Add your first site

You give SEOComet a site’s address. It finds the site’s robots.txt, sitemaps and ads.txt, sets up a check for each, adds uptime and SSL checks, and runs them all straight away.

Add a site

Open Sites and choose Add site, or use the first-site page you see after signing up. The form asks for one thing: the address, such as example.com or https://www.example.com.

• If you leave out https://, SEOComet adds it.
• Only the scheme, host and any non-standard port are kept. A path like /blog is dropped, because a site is the whole domain.
• The site is named after its host, without www.. You can rename it later in the site’s Settings.
• SEOComet only checks public addresses. Private IP addresses are refused. A hostname that points to a private network can be added, but every check of it fails.

The owner and people with Can edit on all sites can add sites. People with access to selected sites can’t, since a new site isn’t one of theirs. See Sharing sites and roles.

Your plan sets how many sites the account can have. When you’re at the limit, the form says so instead of adding the site. See Plans and limits.

When the address redirects

Before it saves the site, SEOComet opens the address once. If the home page redirects to the same site at another address, SEOComet watches the address it ends up on. For example, if example.com redirects to https://www.example.com, the site is saved as https://www.example.com, and the message after adding tells you so.

Same site means the same host with or without www., on http or https. A redirect to a different domain or to a subdomain such as shop.example.com doesn’t count, so the address you typed is kept. So is the typed address when the site is slow, down or doesn’t answer.

You can’t add the same site twice. http://example.com, https://example.com and https://www.example.com are one site, and the form tells you the address it’s already saved under.

What SEOComet looks for

Right after you add the site, SEOComet looks for:

1. robots.txt at the site root, and the Sitemap: lines in it. Each sitemap on the site’s domain or one of its subdomains gets its own check. Lines pointing at another domain are skipped.
2. /sitemap.xml, but only when robots.txt lists no sitemap on the site’s own domain.
3. ads.txt and app-ads.txt at the site root. A web page answering in their place doesn’t count as the file. app-ads.txt only gets a check if it’s there, since only app publishers need one.

Then it adds two checks of its own:

• An uptime check on the home page, shown as Homepage. It also reads the page for noindex, a changed canonical and other problems. See Uptime and the page check.
• An SSL check, when the address starts with https://.

A file SEOComet doesn’t find still gets a check. It shows as Not found and stays quiet, with no alerts, until the file appears. Then it’s checked in full. See Missing files. A file that couldn’t be reached at all gets a check too, since it may well be there.

None of these count against your plan. Every plan checks robots.txt, sitemaps, ads.txt, app-ads.txt, the homepage and SSL. A site can have up to 50 sitemaps; past that, the Checks page says which were left out. Your plan only limits the other pages you choose to watch: 3 pages on Free, 25 pages on Pro and 100 pages on Business.

Later, if you add new sitemaps or an ads.txt file, use Add check › Run discovery again on the site’s Checks page to pick them up.

Setting up

After you add a site, you land on its Checks page. A line above the table shows Setting up, with what SEOComet is looking for, then what it found and how many of the first checks have finished. On the Sites list the site shows Setting up until its checks are created.

Every new check runs straight away, without waiting for its schedule. The page updates on its own as results come in. Once every first check has run, the line sums up: all clear, or how many things need attention. You can dismiss it.

If it takes longer than expected, you can leave the page. The checks keep running and the results are there when you come back.

What to do next

• Look at anything marked Critical or Warning on the Checks page. Each issue says what it means and what to do. Severity and suggestions explains the levels.
• Alerts already go to your email. On Pro and Business you can add Slack or a webhook on the Alerts page. See Alert channels.
• See how often each check runs on your plan in How often checks run.
• Add more pages to watch, such as key landing pages, with Add check › Watch pages. See Watch pages.