Add rank-tracking keywords
How do I add keywords and generate their first grid report?
SEO → Ranking Analytics → Add Keyword takes the search terms you want to track, spreads a 7×7 grid of 49 measuring points around the location, and checks your position at every one. Generating the report costs credits, charged per grid point, so it is worth getting the spacing right before you press Generate Report.
Steps
Pick the client and the location in the top bar, then press Add Keyword.
Type a keyword and press Enter. Each one becomes a chip. You can paste several separated by commas.
Write the phrase a customer would actually type, including the town —
bed and breakfast fairbanksrather thanbed and breakfast. A term without a place name tends to measure a much larger market than the one you compete in.Set Distance Between Grid Points. The toggle switches between kilometres and miles, and the slider sets the gap between neighbouring points.
Spacing decides how much ground the grid covers. At 1 mile the 49 points reach about three miles out in each direction from the business — roughly a town. Widen it and you measure a whole metro area but stop seeing which neighbourhoods you lose; tighten it and you get street-level detail over a small area.
Read the credit line above the button, highlighted above. It is an estimate of the upper bound, not a final charge — see below.
Press Generate Report. The panel closes and the grid fills in on the map point by point, so you don't have to wait on the screen.
What the credit estimate actually promises
The line reads About 392 credits per keyword — 49 grid points, one lookup each, and the product's own wording is the honest part: about.
The figure is grid points × the rate for one lookup, so it tells you what the report costs if every point returns a result. Points that fail to return one aren't charged, and they aren't rare — a report that measures only part of the grid costs proportionally less. Treat the number as a planning ceiling, check your balance against it, and expect the actual charge to land at or below it.
What you'll see when it's done
- The keyword appears in Select Keyword on the Overview tab with its average rank beside it
- Top 3, Top 10 and Avg Rank populate over the map
- Competitors, Recommendations and Sydekick insight all fill from this one report — you don't need to generate anything else
Watch out for
- Changing the spacing re-charges in full. Grid points are identified by position, so a grid at new spacing is a new set of points with nothing already paid for. Re-running the same keyword at the same spacing for the same month is free; a different month is a new charge.
- A keyword that isn't measurable locally will come back empty. If the business does not surface in local results for that phrase at all, every point returns
20+and you have paid for a uniformly negative grid. It is still a real answer, but pick your first keyword to be one you have a genuine chance on. - Each location has a keyword cap. The Sydekick insight tab shows your usage, as
0 / 25 keywords used. Remove a keyword before adding another once you are at the limit.
Questions people ask
Can I exclude grid points I don't care about?
Yes — the Grid Points Preview beside the form lets you click points to drop them from the report, and the counter beneath tracks how many are still active. Excluding points does not reduce the bill: every point in the grid is measured either way, so exclusion changes the map and the statistics rather than the cost.
I entered two keywords. Is the cost doubled?
Yes. The estimate line switches to a combined figure showing keywords × grid points. Each keyword gets its own full grid.