🧭 Overview
When you no longer need an active OTTO SEO project, it is natural to want to remove it from your workspace. However, simply deleting a project can strip away optimizations that are actively supporting your rankings. This article explains why deletion can be risky and walks you through the recommended safe disconnection process for an OTTO project.
⚠️ Why Deletion Can Damage Your Rankings
Deleting an OTTO project does more than tidy up your dashboard — it can reverse the SEO work OTTO has deployed on your site. Here is what you risk when you delete rather than pause or freeze a project:
- Reversal of applied optimizations: On-page changes, schema markup, and other deployments may be rolled back.
- Loss of project data: All historical data, audit results, and configurations are permanently removed and cannot be recovered.
- Ranking drops: Pages that were benefiting from OTTO's active optimizations may lose their positions in search results.
To avoid these outcomes, the recommended approach is to pause or freeze the project rather than deleting it.
❄️ What Does Pausing or Freezing a Project Do?
Pausing or freezing an OTTO project stops active automation without removing any of the optimizations already applied to your site. This means:
- Your existing rankings and deployed changes are preserved.
- All project data, history, and settings remain intact.
- No new changes are pushed to your site.
- You can reactivate the project at any time without losing progress.
This is the safest way to disconnect from OTTO when you are unsure about the future of a project or want to stop activity without risking ranking loss.
🔢 How to Safely Disconnect an OTTO Project
- In the left sidebar, click OTTO SEO → All Sites (SEO Automation) to open the main OTTO SEO dashboard.
- Locate the project you want to disconnect from the list of active projects.
- Look for the option to pause or freeze the project within that project's settings or management controls.
- Select the pause or freeze option and confirm the action when prompted. The project will move to an inactive state, pausing all active automation.
- Verify that the project now appears in the Deep Frozen tab of the All Sites (SEO Automation) page.
Your site's optimizations remain live and your rankings are protected. The project is now safely disconnected from active automation.
🔄 How to Reactivate a Paused Project
If you decide to resume OTTO automation in the future, reactivating a paused project is straightforward:
- Go to OTTO SEO → All Sites (SEO Automation) in the left sidebar.
- Find your paused project in the Deep Frozen tab of the All Sites (SEO Automation) page.
- Select the option to reactivate or unfreeze the project and confirm when prompted.
- OTTO will resume automation from where it left off, with all previous data and settings intact.
If you are unsure which option to choose, or if you do not see a pause or freeze option for your project, reach out to our support team before deleting — a team member can confirm the safest path forward for your specific setup.
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.