Dashboard Overview

Before You Start

The Dashboard is the first screen you see when you open SEO Rank Genius in your WordPress admin. It requires:

• Administrator role (or a custom role with manage_options capability)
• Completed the Setup Wizard (recommended but not required)
• At least one Full Site Scan to populate the KPI tiles and reports

Dashboard Layout

The dashboard is organized top-to-bottom in order of priority. Here’s what you’ll see:

From top to bottom, you’ll find:

1. Header bar — plugin logo, keyboard shortcuts button
2. Page header — site name, last scan time, Refresh Data and Full Site Scan buttons
3. Health Hero — animated health score ring, letter grade, and content counts
4. KPI Cards — Orphan Pages, Broken Links, and Opportunities with action buttons
5. Suggestions & Improvements — prioritized cards with estimated fix times
6. What’s Working Well — green checkmarks for things you’re doing right
7. Link Analytics — donut chart of internal/external ratio, top external domains, top linked pages

Health Score & Grade

The circular score (0–100) is calculated from multiple factors across your site. It updates every time you run a scan or refresh data.

The letter grade maps directly to the score:

• A (90–100) — Excellent. Your site is in top shape.
• B+ (80–89) — Great job. Minor tweaks will push you to A-grade.
• B (70–79) — Good foundation. A few improvements will make a big difference.
• C+ (60–69) — Room for improvement. Focus on critical issues.
• C (below 60) — Needs attention. Address the issues to improve your SEO.

Next to the score you’ll see issue chips: Critical (red), Important (amber), and Opportunities (blue). Click them to jump to the suggestions section.

KPI Cards

Three KPI cards sit below the health hero, each with a colored top bar indicating severity:

🔴 Orphan Pages (Red)

Posts or pages that have zero inbound internal links. Search engines may struggle to find these pages. Click Details to see the list, or Fix All to auto-insert links from related content.

🟠 Broken Links (Amber)

Links on your site that return 4xx HTTP errors (404 Not Found, 403 Forbidden, etc.). Click View Details for the full list with source pages, or Auto-Fix to remove or redirect them automatically.

🔵 Opportunities (Blue)

Potential internal links the plugin has discovered based on your content and keyword analysis. Click Details to review them, or View All to go to Link Management for bulk insertion.

Suggestions Engine

Below the KPIs, the Suggestions & Improvements section shows prioritized action cards. Each card includes:

• Title & metric — what the issue is and how many items are affected
• Impact label — Critical (red), Important (amber), or Helpful (blue)
• Description & tips — what to do and why it matters
• Estimated time — how long the fix typically takes
• Auto-fixable badge — if the plugin can fix it for you in one click
• Fix button — takes you directly to the relevant tool or page

Below suggestions, the What’s Working Well section shows green checkmarks for positive signals — things you’re already doing right. This helps you avoid breaking what’s already working.

Link Analytics

The bottom section contains two cards:

Link Distribution (Donut Chart)

Shows the ratio of internal vs external links across your site. A healthy ratio is 70%+ internal. The center displays the internal percentage, with a color-coded badge:

• Excellent — 70%+ internal
• Good — 50–69% internal
• Needs Work — below 50% internal

Top External Domains

Lists the 5 most-linked external domains with link counts and percentage bars. Click Full Report to see all domains in the External Domains tool.

Top Linked Pages

A table showing your pages ranked by number of inbound internal links. Helps you identify your link magnets and find pages that need more internal links.

Refresh Data vs Full Site Scan

The dashboard header has two buttons. Here’s the difference:

• Refresh Data — recalculates cached stats from existing scan data. Fast (seconds). Use it to update counters after making changes in other tools.
• Full Site Scan — re-crawls every published post and page, re-analyzes all links, recalculates opportunities, checks for broken links, and rebuilds all reports. Takes 30 seconds to several minutes depending on site size. Shows a progress bar with cancel option.

Daily Workflow

Here’s how to use the dashboard as part of your daily routine:

1. Check your health score — open the dashboard and glance at the score ring. Is it going up or down?
2. Review KPI cards — new orphans? Broken links detected? Any fresh opportunities?
3. Act on critical suggestions — red cards first. Click the fix button to go directly to the solution.
4. Scan after changes — published new content or edited links? Run Refresh Data to update your numbers.

Troubleshooting

Health score shows 0 or all KPIs show 0

You haven’t run a Full Site Scan yet. Click the Full Site Scan button and wait for it to complete. The dashboard needs scan data to display metrics.

Counters don’t update after making changes

Click Refresh Data to clear the cache. If that doesn’t work, run a Full Site Scan to rebuild all data from scratch.

Scan seems stuck or takes too long

Large sites (500+ posts) may take a few minutes. The progress bar and percentage should keep moving. If it truly stalls, click Cancel and try again. Check that your server doesn’t have strict PHP timeout limits (30 seconds or less).

Keyboard shortcuts don’t work

Click the ? button in the header bar to see available shortcuts. They only work when the dashboard is focused (click anywhere on the page first).

Continue Learning

Now that you understand the dashboard, explore these guides next: