🔍 Quick Answer
Sanity is a headless CMS. It stores and manages your content but does not build or host the pages visitors see. Your website's front end (often built with Next.js, Nuxt, Astro, Gatsby, or similar) does that. Because of this, Search Atlas works with the live website your Sanity content powers, rather than with the Sanity Studio itself.
Sanity sites are usually set up differently from Webflow, and the experience is not identical. The sections below explain what that means in practice.
🧩 How Sanity Differs From Webflow
Webflow is an all-in-one platform, so one connection can reach your content, page settings, and published pages. A headless setup splits these into separate parts:
- Sanity holds your content (text, images, fields).
- Your front-end code decides how that content becomes HTML pages, including title tags, meta descriptions, schema, and links.
- Your hosting provider (such as Vercel or Netlify) serves the finished pages to visitors.
Search Atlas can only change what it can reach. On a headless site, many SEO elements are controlled by your front-end code, so some changes may need a developer's help.
⚖️ What to Expect Compared to Webflow
- Site audits, rank tracking, keyword research, and reporting: These rely on your public website, so they work the same way whether your site runs on Sanity, Webflow, or anything else once your domain is added to a project.
- On-page optimization with OTTO SEO: This depends on how OTTO is installed on your site. Headless sites usually need the installation done on the front end, so a developer is typically involved.
- Direct publishing or editing of CMS content: Do not assume this works the way it does with Webflow. Content stored inside Sanity is generally edited in Sanity Studio, so content created in Search Atlas may need to be copied into Sanity manually or through your developer's own workflow.
- One-click connection: Sanity is not a Search Atlas CMS connector. CMS Connectors (Settings, CMS Connectors) covers platforms such as WordPress, Webflow, Shopify, and Contentful, and Sanity is not one of them. There is no one-click Sanity connection.
In short, you can get most of the research, monitoring, and analysis value from Search Atlas with a Sanity site. Automated on-site changes and publishing depend on your front-end setup.
🛠️ How to Get Started
- Log in to Search Atlas and create a new project for your website using your live domain (for example, www.yoursite.com), not your Sanity Studio URL.
- Open Settings, then CMS Connectors, and review the platforms offered. Sanity is not listed. Do not expect a custom or non-listed website option there. To use OTTO on the live site, install the OTTO pixel instead.
- Follow the on-screen instructions. For OTTO SEO, this usually means adding a provided code snippet or setting to your site so it can apply optimizations.
- Share the instructions with your developer. They will typically add the snippet in your front-end project's global layout or head section, then deploy the site.
- Return to Search Atlas and confirm the OTTO pixel is detected on the live domain.
- Wait for the first crawl or audit to finish, then review the results in your project dashboard.
✅ Tips for a Smooth Setup
- Use the exact public URL your visitors see, including the correct www or non-www version.
- Make sure your site is published and not password-protected or blocked from crawlers while Search Atlas scans it.
- If your site uses server-side rendering or static generation, redeploy after adding any code so the change goes live.
- Test in a staging environment first if your team uses one.
- Keep a note of which SEO fields (titles, descriptions, schema) are stored in Sanity and which are set in code. This helps you decide where each recommendation should be applied.
🧯 Troubleshooting
- Connection will not verify: Confirm the snippet is on the live site (not just in a local or preview build) and that your latest deployment has finished.
- Changes do not appear on the page: Your hosting provider may be caching older pages. Clear the cache or trigger a fresh deployment, then check again.
- Recommendations do not match what is in Sanity: Search Atlas reads the final page. If a field is overridden in your front-end code, update it in the code or the matching Sanity field.
- Audit shows missing pages: Check that your sitemap is up to date and that pages are not blocked by robots settings.
💬 Need Help?
Every Sanity project is built a little differently, so a quick conversation can save time. If you need further assistance, open the chat widget in the bottom-right corner of the platform and type human teammate to be instantly connected with a member of our team.