## **🔍 What Does 'Website Engagement' Mean?**

When you connect a website to OTTO SEO and complete the initial configuration, Search Atlas begins an **engagement process**. This means OTTO SEO is actively analysing your site, running a full audit crawl, and preparing personalised optimisation recommendations. Until this process completes, your website will show as **not yet engaged** — this is completely normal.

## **⏱️ How Long Does Engagement Take?**

The engagement and crawl timeline depends on the size and complexity of each website. Here is what you can generally expect:

- **Small websites (under 100 pages):** Typically 30 minutes to 2 hours.
- **Medium websites (100–1,000 pages):** Typically 2 to 12 hours.
- **Large websites (1,000+ pages):** Can take up to 24–48 hours in some cases.

If you have configured **two websites** at the same time, each site goes through its own independent crawl queue. Both sites may take time to become fully engaged, and one may complete before the other — this is expected behaviour.

## **🛠️ What Happens During the Crawling Process?**

Once you complete configuration, OTTO SEO performs the following steps automatically:

1. **Site discovery:** OTTO SEO maps all accessible pages on your website by following internal links and your sitemap.
2. **Technical audit:** Each page is scanned for SEO issues such as broken links, missing metadata, slow load times, and crawlability problems.
3. **Data processing:** Crawl results are analysed and matched against your target keywords and SEO goals.
4. **Engagement activation:** Once processing is complete, your site status updates to **Engaged** and recommendations become available.

## **✅ How to Check Your Engagement Status**

You can monitor the status of your websites at any time by following these steps:

1. In the left sidebar, click **OTTO SEO V3**.
2. Your connected websites will be listed on the dashboard. Each site displays its current engagement status.
3. If a site is still processing, you will see a pending or loading indicator next to it.
4. Once engagement is complete, the status will update automatically — no page refresh is required.

You do not need to re-run configuration or reconnect your site. Simply allow the crawl to finish.

## **💡 Tips While You Wait**

- Make sure your website is publicly accessible and not blocked by a **robots.txt** rule or password protection, as this can prevent the crawler from completing.
- Confirm that your sitemap URL was entered correctly during configuration, as a missing or incorrect sitemap can slow down the discovery phase.
- Avoid making large structural changes to your website while the initial crawl is in progress, as this can affect the accuracy of the audit results.
- If you have multiple sites queued, the one added first will generally be crawled first.

## **⚠️ When to Reach Out for Help**

In most cases, engagement completes within the timeframes listed above. However, you should contact support if:

- Your website has been showing **not engaged** for more than **48 hours** after completing configuration.
- You see an error message on the OTTO SEO V3 dashboard instead of a progress indicator.
- Only one of your two websites engaged successfully and the other has shown no progress for over 24 hours.

If you need further assistance, open the chat widget in the bottom-right corner of the platform and type **human teammate** to be connected with a member of our team.