SEO Command Center overview

What the SEO Command Center does, the words it uses, and the order you work in — connect a website, research it, activate a strategy, act, publish, report.

The SEO Command Center is where you run SEO for a client website end to end. It connects the data sources, learns what the business actually sells, researches the market, writes a strategy you approve, turns that strategy into work, and reports the outcome to the client. It lives at BuilderSEO Command Center.

It is the densest area of Zyan, so this page does one job: it gives you the vocabulary and the order of operations. Every other page in this section assumes you have read it.

Before you start

You need a plan that includes Builder, the builder permission, and a Builder project for the website. Spending on research is restricted to workspace owners and admins. If the Command Center shows a Not activated for this workspace yet card, the area has not been switched on for your workspace — contact support rather than working around it.

Enrol a site

Connect GSC and Analytics

Research

Market, competitors, keywords

Activate a strategy

Intent clusters and targets

Act

Recommendations and autoblog

Publish

Then the site deploy gate

Report

Share a public link with the client

The tabs do not imply an order. This is the order.

The SEO Command Center portfolio view with the scope switcher, the section rail and the trailing-28-day metric cards — The portfolio scope, with two enrolled websites. The switcher next to Portfolio is how you move between all sites, one site and a research target.

The three scopes

The whole Command Center looks at one of three things at a time. Change it with the switcher next to Portfolio in the header.

Scope	What it is	What you get
Portfolio	Every website at once	Overview, Content, Research, Reports
A website	A Builder project with a URL	The full tab set — Strategy, Content, Page, Technical, Results, Settings
A research target	A domain paired with one country market	The research surfaces only

A research target does not have to be your client. You can type any domain into the switcher and choose Research <domain> to open the target editor prefilled, which is how you look at a competitor.

An unlinked research target locks the website tabs

On a bare research target, Strategy, Content, Page, Technical, Results and Settings are disabled with the tooltip Link this target to a Builder project to unlock. That is expected — a target is a domain, not a website you manage. Link it to a project when you want the rest.

The order of operations

Work in this order. Each step needs the one before it.

Connect the website

Google Search Console and Google Analytics, a niche, and a crawl of the site so the AI can read it. See Set up a website.

Research the market

Fill the Research brief, create a research target, then run research from StrategyResearch. See Research.

Activate a strategy

Research writes a draft. You review the intent clusters and the backlog, then press Activate draft. See Strategy.

Act on what it found

Work the queue on Technical, and turn keyword research into briefs with Use with Claude. See Recommendations.

Let the autoblog write

Create an Autopilot schedule on ContentSchedule and let Claude write and publish posts. See Autoblog.

Report to the client

Lock a baseline, generate the monthly report on ResultsReports, then attach it to the portal. See Reports.

The vocabulary

Term	What it means
Research brief	Five fields that say what the business is — Niche, Target audience, Primary services, Secondary services, Target locations. Everything downstream is grounded in them
Research target	A domain paired with one country market, for example `example.com` · United States · en. Every keyword, gap and SERP surface reads from one. Creating it is free
Market	The country a target measures in. Country-only by design; 36 are available, each with a default language code
Research run	The staged pipeline that builds a strategy. A full run is ten stages; a monthly adjustment is three
Living strategy	The strategy for one website. It has an Active side, optionally a Draft side, a version number, a charter, a monthly focus, intent clusters and a backlog
Intent cluster	A named group of search queries with a business outcome, an owning page and supporting pages. Labelled Intent in the nav
Backlog item	A decision research proposes, at priority P0, P1 or P2. Open P0 items block activation until reviewed
Evidence lane	One of three refreshable data streams — Site knowledge (free crawl), Search evidence (paid), Content structure (paid)
Knowledge source	A document the AI has read — a crawled page, an uploaded file, a transcript, a URL or a note
Tracked keywords	The website's working keyword set. The In report switch decides which of them a client ever sees
Context pack	The set of SEO context files the project terminal loads when you open it, compiled from Zyan's SEO knowledge and this website's strategy
Dispatch	One attempt to write one blog post — minted, claimed by a runner, drafted, then published
Cost cap	The ceiling for a single research run, separate from the website's monthly budget and from a target's monthly ceiling

What costs money and what does not

Paid research runs against DataForSEO, which Zyan provides. Every paid control shows an estimate and needs a second, confirming click.

Free	Paid
Setup check, connection readiness	Pull search evidence (about $2 a run)
Crawl website (site knowledge)	Refresh structure (about $2 a run)
Google evidence, Deep Search Console pull, Free sources	Keyword Magic Find keywords and its two extend controls
Reading any cached research	Keyword Gap Compare
Track positions, Add to list	Keyword Overview analysis and Check live SERP
Cancelling a run	Domain Overview Refresh
Preview topic ideas, publish readiness check	A research run's paid stages, and monthly reports (AI credits)

Dollar figures in the product are estimates

The roughly $2 per-run figures shown in the interface are client-side estimates. The server's own estimate governs what is actually charged, and a platform setting can change it. Treat them as guidance, not a quote.

Who can do what

Spending is owner and admin territory. Members can read everything and do the free things.

Owners and admins: start and resume research runs, every paid refresh, Measure now, arming Auto-attach after QA, the generic-domain rule.
Members: reading, Crawl website, Track positions, Add to list, cached reads, cancelling a run, and the whole Technical queue.

A member sees paid controls disabled with Owner only: running this spends the DataForSEO budget. They stay disabled for a moment on load while the roster is read, which is not an error.

Two platform-level states you cannot fix yourself

If the platform research credential is unavailable, the workspace shows DataForSEO research is paused for this workspace and every paid surface degrades to cached reads. Separately, Position Tracking, Organic Pages and Backlink Analytics are later-phase surfaces — confirm they are present in your workspace before planning work around them.

Deep links

Every surface, sub-tab and pane is addressable, so a link you paste into a message reopens the exact view. Copy the browser URL. The keys you will see most are ?project= (a website), ?target= (a research target), ?view= (the tab), ?strategyView=, ?researchView= and ?q= (a keyword seed). A URL never carries both ?project= and ?target= — switching scope clears the other.

Troubleshooting

Symptom	Cause	Fix
The Command Center shows Not activated for this workspace yet	The area is not switched on for your workspace	Contact support; there is no in-app toggle
Strategy, Content, Page, Technical, Results and Settings are disabled	You are on an unlinked research target	Link the target to a Builder project, or switch back to the website
Every paid button is greyed out	You are a member, not an owner or admin	Ask an owner to run it; free actions still work for you
Paid surfaces show cached data only	The platform research credential is unavailable	Wait — this is a platform state, not a workspace setting
Switching scope warns about leaving without saving	You have unsaved Settings edits	Save or discard first