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Project Planner overview: folders, projects, groups and keywords

Project Planner is where you plan a website before you build it. Keywords sit in groups, groups sit in projects, and projects sit in folders. Each group usually becomes one page on your site.

Before you start

Section titled “Before you start”
  • Open Project Planner from the panel sidebar: RESEARCH > Project planner.
  • If you do not see Project planner in the sidebar, your plan does not include it, or the account owner has turned it off for your sub-user.

How Project Planner is organized

Section titled “How Project Planner is organized”
  • Folders hold projects. Each folder can store default rank-tracking settings: search engines, language, country and location.
  • Projects hold keyword groups. A project is the plan for one site.
  • Groups hold keywords. Each group has an H1, a URL, an SEO Title, an SEO Description and Notes.
  • Keywords show Volume, CPC ($), inTitle, inURL, TR, UR and Rank.

TR (title ratio) is inTitle divided by volume. UR (URL ratio) is inURL divided by volume. Both stay empty until you have volume and competition data. See Get search volume, CPC and competition data.

Create a folder

Section titled “Create a folder”
  1. Select New folder.
  2. Enter a Folder name.
  3. Optional: choose the Search Engine, Language, Country and Location you want to track rankings for. You can change these later.
  4. Select Save.

To change a folder later, select the gear icon (Folder Settings) next to its name.

Create a project

Section titled “Create a project”
  1. Select the + button (New Project) in the top bar or on a folder.
  2. Enter a Project Name.
  3. Choose a Project Folder, or choose Generate New Project Name to create a new folder.
  4. Select Save.

Manage projects

Section titled “Manage projects”

Open a folder to see its projects. Each project row shows Created Date, Groups and Keywords, a Share switch and these action buttons:

  • Load this project: open the project.
  • Duplicate Project: make a copy with “ COPY” added to the name. Sharing is off on the copy.
  • Move project to folder
  • Export this project: download it as a CSV file.
  • Remove this project permanently

Select the pencil icon next to a project name to rename it. Use Search for Project… at the top to find a project in any folder.

Add groups and keywords

Section titled “Add groups and keywords”
  1. Open a project.
  2. Select Groups > Add Group. To add several groups at once, separate the names with commas.
  3. In a group, select the gear icon (Actions) and then Add Keywords.
  4. Enter one keyword per line and select Add.

Select Save Changes (the disk icon) on a group after you edit its H1, URL, title, description or notes. The title counters show the desktop limit (70) and the mobile limit (78). The description counters show 300 for desktop and 120 for mobile.

Group buttons

Section titled “Group buttons”

The project top bar also has Expand All and Collapse All under Groups, and a sort button that orders groups by name.

Delete folders, projects, groups and keywords

Section titled “Delete folders, projects, groups and keywords”

Deleting is permanent. Each confirmation includes a box to also remove the matching keywords from Rank Tracker (Delete keywords rank from RankTracker? or Also delete keywords from Rank Tracker?).

  • Folder: select the trash icon on the folder. All its projects, groups, keywords, AI optimizations and AI content are deleted.
  • Groups: Groups > Delete Selected Groups or Delete Empty Groups. When deleting empty groups, you can keep groups that already have an H1, SEO Title and SEO Description.
  • Keywords: select them, then Actions > Delete Selected Keywords.

Troubleshooting

Section titled “Troubleshooting”
  • “Please enter a folder name” or “Folder Name cannot be empty!”: enter a name before saving.
  • “Please enter group name”: the group name field is empty.
  • “Please select at least one group to delete”: tick the box next to each group name first.
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