Quickstart

This guide uses the dashboard. Your AI agent can do every step with you instead. See Set up with an agent.

Your site's overview shows each step and ticks it off when it's done:

1. Add your website
2. We read your site
3. Check your brand profile
4. Choose your questions
5. Get your first ideas
6. Write your first page
7. Connect your site, any time before you publish

1. Add your websiteCopy Anchor Link

Create a RootSmith account and enter your website. RootSmith reads your homepage, up to twelve business pages such as pricing, FAQ, and terms, and the App Store, Google Play, Chrome Web Store, or Shopify App Store listing your site links to. It drafts your brand profile, including your prices and key facts, and suggests competitors. This usually takes a minute or two.

RootSmith then shows how to let your agent set up the rest. To do it in the dashboard, choose Set it up myself and watch what RootSmith finds.

2. Check your brand profileCopy Anchor Link

When the analysis ends, your site overview shows Here's what we found: what you sell, who it's for, your pricing and key facts, a few questions RootSmith couldn't answer from your site, and suggested competitors. Edit anything that's off, answer the questions you can, add anything else every page should get right, uncheck competitors that don't fit, and select Looks right. Your corrections are kept when RootSmith reads your site again.

Open Brand to change single details later. Fill in What you don't offer yourself. RootSmith uses it to avoid claiming features or plans you don't have.

Articles state facts about your business only from your brand profile and your own site. If a comparison page needs your price and your profile has none, RootSmith asks for it before writing.

3. Choose your questionsCopy Anchor Link

RootSmith then suggests about ten questions your buyers ask AI assistants. Select Choose questions to open them in Performance → Questions. Reword the ones that are close, remove the ones that don't fit, add your own, and track the ones you want. Without a plan, you can track five.

Two minutes after you track the last one, RootSmith asks AI assistants your questions. Your overview shows whether they name you, who they name instead, and ideas to win those questions. Every site gets this first look for free, so choose questions you care about before you track them.

4. Get your first ideasCopy Anchor Link

Open Content to see every idea. RootSmith suggests ideas from your brand profile, Google search demand, and gaps in AI answers, and shows the best ones first. To steer the list, choose Find more ideas and pick a page type or say what you want, such as one comparison page for each competitor you track. Choose Add your own to type ideas yourself, one per line.

5. Write your first pageCopy Anchor Link

Review the ideas one at a time and choose Write it or Not this one. You can add a note with what only your team knows.

RootSmith researches, writes, and checks the facts in a few minutes. Read the draft, look at any flags in What we checked, then choose Approve and publish, or Request changes to have it revised.

6. Connect your websiteCopy Anchor Link

Open Publishing and answer How is your site built?. RootSmith shows the way to connect for your answer. See Choose how to publish for every option. Once it's connected, approved pages go live at their saved path on your domain.

7. Check your page typesCopy Anchor Link

Open Page types. Each page type has a fixed URL prefix and its own writing guidance. Every site starts with:

A comparison page weighs several products, such as the best tools for one job or the alternatives to one competitor. A versus page puts your product against one competitor you track.

Every page puts your product first, using only the facts in your brand profile and on your own site. Pages that compare products present yours as the reader's first choice, and facts about competitors stay accurate. Pages that teach answer the reader's question and add a call to action only when you set one on the page type.

Add a custom page type when you need another kind of page. A page keeps its path after it's published, even if you change its page type later.

8. Automate and measureCopy Anchor Link

• Automations write your top ideas or refresh live pages daily, weekly, or monthly. With automatic approval in Publishing, finished drafts publish without a person.
• Performance shows AI citations and Google clicks for each published page before publication and at 14, 30, 60, and 90 days. Connect Google Search Console in Integrations to see search data.
• AI visibility shows how AI engines answer your tracked questions each week and who they name. Weekly checks need a plan.