# Projects: set up and manage a website in Serpel

URL: https://serpel.app/docs/projects

Updated: 2026-11-05

A project in Serpel is one website that you analyse. You create it from a domain and a market, and it then holds the crawls, tracked keywords, competitors, reports and settings of that site. Creating a project is free, and nothing is crawled or checked until you start it.

## What is a project in Serpel?

A project is the container for everything about one domain: crawls and the audit score, tracked keywords, competitors, AI prompts, keyword lists, reports, tasks and the connections to Search Console or web analytics. Every project has its own market (a country and a language), its own settings and its own members.

Projects belong to a workspace, and your plan decides how many projects the workspace can hold. Work that runs in a project is charged to the workspace that owns it. [Credits and billing](https://serpel.app/docs/credits-and-billing) explains plans, credits and prices.

- **1** project without a subscription
- **5** projects on Starter
- **20** projects on Pro

## How do you create a project in Serpel?

You create a project from a domain. Serpel normalises the domain, creates the project with you as its owner and opens its overview. Account connections to Google, Bing, PostHog or Plausible that you already made under **Settings → Integrations** are matched to the new project in the background.

**From domain to first data**

1. **Add the domain** (Free): Enter the domain, an optional name and the market. Nothing is crawled or checked yet.
2. **Crawl the site** (Credits): Start the first crawl from the overview. A crawl costs 1 credit per started 20 pages.
3. **Track keywords** (Slots): Add the keywords you want to rank for. Adding is free, and the checks cost credits.
4. **Connect search data** (Free): Connect Search Console to see real clicks and queries instead of estimates.
5. **Schedule monitoring** (Optional): Choose how often Serpel checks rankings and writes a report.

1. **Open the new project dialog.** Open the project menu at the top of the sidebar and choose **New project**. On the **All projects** page you can also use the **Project** button, or **Create first project** if you have no project yet.

2. **Enter the domain.** Type the domain into **Domain**, for example `example.com`, or paste a full address. A path in the address becomes the start URL of the crawl.

3. **Name it if you like.** **Name (optional)** is only a label. Without it, Serpel uses the domain as the name.

4. **Choose the market.** Pick the **Country** and **Language** that the site targets. The dialog starts with Germany and German.

5. **Create the project.** Click **Create project**. Serpel opens the overview of the new project, where the **Getting started** checklist waits for you.

### Which domains does Serpel accept?

Serpel accepts public domain names. It strips `www.` from the domain, but the start URL for crawls keeps the host, path and query that you typed. Rank checks match your domain and its subdomains.

| You enter | Serpel stores | Why |
| --- | --- | --- |
| `Example.com` | Domain `example.com`, start URL `https://example.com/` | Names are lower-cased, and an address without a scheme becomes https. |
| `https://www.example.com/shop` | Domain `example.com`, start URL `https://www.example.com/shop` | The `www.` prefix leaves the domain, and the path becomes the start URL. |
| `shop.example.com` | Domain `shop.example.com` | A subdomain is treated as its own domain. |
| `example.com:8443` | Rejected | Only the standard ports 80 and 443 are supported. |
| `192.168.0.10`, `localhost`, names ending in `.local` or `.internal` | Rejected | Only public domain names can be analysed, not IP addresses or internal hosts. |

You cannot create a second project for a domain that you already have a project for. Serpel then names the existing project, and the CLI returns its ID. The domain cannot be changed after creation, so create a new project for a different domain.

### Which country and language should you choose?

Serpel supports 43 countries and 22 languages. The market of the project is the default for new tracked keywords and for keyword research. Each tracked keyword keeps the market it was added with, so changing the project market later does not touch existing keywords. See [rank tracking](https://serpel.app/docs/rank-tracking) for how markets, locations and devices combine.

### How many projects can you create?

The limit counts the active projects in your workspace. When you reach it, the dialog shows a usage meter, **Create project** is disabled and the API answers with HTTP 403 and `plan_limit`. Deleting a project frees its slot, and a larger plan raises the limit under **Settings → Billing**. The other per-project limits follow the same plan.

| Plan | Projects | Tracked keywords per project | AI prompts per project | Pages per crawl | Daily monitoring |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| No subscription | 1 | 50 | 10 | 250 | No |
| Starter | 5 | 200 | 25 | 1,000 | No |
| Pro | 20 | 500 | 50 | 1,000 | Yes |

## What does the project overview show?

Open a project from **All projects** or from the project menu in the sidebar to reach its overview. The page fills as you add data, and each section links to the page that explains it:

- **Getting started** is the onboarding checklist. It stays until all five steps are done or you click **Hide**.
- The monitoring strip shows **Monitoring active** or **Monitoring off**, the **Frequency**, the **Last run**, the **Next run** and the **Email report** status. **Latest report** opens the newest [monitoring report](https://serpel.app/docs/monitoring-and-reports), and **Check now** starts a monitoring run immediately.
- **Since the last run** counts the keywords that moved up or dropped, new page-1 rankings, prompts where ChatGPT cites you and new issues on the website.
- The opportunities widget lists the best [opportunities](https://serpel.app/docs/opportunities) for the site.
- **Trends** charts Visibility, Clicks from Google, Visitors and Audit score for **Last 7 days**, **Last 28 days** (the default) or **Last 3 months**. Charts for Search Console and web analytics appear once those are connected.
- Cards for clicks, competitors, visitors and positions summarise the other pages, and **To do on your website** lists the most important issues of the latest crawl.

Illustration: A project overview with the monitoring strip, the changes since the last run and the trend chart, shown with demo data.

### What is on the Getting started checklist?

| Step | What it asks for | Counts as done when |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Project created | Nothing. It links to the project settings. | Always, from the start. |
| Connect Search Console | A Google Search Console connection, see [search data](https://serpel.app/docs/search-data). | A Google connection with a chosen property exists for the project. |
| Complete your first crawl | Start a crawl. The card shows the page limit and the most it can cost, starting at 100 pages by default. | A crawl has finished. See [site audit](https://serpel.app/docs/site-audit). |
| Check your starting balance | Open **Billing** to see your credits. | Your workspace has any credit booking, such as the welcome credits. |
| Start your first keyword research | Open [keyword research](https://serpel.app/docs/keyword-research). | You have started a research in this project. |

The checklist updates itself from your real data. **Hide** stores your choice in a cookie of your browser, so it stays hidden only on that browser.

## Which settings does a project have?

Open the project menu in the sidebar and choose **Settings**. The sidebar then lists the project sections **General**, **Ranking check**, **Monitoring** and **Members**. Editors and owners can change these settings, except for the domain. After you change a value, a bar with **Cancel** and **Save** appears, and nothing is stored until you click **Save**.

### General: name, market and crawl

| Setting | What it does |
| --- | --- |
| **Name** | The label shown in the sidebar and on the project cards. |
| **Domain** | Read-only. The domain cannot change after creation. |
| **Market** | Country and language, the defaults for new keywords and research. |
| **Pages per crawl** | The most pages one crawl may check, from 1 to 1,000 and never more than your plan allows. New projects start with 100. |
| **JavaScript rendering** | **Automatic for empty pages** renders only pages that arrive almost empty, **Always render** renders every page and **Never render** reads only the served HTML. See [site audit](https://serpel.app/docs/site-audit). |

### Ranking check: how rankings are read

The sidebar calls this section **Ranking check**, while the heading on the page says “Rank check”. Both are the same settings.

| Setting | What it does |
| --- | --- |
| **Depth** | How many organic results each check reads: top 10, top 20, top 30, top 50, top 100. The deepest level costs more per keyword. New projects start at top 50. See [rank tracking](https://serpel.app/docs/rank-tracking). |
| **Location** | The default place for new keywords: all of the country, or a city or postal code. Existing keywords keep their own location. |
| **Device** | The default device for new keywords: **Desktop** or **Mobile**. New projects start on desktop. |
| **Also check Google AI Overview** | Reads on every check whether Google shows an AI Overview and whether it cites you. It is on by default. |
| **Add search volume automatically** | Adds search volume and CPC to new keywords before a check, and refreshes them every 30 days. It is on by default. |

### Monitoring: schedules, reports and webhooks

**Frequency** is **Manual only**, **Daily**, **Every 3 days** or **Weekly**, and **Time** is the hour a scheduled run starts. The hour is in Europe/Berlin time, not in your local time. **Daily** needs the Pro plan. A forecast beneath the fields shows the credits per month, and **Weekly crawl** adds a crawl every Monday at the same hour. The section also holds the **Email report** recipients and the Slack and Discord report rows. [Monitoring and reports](https://serpel.app/docs/monitoring-and-reports) covers all of them.

## Who can see and change a project?

Roles belong to a project, not to the workspace. Whoever creates a project becomes its owner. Everyone else is an editor or a viewer.

**What each project role can do**

- **Viewer** (Reads): Sees all data of the project. Cannot change settings, keywords or competitors. Sees a **Read only** banner on the settings page.
- **Editor** (Reads and changes): Starts crawls and checks, maintains keywords and competitors. Changes the project settings. Cannot manage members or delete the project.
- **Owner** (Full control): Everything an editor can do. Removes members and sees the **Invite member** button. Deletes the project.

### How do you add members during the beta?

Owners see an **Invite member** button under **Members**, with an email address and the roles **Viewer** and **Editor**. During the beta, the request only succeeds when a Serpel administrator sends it, so ask the Serpel team to add the person instead. The person needs an existing, active Serpel account, because there are no email invitations. Role changes follow the same rule, and you cannot hand the owner role to someone else.

Owners can remove a member at any time with the trash icon next to the name. The member loses access at once, and the connections that member created for the project are removed too. Everyone can read the list of members, in the dashboard and with `serpel projects members list`.

## How do you delete a project?

1. **Open the project settings.** Choose **Settings** in the project menu and scroll to **Delete project**. Only owners see this section.

2. **Click Delete project.** A dialog asks you to type the domain of the project as a confirmation.

3. **Confirm.** Click **Delete permanently**. Serpel returns you to **All projects**.

The project disappears at once. Queued jobs are cancelled, running jobs are asked to stop, the schedule is switched off and the project slot becomes free. Serpel removes the stored data for good about 30 days after the deletion. The app has no restore button, so export what you need first with the [history and exports](https://serpel.app/docs/history-and-exports) tools.

> **Deleting is final in the app:** The dialog says that this cannot be undone in the application. Do not count on a restore, and do not delete a project only to fix a wrong domain: a new project with the right domain is quicker.

## How do you manage projects from the CLI, API and MCP?

Every project action in the dashboard has a [CLI](https://serpel.app/docs/cli) command and a [REST API](https://serpel.app/docs/api) endpoint. The commands below create, list, change and delete projects. Changing and deleting follow the same roles as the dashboard.

```bash
serpel projects create --domain example.com --country US --language en
serpel projects list
serpel projects show <id>
serpel projects update <id> --rank-depth 50 --schedule weekly --schedule-hour 6
serpel projects members list --project <id>
serpel projects delete <id> --yes
```

The API needs a token with the `projects:write` scope to create or change a project and `projects:read` to read one. A token that is limited to certain projects cannot create new ones.

```bash
curl -X POST https://serpel.app/api/v1/projects \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $SERPEL_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"domain": "example.com", "name": "Example", "country": "US", "language": "en"}'
```

The MCP server can read projects but not create or change them. `list_projects` returns your projects with ID, domain, market and role, and `get_project_overview` summarises one of them. The [Claude Code guide](https://serpel.app/docs/mcp/claude-code) lists all tools.

## What if a project does not behave as expected?

| What you see | What to do |
| --- | --- |
| **Create project** is disabled, or the API answers `plan_limit` | Your workspace has reached its project limit. Delete a project you no longer need or upgrade under **Settings → Billing**. |
| “A project for example.com already exists” | You already have an active project for that domain. Open the existing project, or delete it before you create another. |
| “Enter a domain name instead of an IP address” | Use the public domain name. IP addresses, `localhost` and internal hosts cannot be analysed. |
| The settings are greyed out and a **Read only** banner shows | You are a viewer in this project. Ask an owner to change your role. |
| **Daily** does not save | Daily checks need the Pro plan. Choose **Every 3 days** or **Weekly**. |
| **Invite member** fails with “project members can only be added by a platform admin” | That is the beta rule. Ask the Serpel team to add the person. |
| The new project is empty | That is expected. Start a crawl, add keywords or run a research, as in the checklist. |

## Where to go next

- [Rank tracking](https://serpel.app/docs/rank-tracking): Add keywords and read their positions on Google.
- [Site audit](https://serpel.app/docs/site-audit): Crawl the site and fix what the audit finds.
- [Monitoring and reports](https://serpel.app/docs/monitoring-and-reports): Schedule checks and get a report by email or webhook.
- [Credits and billing](https://serpel.app/docs/credits-and-billing): See plans, limits and what each action costs.