibility
At setup, Rankfender writes the questions your buyers ask, in your project's language. Most do not contain your brand name, because AI almost always names you when the question already does. At most about 15 % of suggested questions name your brand, and each carries a "Names you" or "Doesn't name you" tag you can correct.
Every question goes to each selected assistant every week, or straight away when you click "Run AI check". Answers currently come from ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Mistral and Llama. Rankfender does not track Google AI Overviews or AI Mode.
The AI Visibility area has five tabs:
- Summary: how often you are named when the question does not mention you, and who is named instead, by assistant, topic and buying stage.
- Questions: add, pause, edit or delete the questions.
- Answers: every answer, with the brands named, your position, the tone and the sources.
- Competitors: share of voice for you and the competitors you track.
- Content ideas: article ideas built from the questions you lose.
Rankfender counts a mention only when an answer contains your full brand name, your domain or an alias you saved, never a single word taken from a longer name. Answers vary a little from one check to the next, so judge the trend over several checks. See the AI visibility tracker.
Step 6: Write and publish your first article
Articles start from a keyword's target icon, from AI Visibility's Content ideas, or from a content plan in Planning. Each article is written from source evidence: the pages that rank for your keyword, your own pages, your Brand Book and your AI visibility data. A truth layer screens out invented quotes, statistics and claims, and a publish gate holds back anything that fails review.
Every article comes with answer-first sections, key takeaways, an FAQ, a numbered sources list, a schema graph (JSON-LD), a meta title, a meta description and a featured image. Rankfender writes in 28 languages. You can copy an article, download it as Word or Markdown, or publish it.
To publish to WordPress, open Settings › Integrations, click "Install Plugin" on the WordPress card and download the plugin. Upload and activate it in WordPress, paste the token Rankfender generates into the plugin's settings, enter your site URL and click "Test Connection". The plugin fills the SEO fields of Yoast, Rank Math, AIOSEO, SEOPress and The SEO Framework. To review posts first, set the plugin's default status to Draft.
Not on WordPress? The Modern Web card lets your site pull articles with an API key, or Rankfender pushes each article to your webhook. See the AI content writer.
Step 7: See where competitors beat you
Competitors gives one measured picture of you and up to 8 competitors in six views: Overview, Keyword gap, Top pages, Link gap, AI answers and Profiles. Search and link figures are estimates from a search-data provider for your country and language; AI answers come from your own AI checks.
The first time you open a view, Rankfender measures it in about 20 seconds and saves the result. Later visits show the saved figures for free, and "Measure again" refreshes a view once a day. Add or hide competitors in the "Your competitors" dialog; it is the same list AI Visibility uses.
Step 8: Connect Google, plan the work and send reports
Google. On Professional plans and up, the Google card in Settings › Integrations connects Search Console and Google Analytics 4 in one step. Traffic then shows your own clicks, impressions, positions, sessions and conversions.
Planning. The task board holds audit fixes and other tasks; the calendar holds planned articles. On Professional and up you can assign a task to a team member or an outside collaborator by email.
Reports. Six report types (SEO, AI visibility, content, keywords, backlinks, executive) over a date range you choose, exported as PDF, CSV or Excel. Report Automation emails a link on a schedule, and share links can expire after 7, 30 or 90 days. Your own logo and colours on reports come with the Agencies plan.
Step 9: Ask RAISA, the SEO agent
RAISA is the Assistant in the sidebar. Ask in plain words, for example "What changed in my organic search this week?". It answers from your project's own data: organic overview, AI visibility, competitors, backlinks, site audit and credits.
It can also do the work: add or remove keywords, plan or write an article, run a site audit or an AI check, write schema, an FAQ block, an llms.txt or a robots.txt for you to paste, and build a report with a share link. Writing an article, running an audit and running an AI check always wait for your "yes", and RAISA never changes your website itself.
Plans, limits and credits
Every plan includes the same tools. Plans differ in how much Rankfender handles for you:
| Limit | Essential | Professional | Business | Agencies |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Brands (projects) | 1 | 2 | 5, or 1 brand in up to 5 languages | Unlimited |
| AI questions tracked | 15 | 30 | 80 | Unlimited |
| Keywords | 50 | 150 per brand | 350 per brand | Unlimited |
| Articles a month | 5 | 15 | 30 | Unlimited |
| Pages per site audit | 10 | 50 | 500 | 500 |
| Seats | 1 | 1 | 5 | Unlimited |
| Search Console and GA4 | No | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Done-for-you link building | No | No | Yes | Yes |
Each plan also includes monthly credits, shown live in the top bar. Typical costs: about 80 credits to set up a project, 25 for an AI check, 30 for an article, 4 for a keyword search and 120 for a full competitor comparison. Viewing data you already fetched is free. When credits run out, new work pauses and everything saved stays visible. Prices for each plan are on the pricing page.
Frequently asked questions
What does Rankfender do?
Rankfender is an SEO and AI search platform for brands and agencies. It audits your site for Google and AI engines, finds the keywords you can win, writes and publishes articles, and checks whether ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini recommend you.
Can I try Rankfender before paying?
There is no trial and no free plan. You can run the free AI visibility checker on your brand, book a demo, or start on pay-as-you-go with no subscription.
Does Rankfender track my Google rankings?
Not as a daily rank tracker. It shows the keywords your site already ranks for and, once Search Console is connected, your own clicks, impressions and positions.
Which AI assistants does Rankfender check?
Answers currently come from ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Mistral and Llama, checked every week by default. It does not track Google AI Overviews or AI Mode.
Do I need WordPress?
No. WordPress gets a one-click plugin, any other site can use the webhook or the content API, and every article can be copied or downloaded as Word or Markdown.
How long does setup take?
The two setup steps take a few minutes, then setup runs on its own for about five. You do not need to wait: each part appears on Home as soon as it is ready.
Sources
- Rankfender docs: welcome and main areas
- Rankfender docs: create your project
- Rankfender docs: your first week
- Rankfender docs: Site Health (Optimizer)
- Rankfender docs: Keywords
- Rankfender docs: AI Visibility
- Rankfender docs: Content
- Rankfender docs: WordPress integration
- Rankfender docs: Competitors
- Rankfender docs: Reports
- Rankfender docs: RAISA, the Assistant
- Rankfender docs: plan limits
- Rankfender docs: monthly credits
