Your dashboard

The dashboard is the page you land on after signing in. It is not a report, and it is not trying to be an analytics screen. It answers one question, which is roughly "what is in flight, and where should I go now?", and every part of it is a link into the module it describes.

The header greets you by name, with the line "Everything in flight, in one glance." Approvers and super admins get their role's title instead, with a badge.

The websites card

Top left, and it changes shape depending on whether you have a site.

With sites, it shows a count and a link, Open My sites, which takes you to your list of websites.

With none, the zero is replaced by something more useful:

No website added yet Add the site you manage to unlock audits, link swaps and the calendar.

with an Add your website button. A zero told a new owner nothing; this tells them where their journey starts. See adding your first website.

The Link Exchange card

Before you have any swap activity, the card is an invitation:

Link Exchange You link to a related site, they link back — both sites look better to Google. Nothing here yet. When you send or receive a swap request, this card shows where each one stands.

with a See how it works button that opens the link exchange overview.

Once there is activity, the same card turns into figures. Its description becomes "Requests and collaboration activity in your workspace," and it shows two numbers, Total requests and Pending, with an Open button going to your requests list. Underneath is a fortnight of request activity as a small bar chart, one bar per day.

"Pending" counts requests still moving through a decision: submitted, under review, needs information, or resubmitted. A request that has been accepted or declined is settled, and drops out of the count.

See link swaps on Rankbank.

The Guest Posts card

Same pattern. Before you have any articles:

Guest Posts Articles written for other sites — yours or your authors'. No articles yet. Start one and this card tracks it from draft to published.

with a Start a Guest Post button that opens the intake.

With articles, the description becomes "Editorial work moving through your Rankbank workflow," and you get:

• Total, footnoted "All accessible articles".
• Active, footnoted "Moving through review". These are the articles sitting with someone else: submitted, under review, resubmitted, awaiting publication, live URL submitted, or being validated.
• A footer row, Needs attention, with a link reading "{n} review now". That number counts the articles waiting on you, which means changes requested or a live link that failed its check.

Needs attention is the number to act on. Everything in it is blocked until you do something. See tracking your guest posts.

What "accessible" means

The counts follow your account, not your screen. With a role in an organisation, you see the organisation's articles, which is what a site owner or editor wants. Without one, you see your own, which is what a guest author wants.

Do this next

Under the cards is a section headed Do this next, with a badge counting the suggestions and the line "Based on where your work currently stands."

You get at most three, each a card with an icon, a sentence of context, and a way in. They are chosen by looking at your actual numbers, in this order:

1. Review articles needing attention, when any article has a change request or a validation issue. The card counts them for you: "1 article has a change request or validation issue."
2. Review pending Link Exchange requests, when a swap request is waiting for its next step.
3. Audit one of your sites, once you have at least one site. "Rankbank reads your pages and tells you what is broken and which internal links are worth adding."

If fewer than three came out of that, the list is topped up. Add your website leads the top-ups when you have no site at all, since audits, swaps and the calendar all start there. Then a guest post suggestion, which reads Write a guest post when you have none and Review your Guest Posts when you do, and a link exchange suggestion, which reads Swap links with another site or Open Link Exchange on the same principle.

So the section is genuinely reactive. Clear your change requests and that card is replaced by the next most useful thing.

Activity, Keep going, and Recent activity

Once there has been some activity in the last month, three more panels appear.

Activity is a thirty-day calendar of article and request events, so a quiet fortnight looks like one.

Keep going, described as "Where your open work stands", repeats the two counts that matter, Pending requests and Active articles, and then lists shortcuts to Submit Guest Post, My Guest Posts, Notifications and Profile.

Recent activity is a plain list of the latest updates visible to your account, each with its date.

On a brand-new account none of these render, which is correct. There is nothing to plot.

Read it as a router

The dashboard deliberately stops short of being the place you work. There are no filters on it, nothing to sort, no detail to drill into. Every card, count and suggestion is a door into the module that owns that work, and the module is where the real controls are.

Two habits make it worth opening:

• The Needs attention link on the Guest Posts card and the Pending figure on the Link Exchange card are the two numbers that mean somebody is waiting. Check them first.
• Treat Do this next as a suggestion, not an instruction. It reads your data, not your calendar.

For the things that are genuinely time-sensitive, the bell is the better instrument, because it tells you the moment the other side moves. See how Rankbank tells you things.

Where to go next

If the dashboard is mostly empty states, the fastest way to change that is adding your first website or submitting your first guest post. If it is full and you are not sure where to start, the SEO overview is the page that ranks the work for you.