Documentation

What is Octara?

Octara is an SEO platform built around a visual site map. Instead of showing your website as rows in a spreadsheet, it draws every page as a node in a tree — connected to its parent, grouped into categories, colour-coded by health status.

From that map you can run technical audits, research keywords, write AI-assisted content, track rankings, monitor Google Ads campaigns, and keep a full history of every change detected on your site.

Projects & the Dashboard

Each project tracks one website. You give it a domain, run a first crawl, and Octara discovers all your pages automatically. Re-crawls run on a daily schedule and update everything.

Portfolio dashboard

The first screen after login lists all your projects. For each one you see:

Project overview

Click into a project to see the summary dashboard for that site, including:

• Indexability — how many pages are indexed vs. blocked (noindex tag, 404, etc.)
• Meta issues — missing titles, duplicate titles, titles/descriptions that are too long or too short
• PageSpeed — how pages score on Lighthouse (Good ≥90, Needs Improvement 50–89, Poor <50)
• GSC performance — average search position and total clicks across all pages
• Keyword performance — same metrics filtered to pages with an assigned target keyword
• Crawl changes — which pages were added or removed since the previous crawl
• Top opportunities — pages ranking in positions 11–50 where a small push could reach page 1
• Declining keywords — keywords that have dropped in clicks recently

Crawling Your Site

A crawl discovers every page on your site and records its technical details. Crawls run automatically on a scheduled basis and can also be triggered manually from the project dashboard.

How pages are discovered

The crawler uses two complementary methods to find all your pages, in this order:

• Sitemap — Octara first reads your robots.txt to find any declared Sitemap: directive, then fetches and parses your XML sitemap (including sitemap indexes). All URLs listed in the sitemap are queued immediately. This is the primary method for sites with JavaScript-rendered navigation.
• Link following — Starting from your homepage (and every sitemap URL), the crawler follows every internal <a href> link it finds in the HTML, up to 6 levels deep. This catches any pages missing from your sitemap.
• Hreflang alternates — On multi-language sites, alternate language URLs declared in hreflang tags are discovered and crawled automatically, even if they are not in the sitemap.

What is recorded per page

Crawl frequency

Octara runs an automatic crawl for every active project once per day. This keeps your site map and health data current without any manual work. You can also trigger a crawl at any time from the project dashboard — for example after publishing a batch of new pages or making structural changes to your site.

What happens after each crawl

• All page data is updated — status codes, titles, meta descriptions, and technical fields are refreshed
• Stale pages are removed — any page not seen in the latest crawl is deleted from the project (it was likely deleted or de-linked from your site)
• Parent URLs are auto-detected — pages are linked to their natural parent based on URL path structure (e.g. /blog/post-1 is placed under /blog/)
• Categories are auto-assigned — pages are grouped into categories based on their URL path prefix
• URL rules are re-applied — any category or parent rules you have configured are applied to newly discovered pages
• The change log is updated — every meaningful change (title, meta, status, canonical, noindex) is recorded with before/after values

Large sites (more pages than your plan limit)

Each plan includes a maximum number of pages per project (Free: 20, Growth: 1,000, Agency: 10,000). If your site has more pages than your limit, a full crawl will stop at the limit. In that case you can choose a focused crawl strategy to make the most of your quota:

Crawl strategies can be configured at project creation or later in Project Settings → Crawl strategy. Growth plans support up to 1,000 pages and Agency plans up to 10,000 pages per project. Need more? Contact support to discuss a higher limit.

Site Map

The site map is the core of Octara — a visual tree showing every page on your site, how it connects to others, and its health status at a glance. Each node is one page. The colour indicates health:

Filtering and focusing

Filter by health mode — switch between Tech (404s, noindex, slow pages, canonical mismatches) and Content (missing titles, missing keywords, low rankings).

Filter by issue — click any issue chip (e.g. "Not indexed") to dim everything else and show only affected pages. Click again to clear the filter.

Language tabs — on multi-language sites, each detected language gets its own tab. See Multi-Language Sites.

Hide PDFs / query-string URLs — toggle buttons in the filter bar to exclude these from the view.

Reorganising the map

Set a parent page — in the page detail panel, use the Parent field to connect a page to its parent. This is stored in the database and survives recrawls.

Assign children — click "Assign children" on any page to bulk-connect all its direct sub-path pages as children in one step. An undo banner appears immediately after.

Categories — if a section of pages has no natural parent page, assign them all to a named category (e.g. "Blog"). Category nodes appear as folder-style headers in the map.

PageSpeed testing

Click the PageSpeed button in the toolbar to batch-test all unscored pages with Lighthouse. You can also test a single page from its detail panel. Scores are cached — re-run only when you've made performance changes.

Syncing Google Search Console

Once GSC is connected in Settings, the Sync button pulls the latest 28-day average position and click data for every page and updates the ranking information shown across the map and detail panels.

Page Detail Panel

Click any page node in the site map to open the detail panel on the right. It shows everything Octara knows about that URL and lets you make changes directly.

Information shown

Actions

Edit metadata — click any field to edit title, meta description, or canonical URL. Changes are saved to the Octara database for audit tracking (you still need to update your actual page).

Assign parent — use the Parent dropdown to pick which page this should sit under in the tree. Searchable across all pages in the project.

Assign category — pick from existing categories or type a new one.

Set target keyword — enter the main keyword this page should rank for. Octara then tracks its GSC position specifically for that keyword.

View SERP — opens a modal showing the current top 10 Google results for the page's target keyword, including featured snippets, AI Overviews, and People Also Ask.

Language variants — if hreflang tags are present, jump directly to other language versions of the same page.

URL Rules & Categories

URL rules let you automatically assign categories or parent pages to groups of URLs based on path patterns. Instead of assigning every page manually, you define once that "any URL containing /blog/ belongs to the Blog category" and all matching pages are organised instantly.

Open the rules editor from the Category Rules button in the site map toolbar.

Rule types

How matching works

• Patterns are matched against the full URL (case-insensitive substring match)
• The most specific pattern wins — longer patterns take precedence over shorter ones
• Rules respect manual assignments — if you've manually set a value in the detail panel, the rule won't overwrite it
• Rules are re-applied automatically after every recrawl so new pages are always organised

Suggested rules

When you open the rules editor, Octara analyses your URL structure and suggests rules automatically based on common path patterns it detects. You can accept, edit, or discard each suggestion.

The Overwrite toggle

Each rule has an optional Overwrite toggle. By default, rules skip pages whose value already matches. Enabling Overwrite forces the rule to apply even to pages with an existing value — useful when renaming a category across the entire site.

Content Writer

The Content Writer generates and improves page content using AI. It has two modes: create new content from scratch, or edit an existing live page.

Creating new content (3-step wizard)

Step 1 — Setup

Step 2 — Outline. Review and edit the AI-generated outline before writing. Add, remove, or reorder sections.

Step 3 — Full content. The AI writes the complete article. The output is HTML ready to paste into your CMS.

Editing existing pages

Load any URL from your project to open it in the editor. A live SEO sidebar shows real-time metrics as you review the page: title and meta description lengths, keyword presence in H1/H2s/alt tags, word count, keyword density, and readability score. Annotate specific text passages with suggested improvements and track which have been applied.

Brand voice

If brand voice is configured in Settings, all AI-generated content uses your site's tone and style guidelines automatically.

Content Planner

The Content Planner is a calendar for scheduling and tracking what content you intend to create and publish.

Status workflow

Topical Map

The Topical Map is a visual content strategy canvas. Instead of a list of pages, it shows the relationship between your key topics — which pillar pages anchor a theme, which supporting pages go deeper on sub-topics, and where content gaps still exist. Use it to plan a content strategy from scratch or to audit what you already have and identify what's missing.

Open the Topical Map from the left sidebar. Each project gets its own map, and multi-language sites can maintain a separate map per language using the language tabs at the top.

Node types

Every item on the map is one of four node types, arranged in a hierarchy:

Nodes connect to each other with edges (arrows), showing the parent–child relationship. A Pillar connects to the Center, Sub-Pillars connect to a Pillar, and Topics connect to either a Sub-Pillar or directly to a Pillar.

Node status colours

Generating a map with AI

Click the Generate button in the toolbar to create a full topical map automatically. You can generate from two sources:

• Topic — type a subject (e.g. "On-Page SEO") and Octara builds a structured pillar + sub-pillar + topic map for that niche using AI
• Competitor URL — paste a competitor's domain and Octara analyses their content structure and builds a map reflecting their strategy

Generated maps are saved automatically under Saved Maps in the toolbar. You can overlay a saved map onto your current map to merge ideas without overwriting your existing work.

Building a map manually

You can build or extend a map node by node. Click anywhere on the canvas to add a new node, or use the Add node button in the toolbar. After adding a node, click it to open the properties panel and configure it.

Drag nodes to reposition them. Click Organize to automatically arrange the entire map into a clean radial layout — pillars form a ring around the centre, sub-pillars fan out from their pillar, and topics stack in a compact grid outward from their parent.

Node properties panel

Click any node to open its properties panel on the right. The panel is the same for all node types:

Finding related content from your site

Pillar and Sub-Pillar nodes have a Find related topics accordion in their properties panel. It has two tabs:

• My site — search your crawled pages by keyword, URL, or title. Results show page titles and URLs. Pages already on the map are marked "in map" so you don't add them twice. Select pages and click Add to add them as child Topic nodes under this pillar.
• GSC top queries — enter a keyword to pull the top Google Search Console queries related to that term from your connected property. Select queries to add them as Topic nodes.

Toolbar actions

Keyword Research

Look up any keyword to see search volume, difficulty, intent, trend data, and current SERP results.

Metrics

Keyword difficulty scale

Related keywords

Below the main metrics you'll find similar keywords, question variants, and People Also Ask entries automatically surfaced from the same query.

SERP Preview

See a live snapshot of Google's search results for any query. Access it from Keyword Research or directly from a page's detail panel (when a target keyword is assigned).

Use the country selector to see localised results for your target market.

Competitor Analysis

Enter a competitor's domain to see their full organic search footprint.

The position breakdown chart shows how their keywords are distributed across buckets (top 3, 4–10, 11–20, 21–50, 51–100), giving you a sense of how much traffic comes from high-value vs. long-tail positions. A 12-month trend chart shows growth or decline over time. The top keywords and top pages tables surface individual opportunities worth targeting.

AI Search Tracking

AI Search Tracking monitors how your brand is mentioned when people ask AI assistants (ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity) questions related to your industry.

How it works

You define a topic — a keyword or question area, your brand name, and a list of competitors. Octara sends a series of related questions to multiple AI models and records whether your brand appears in the answer, the sentiment, competitor mentions, and which sources were cited.

What you get

• Mention rate — what % of AI answers for this topic include your brand
• Model comparison — which AI model mentions you most often
• Competitor mentions — how your brand appears vs. competitors
• Question breakdown — which types of questions trigger brand mentions
• Historical tracking — run analyses periodically to track visibility trends

Google Ads

Connect your Google Ads account to monitor campaign performance and make basic changes directly from Octara.

Campaign table columns

Pause or resume campaigns directly from the list. Click into any campaign to see ad group and ad-level performance. For declining campaigns, the AI root cause analysis identifies whether the problem is CTR, bids, budget, or ad copy — and suggests what to fix.

Settings & Integrations

Project details

Edit the project name and set a target country for keyword research defaults. The domain is set at project creation and cannot be changed.

Google Search Console

Connect via Google OAuth, select your GSC property, and click Sync to pull the last 28 days of average position and click data per page. You can re-sync at any time. Disconnect from the same panel — existing data is retained until the next crawl overwrites it.

Brand voice

Click Analyse to have Octara read your existing site content and extract your brand's tone and style automatically. Edit the guidelines manually if needed. The Content Writer uses these guidelines for every AI generation in this project.

Danger zone

Delete project permanently removes the project, all pages, and all history. This cannot be undone.

Change Log

Octara keeps a full history of every meaningful change it detects on your pages. View it project-wide in Settings → Change Log, or per page at the bottom of the Page Detail Panel.

Automatically detected on every crawl

From app actions

Manually logged (from keyword tracker)

You can add your own entries for off-site or non-crawlable work: content updated, internal links added, backlinks built, page speed improved, canonical fixed, structured data added, other.

What's stored per entry

• Before and after values — exact old and new content
• GSC snapshot — the page's position, clicks, and impressions at the time of the change
• Source — whether the change was made by the crawler, the content writer, or manually
• Timestamp — date and time of the change

Multi-Language Sites

If your site has multiple language versions (e.g. /en/, /de/, /fr/), Octara automatically separates them into tabs in the site map.

How languages are detected

Languages are identified by URL path prefixes. Octara recognises 34 language codes including de, en, fr, es, it, nl, pt, pl, ja, zh, ko, ar, and more.

Pages without a language prefix appear in a separate Default tab. If your site uses hreflang tags, Octara reads the x-default attribute to label this tab with the actual language name (e.g. "English").

Working with language tabs

• Each tab shows only pages for that language so the map is not cluttered with duplicates
• Issue counts are tracked per language — compare how the German version compares to English
• Category rules and parent assignments are language-aware and work independently per language version

Plans & Limits

When you reach a limit, Octara shows a banner explaining what has been reached and offers an upgrade path.