help.x.com

X's rules and policies are the standards that govern what content and behavior are allowed on the platform, and they are enforced through a system of notices, labels, and account restrictions. The X Help Center groups this material under a Rules and Policies section, which includes articles on how X enforces its rules, what notices on X mean, and specific policy topics such as the Take It Down Act. If you want to understand what happens when a rule is broken — or why you received a notice or label — this section is the place to start.

What the Rules and Policies section covers

According to the X Help Center, the Rules and Policies area collects the platform's enforcement-related documentation. The articles visible there include:

• How we enforce our rules — explains the enforcement process itself
• Notices on X and what they mean — explains the notices users may receive
• US Take It Down Act — an example of a specific policy topic covered in the section
• How cookies are used on X — a related policy article listed alongside the others

The Help Center presents these as "Last viewed" entries, meaning they are among the most commonly consulted articles in this category.

How enforcement works

Based on the Help Center's own framing, enforcement of X's rules can result in several outcomes:

• Notices — X may send you a notice explaining that content was actioned and why. The article "Notices on X and what they mean" exists specifically to decode these messages.
• Labels — content may be labeled rather than removed, so that viewers have additional context.
• Account restrictions — enforcement can escalate to limits on your account. The Help Center's "Managing your account" section includes articles on suspended accounts and locked or limited accounts, which are the account-level consequences of enforcement.

The exact action taken depends on the rule involved and the specifics of the content or behavior, which is why the "How we enforce our rules" article is the authoritative reference rather than any single summary.

Where to go for each question

Practical notes

• The Help Center is organized so that enforcement questions sit in Rules and Policies, while the consequences to your account sit in Managing your account. If you received a notice and then found your account restricted, you may need both sections.
• Policy content is not static. Specific articles such as the Take It Down Act entry reflect that X maintains policy pages for particular laws and topics, so check the current version of the relevant article rather than relying on secondhand summaries.
• The Help Center homepage surfaces "Last viewed" articles, which is a useful signal of what other users most often need — currently including suspended accounts, locked or limited accounts, and notices.

For anything involving a specific enforcement action on your own account, start with the notice you received and match it to the corresponding Help Center article before assuming the outcome is permanent.

If you're new to Ahrefs and want to run your first SEO audit, the fastest path is: open Site Explorer, enter your target URL, review the Overview for a health snapshot, then dig into Organic Keywords, Top Pages, and Site Audit to find specific problems. From there, build a short prioritized to-do list instead of trying to fix everything at once.

This tutorial walks through that workflow using a realistic starting scenario, explains what the numbers mean, and shows how to turn findings into actions.

Before You Start: Pick a Narrow Scope

A common beginner mistake is auditing an entire large website on day one. The reports become overwhelming, and you can't tell which issues matter.

Instead, choose one of these starting points:

• A single important page (your homepage or a key product/service page)
• A small site (under ~50 pages, e.g., a personal blog or small business site)
• One section of a bigger site (e.g., /blog/)

For this tutorial, assume you're auditing a small business site with about 30 pages. The same steps scale up later.

You'll need an Ahrefs account to follow along. Ahrefs offers paid plans, and pricing and feature limits change over time, so check the current Pricing page for what's included in each tier before committing.

Step 1: Enter Your Target in Site Explorer

Site Explorer is Ahrefs' core tool for analyzing any website or URL.

1. Open Site Explorer from the top navigation.
2. In the search box, paste your domain (e.g., example.com).
3. Choose the Exact URL or Domain mode depending on scope. For a full-site view, use Domain or Prefix; for a single page, use Exact URL.
4. Press Enter.

You'll land on the Overview report. Don't try to absorb everything — focus on four numbers first.

Reading the Overview Snapshot

Important caveat: Ahrefs' traffic and keyword numbers are estimates based on its own data. They won't match Google Search Console or your analytics exactly. Treat them as directional, not absolute.

Step 2: See What You Already Rank For

Go to Organic Keywords in the left sidebar. This shows queries where your site appears in search results.

Sort by Traffic (descending) to see which pages bring the most estimated visitors. Then look for:

• Keywords ranking in positions 4–15 — these are often the easiest wins. A small content or on-page improvement can push them onto page one.
• Keywords with high volume but low position — potential opportunities if the topic is relevant.
• Irrelevant keywords — if you rank for something off-topic, it may signal thin or mismatched content.

Write down 5–10 of the position 4–15 keywords. These become your first optimization targets.

Step 3: Find Your Best and Weakest Pages

Open Top Pages. This ranks your URLs by estimated organic traffic.

Look for two things:

1. Your top performers — understand what topics and formats work. Can you create more content like this?
2. Pages with traffic but poor rankings — these may need on-page fixes (title, headings, internal links).

If a page gets zero traffic and targets a topic you care about, it's a candidate for a rewrite or consolidation.

Step 4: Run a Technical Site Audit

Now move to Site Audit. This crawls your site and flags technical and on-page issues.

1. Click Site Audit → New project.
2. Enter your domain and set crawl settings (default is usually fine for a small site).
3. Start the crawl and wait for it to finish.

Once complete, you'll see a Health Score and a list of issues grouped by category.

Which Issues to Fix First

Not all issues are equal. Prioritize in this order:

Ignore low-impact warnings (like minor meta description length) until the big items are handled.

Step 5: Turn Findings Into a To-Do List

You now have raw data. Convert it into a short, actionable list. Example:

1. Fix 3 broken links found in Site Audit.
2. Rewrite title tags on 5 pages with duplicate titles.
3. Improve 4 pages ranking in positions 6–12 by adding missing subtopics and internal links.
4. Remove or update 2 thin pages with no traffic.

Keep the list to 5–10 items max for your first audit. Finishing a short list beats starting a long one.

Common Beginner Mistakes

• Chasing every red flag. Site Audit flags many minor issues. Fix what affects rankings and users first.
• Trusting estimates as exact numbers. Ahrefs data is modeled, not measured from your analytics.
• Auditing a huge site too early. Start small to learn the interface.
• Ignoring search intent. A page can be technically perfect but still fail if it doesn't match what searchers want.
• Forgetting to re-crawl. After fixes, run Site Audit again to confirm improvements.

Where to Go Next

Once your first audit is done:

• Compare with competitors using Site Explorer's Competing Domains and Content Gap reports.
• Track keyword rankings over time with Rank Tracker.
• Explore backlink opportunities in the Backlinks and Link Intersect reports.
• Set up recurring Site Audit crawls so new issues surface automatically.

Your first audit isn't about perfection — it's about building a repeatable habit: enter a target, read the key reports, pick the highest-impact fixes, and act. Do that once a month and your site's health compounds.

Go to help.x.com and open the 🔐 Managing your account section. It contains the two articles you need: "About suspended accounts" and "Help with locked or limited account." Which one applies depends on what happened to your account — a suspension is an enforcement action, while a locked or limited account is usually a verification or security step. The recovery steps differ for each, so follow the article that matches your situation rather than mixing instructions from both.

Suspended vs. locked or limited: which article do you need?

The Help Center treats these as separate topics, and the fix is different for each.

If you're not sure which one describes your case, start with the wording of the notice you received on X or by email — it usually names the specific issue, and that name maps to one of these two articles.

How to reach the articles

1. Open help.x.com.
2. Find the 🔐 Managing your account group on the homepage.
3. Select About suspended accounts or Help with locked or limited account, depending on your situation.
4. Read the article for the exact steps and conditions that apply to your case.

The homepage also lists recently viewed articles under each section, so if you've looked at one of these before, it may appear there for quick access.

Related pages worth knowing about

Two other areas of the Help Center come up alongside account restrictions:

• 📝 Rules and Policies — includes "How we enforce our rules" and "Notices on X and what they mean," which explain the framework behind enforcement decisions.
• 🤳 Safety and security — includes "Help with my compromised account," relevant if you suspect someone else accessed your account rather than a policy issue.

What to expect from the recovery steps

Recovery depends on the specific issue described in each article, so treat the instructions there as the source of truth. In general terms:

• A locked or limited account usually involves completing a requested action (such as confirming you control the account) before full access returns.
• A suspended account involves the enforcement process described in its own article, which may include an appeal path.

Don't assume the steps are interchangeable — a fix described for a locked account won't necessarily apply to a suspension, and vice versa.

If you can't find your answer

The Help Center homepage links to See all articles within each section, which is the fastest way to browse everything under Managing your account, Rules and Policies, or Safety and security. If your issue spans more than one of these — for example, a compromised account that was then suspended — check the Safety and security article first, since account security typically needs to be resolved before enforcement questions.

You can reduce most account and privacy risks on X by doing three things: switch on the security settings X provides, understand who can see your Posts, and know the recovery steps before something goes wrong. The X Help Center groups this material under Safety and security, with articles on protecting your personal information, public vs. protected Posts, information sharing with business partners, and help for a compromised account. The steps below follow those topics; exact menu labels can change, so treat the Help Center articles as the source of truth if a screen looks different.

Start with the account security basics

• Use a strong, unique password. Reusing a password from another site is the most common way accounts get taken over.
• Add your phone number to your account. The Help Center covers this under Managing your account ("How to add your phone number to your account"). A confirmed phone number gives you a recovery path if you lose access to your email.
• Keep your email address current. If your email is outdated, password resets and security notices go nowhere. See "How to update your email address."
• Review connected apps and sessions periodically and remove anything you don't recognize.

Understand public vs. protected Posts

This is the single setting that most changes who can see what you share.

If your goal is to limit your footprint, protecting your Posts is the biggest lever. If you want reach — for a brand, a creator account, or public conversation — you stay public and manage privacy through what you choose to post instead.

What to do if your account is compromised

The Help Center has a dedicated article, "Help with my compromised account." The general sequence is:

1. Try to regain access using the password reset flow, starting from the email or phone number associated with the account.
2. Change your password immediately once you're back in, and change it anywhere else you reused it.
3. Revoke suspicious sessions and connected apps so the intruder loses their foothold.
4. Check your account settings — email, phone number, and any linked accounts — for changes you didn't make.
5. Report the compromise through the Help Center if you can't get back in, since a locked or suspended account has its own support path ("Help with locked or limited account," "About suspended accounts").

If you're locked out entirely, the locked/limited account article is the correct starting point rather than the compromised-account one.

Know what X shares with business partners

The Help Center notes that additional information may be shared with business partners, and there's a separate article on how cookies are used on X. If you want to limit this kind of sharing, look at your privacy and ad personalization settings rather than assuming your data stays entirely inside X. The Help Center article is the authoritative description of what's shared and why.

Where to go for each problem

The Help Center's front page ("What can we help you find?") links directly into each of these sections, so you can jump straight to the article that matches your situation instead of searching.

You can update your email address or phone number on X from your account settings while logged in. The Help Center lists dedicated articles for both tasks under its "Managing your account" section — "How to update your email address" and "How to add your phone number to your account" — so the exact steps live there rather than in a single combined guide. Expect X to ask you to verify a new email or phone number before the change takes effect.

Where these settings live

Both changes are account-level settings, not profile edits. You need to be signed in to the account you want to change. If you can't sign in, updating contact details isn't the right path — see the Help Center articles on locked or suspended accounts instead.

The Help Center groups the relevant articles here:

Updating your email address

1. Sign in to X on the web or in the app.
2. Open your account settings and find the email section.
3. Enter the new email address.
4. Submit the change and complete any verification X requests.

Expected result: X sends a confirmation or verification step to the new address. The change typically isn't final until you complete it. If you don't see a message, check spam or the promotions tab before retrying.

Common snag: If the new address is already tied to another X account, the change won't go through. Use an address that isn't associated with a different account.

Adding or changing your phone number

1. Sign in to X.
2. Go to the phone number section of your account settings.
3. Enter the number, including the correct country code.
4. Confirm the code X sends to that number.

Expected result: Once verified, the number is associated with your account and can be used for security and account recovery.

Common snag: A number already linked to another account can't be added to a second one. If verification codes never arrive, confirm the country code and that your carrier isn't blocking short-code messages.

Verification is part of the process

Changing contact details is a security-sensitive action, so X verifies that you control the new email or phone number before applying the change. This is why the Help Center treats "update your email address" and "add your phone number" as separate, step-by-step articles — each has its own verification flow. Don't assume the change is complete until you've finished that step.

When to read the full Help Center article instead

Use this page to understand what the task involves and where it lives. For the exact current menu labels and screen-by-screen steps — which X updates over time — open the specific article:

• How to update your email address — for changing the email on your account.
• How to add your phone number to your account — for adding or replacing a number.

If your problem is that you can't sign in to make these changes, that's a different issue: start with "Help with locked or limited account" or "About suspended accounts" in the Help Center's Managing your account section.