RankNest

Add Your First Client

Create a client in RankNest, understand the agency and client dashboard levels, and open your first client workspace.

Every site you manage in RankNest lives inside a client. A client holds the site's domain, its integrations (Search Console, Google Business Profile, Analytics), and everything the six tools produce for that site. This page covers creating a client and finding your way between the two dashboard levels.

Where to find it

After logging in, you land on the agency-level client list. It shows every client you manage, with summary stats in the header: Total Clients, Active, Monthly Revenue, and Total Projects. If you have no clients yet, you see an empty state with an Add Your First Client button; otherwise the Create Client button sits above the list, next to the client search box.

The two dashboard levels

  • Agency level: the client list plus your account-wide settings, which are billing and usage, team members, and integrations. This is shared across all clients.
  • Client level: open any client to enter its workspace. The left sidebar lists that client's tools, and everything you see is scoped to that one site. See the Dashboard Tour for what's on the client overview.

How to create a client

  1. Click Create Client (or Add Your First Client if your list is empty). The Add New Client dialog opens.
  2. Fill in the two required fields:
    • Company Name: the client's brand name. It appears in the client list and sidebar.
    • Domain: the client's website, for example example.com. The crawler and integrations use this, so enter the site's real production domain.
  3. Optionally fill in the remaining fields:
    • Contact Person and Email, for your own reference.
    • Monthly Fee ($), which feeds the Monthly Revenue stat on the client list. That stat totals your active clients only.
    • Services Offered and Target Audience: free text that also helps AI features (like the AI content profile) understand the business. You can edit these later in Client Settings.
  4. Click Add Client. The client is created and the setup wizard opens immediately as an overlay so you can configure the new client end to end.

Note: The dialog shows a deletion policy notice: clients can only be deleted by paid subscribers after 30 days, and trial accounts cannot delete clients. Double-check the domain before creating.

Opening a client workspace

Click any client row in the list to open its workspace. The sidebar switches to that client's tools, and Back To Clients at the top of the sidebar returns you to the agency level at any time.

Tips

  • Enter the domain exactly as the live site serves it (including www if the site uses it). Crawls and Search Console data then cover the same site.
  • Fill in Services Offered and Target Audience even though they're optional. The AI Profile step of the setup wizard builds on them.
  • Each plan allows a set number of active clients. See Billing & Usage or the pricing page for your plan's limit.

Troubleshooting

The Create Client button is disabled. You've reached your plan's active client limit. Hover the button to confirm, then upgrade from Billing & Usage or remove a client you no longer manage.

"No clients found" while searching. The search box filters by client name and domain. Clear the search term to see the full list again.

I closed the setup wizard by accident. The client still exists, and anything already saved (the Search Console connection, the crawl) is kept. The wizard's in-progress draft is discarded, though, so unsubmitted structure and page assignments are gone. Reopen it from Client Settings in the client sidebar, on the Profile tab, with Reopen Setup Wizard; see Client Setup Wizard.

Last updated 2026-07-25