Very little: a domain or a topic, and the country and language you target. Google Search Console is optional - it is needed only for Opportunities and for seeing your measured performance, and you can connect it any time later.
What you need
- A domain or a topic. Either works. If you have a live website, enter its domain and RankDots reads it as data - your current pages, your rankings, your competitors’ footprint - before building your plan. No website yet? Enter a keyword that describes your business instead; the whole plan builds without a site.
- A country and a language. You choose both when you create the project, and every piece of search data is collected for exactly that combination - so pick the market you actually target, not the one you happen to browse from.
- Optionally: access to your Google Search Console. Only if and when you want Opportunities or measured performance data. See below.
Where Search Console fits
Search Console is needed for two things only: Opportunities, and the measured performance columns - clicks, impressions, click-through rate and rank for your pages. Everything else - keyword discovery, your plan, topic clusters and pages, and content creation - works fully without it.
Connecting it, whenever you choose to, does three things. It unlocks Opportunities - the scan of your real site and its ranked recommendations. It fills the measured columns on the Pages screen - Clicks, Impressions, CTR and Rank, with country breakdowns - which until then show only a Connect GSC button. And it lets RankDots judge what you can win from your site’s real standing instead of a cautious default. Nothing is lost by starting without it, and nothing needs redoing when you connect later. Connect Google Search Console.
What you do not need
- A keyword list. Discovery builds one for you. If you have your own, you can import it - but it is an addition, not a requirement.
- Existing content. The plan is a list of pages worth creating; it does not assume your site has any of them yet.
- Anything installed on your site. No snippet, no plugin, no code. Search Console, if you use it, connects through your Google account.
- SEO experience. Every metric you will meet has a plain-language definition one click away, and the plan opens already sorted - the first decision is choosing a topic, not configuring a tool.
What next