Get from sign-up to your first AI-optimised article in under 15 minutes. Create a project, fill the Brand Knowledge Base, run your first scan, and generate your first Strategy Article — step by step.

Set Up Citadex in Under 15 Minutes

This guide walks you from sign-up to your first published AEO-optimised article in five steps. By the end you'll have a project tracking your brand across every AI engine Citadex monitors, a populated Brand Knowledge Base grounding your content generation, and one published Strategy Article distributed to your blog plus syndication platforms.

Step 1: Create Your Account

Go to citadex.io and click Get Started Free
Sign in with Google or register with your email and password
Your account comes with a 7-day free trial of Pro features — no credit card required

Step 2: Create Your First Project

Your first project is created through the Quick Scan onboarding flow. Here's what happens:

Enter your website URL and brand name — Type in your website's homepage URL and your brand name exactly as you want AI to recognise it.

Choose your AI output language — Select the language for AI-generated content and reports. Independent of the platform UI language and configurable per project.

Select topics (up to 5) — Citadex's AI suggests topic clusters based on your website content. Pick the 5 most relevant — these define the queries we'll track across AI platforms.

Review your AI-generated prompt library — The system generates optimised tracking prompts for each topic. These are the actual queries sent to AI platforms to test your brand's visibility. Customise as needed.

Create your project — Click Create Project to finalise. The system runs your first scan immediately.

Step 3: Fill the Brand Knowledge Base (Critical)

This is the step everyone wants to skip — and the one that determines whether your generated content sounds like your brand or generic AI prose.

Left sidebar → Knowledge Base (under More Tools)
Add your top 5–10 canonical sources:

Your pricing page (URL crawl, fastest)
Your About page
Your top 2–3 product/feature pages
Key FAQ content
Any internal brand guidelines (paste or upload as .pdf / .docx)

The Knowledge Base feeds the AI content generator the actual truth about your brand — your real pricing, real product names, real positioning. Without it, the generator falls back to generic public knowledge and tends to invent details. For a full walkthrough, see Brand Knowledge Base.

Step 4: Understand Your First Scan

After your first scan completes (typically 30–90 seconds), you'll land on your Project Dashboard.

AEO Score (0–100) — Your overall AI-readiness score. Think of it as a health percentage. Above 80 is healthy; below 60 needs immediate attention.

Issues Panel — Critical (🔴), Warning (🟡), and Info (🔵) issues found on your scanned pages. Critical issues directly block AI engines from understanding your content.

AI Platform Visibility Matrix — An estimated view of how visible your content is across all major AI platforms Citadex tracks based on your structural signals.

Step 5: Generate Your First Strategy Article

This is where Citadex earns its keep — generating an AEO-optimised article that targets the exact prompts AI users are asking.

Left sidebar → Prompt Tracking
Wait for prompts to finish auto-scanning (status moves from "checking…" to real coverage %)
Tick 3–7 related prompts sharing a topic (same intent — all "best of," all "how to," etc.)
Click Generate Strategy Article (banner above the table)
In the modal: enable AI Agents toggle → choose Standard (faster, 1 credit) or Deep Research (thorough with live web search, 5 credits)
Click Generate — output lands in Content Drafts in 30 seconds (Standard) to 8 minutes (Deep Research)
Review, edit, Approve & Publish — choose where to syndicate (your blog via GitHub + browser-extension targets like Medium, Substack, LinkedIn, etc.)

For the full end-to-end workflow, see Strategy Article Workflow.

What to Do Next

Set up alerts — Configure notifications for the most-urgent badges (Competitor Intercept). See Alert Badges.
Run a real Visibility Check — Go to Visibility and run your first multi-engine check to baseline where you stand.
Plan your content cadence — Most brands target 1–2 Strategy Articles per week. After 4 weeks, you'll have 4–8 AEO-optimised pieces and a clear visibility trend line.
Install the publishing extension — Settings → Integrations → Install Browser Extension. Required for one-click syndication to Medium / Substack / dev.to / LinkedIn / etc. See Extension Publishing.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: How long does a scan take?

A Quick Scan of a single page: 30–90 seconds. A multi-page project scan: 2–5 minutes for sites under 50 pages.

Q: What's the difference between a project and a scan?

A scan is a single-page health check at a point in time. A project is an ongoing monitoring workspace for an entire brand or website — it aggregates all your scans, tracks your visibility trends, stores your prompt library, your Brand Knowledge Base, and your competitors list.

Q: Do I really need the Knowledge Base before generating?

You can generate without it, but the output will be generic. Even adding 3–5 sources (pricing, About, top product page) makes a dramatic difference. Treat the KB as the brand-voice training your AI writer needs.

Q: Standard vs Deep Research — which should I start with?

Start with Standard for your first article. It's fast (30–60 seconds), uses 1 quota credit, and produces a clean baseline. Use Deep Research for comparison pieces ("Citadex vs X") or pillar content where competitive awareness matters.

Q: Do I need to verify ownership of my website?

No. Citadex scans publicly accessible URLs. No verification required.