Rank Math SEO Plugin
Rank Math is an all in one WordPress SEO plugin and it took the WordPress SEO community by storm with its amazing list of features. Wondering why is it better than Yoast? Check out our in-depth review to find all the details.
Searching for an honest Rank Math review? Your search ends here.
When it comes to WordPress optimization plugins, there are two popular plugins which are most talked about.
One is the Yoast SEO plugin and the other is AIO (All in One SEO) plugin.
They both offer a ton of great features and they both have millions of downloads worldwide.
And then… Just a year ago i.e in November 2018, a NEW SEO plugin came into existence.
Let us introduce you… Rank Math SEO plugin
Rank Math is a WordPress SEO Plugin developed by MyThemeShop. If you’re blogging for a while, you might already know about MyThemeShop as it’s a popular platform for premium WordPress themes and plugins.
RankMath plugin quickly generated a lot of buzz around the blogosphere because of its incredible features.
Yes, Yoast SEO plugin is still the #1 most downloaded SEO plugin in the history of WordPress but RankMath is quickly generating a lot of positive buzz and raving reviews from users.
Suddenly, everyone started using this amazing plugin from novice bloggers to professional bloggers like Matthew Woodward, Adam Connell etc.
Now, that brings us confusion: which one to choose? Should you go for RankMath or still use Yoast SEO or All in one SEO plugin? Let’s find it out.
In this RankMath review, let’s talk about;
- The ultimate features of this amazing plugin
- Top benefits of using RankMath SEO plugin
- Why should you install RankMath over other plugins
- Pros and cons of RankMath
- Why we stopped using Yoast SEO plugin (and started using RankMath)
- And a few other important things about the plugin
So are you curious to find more details about this awesome SEO plugin? Let’s jump into the details.
Rank Math Review: Is It Really the Swiss Army Knife of WordPress SEO?
Rank Math SEO Plugin Features List
RankMath offers you a plethora of features including;
- 1 Click Import from Yoast SEO plugin
- 1 Click Import from All in One SEO plugin
- Offers XML sitemaps
- Offers redirection of all sorts
- Offers rich snippets
- LSI keyword tool is integrated (which helps you find LSI keywords to better optimize your blog posts)
- Automated image SEO (which helps you automatically optimize your images that don’t have ALT tags already)
- Offers you rank tracking of your keywords
- Bulk Edit Titles & Descriptions
- Blog post preview on Google
- You can optimize up to 5 keywords
- Choose Pillar Posts & Pages (which helps you with better rankings and SILO structure)
- Offers you internal linking suggestions
- You can nofollow all external image links
- You can nofollow all external links (you can also open external links in new tabs)
- Gives you access to .htaccess Editor
- Gives you access to robots.txt Editor
- Offers you 404 monitor (to identify and fix your 404 pages in real time)
Here’s a quick video from the Rank Math team where you can find some useful details about the plugin.
Top 10 Benefits of Using RankMath WordPress SEO Plugin
So what makes Rank Math a powerful SEO plugin? Why almost every blogger is migrating to RankMath SEO plugin? Here are 10 of the BIGGEST reasons (read benefits).
1. It does On-site SEO analysis on-the-fly
One of the unique features of Rank Math is that it offers you SEO analysis of your website.
Once the plugin is installed, just click on the SEO Analysis tab under Rank Math settings to start the process.
This plugin will automatically start analysing your website once you click on the “Start Site-Wide Analysis” button. Once the analysis is done, it shows an SEO score (which is out of 100).
Here’s how it looks like;
As you can see above, it shows you three tests including the number of passed tests, warnings and failed tests. You should mostly bother about fixing “Failed Tests” as they can badly impact your search rankings.
In fact, Rank Math will analyze your website and your website’s content using 70+ different tests to help you optimize your site perfectly.
Performing frequent site audits such as SEO analysis of your site helps you find and fix your website issues so you can improve your overall search rankings.
2. Optimize up to 5 keywords
One of the major reasons most bloggers are migrating from Yoast to Rank Math is that RankMath lets you optimize your posts for upto 5 keywords.
With Yoast, you can optimize only for one keyword (with their premium version, you can optimize for multiple keywords though).
Gone are the days when you can optimize your blog posts for just one keyword. You need to target multiple keywords to optimize your content properly. Here’s where this feature comes into handy.
In fact, you can optimize for unlimited keywords by using the following filter.
As you can see above, just replace the number 10 with any number to easily increase or decrease the number of maximum focus keywords that can be added into a single post.
3. Track your keyword positions in the search results
RankMath’s integration with Google Search Console (GSC) is simply amazing. Once you connect your GSC account with RankMath, you can discover almost everything from your plugin dashboard.
In fact, you will discover a ton of information including;
- All the keywords that your site is ranking for
- Total number of clicks your site is getting for each of those keywords
- Average CTR (Click-through-rate)
- The position of your website for those keywords in the search results
Here’s how it looks like;
That means, you can easily keep an eye on your current keyword positions. There’s another awesome feature called “Keyword Tracker” will be coming soon which helps you track your website’s rankings for the keywords you choose.
4. No 3rd party plugin is needed for Rich Snippets
Schema Markup which is also known as Rich Snippets is one of the best ways to help your website stand out from your competitors.
When the schema markup is implemented (there are several types of schema), here’s how it looks like;
Fortunately, you don’t have to install or depend on any other plugin or tool for implementing schema markup on your site if you’re using RankMath plugin. Why? Because it offers you Schema Markup where you can add 14 different types of Schema.
You can easily optimize content for rich snippets and local SEO to make search engines understand your content better. It doesn’t matter whether you’re running a blog, a WooCommerce store or a review website, you can use RankMath plugin to easily implement Schema Markup (aka Rich Snippets).
5. Image SEO automation
Did you know that Rank Math lets you automatically add ALT and title tags to your images? Yes, if you’re looking for image SEO optimization, this plugin is extremely useful for you.
In case if you already have a ton of blog posts that have images without any alt tags, by using this plugin, you can automatically add them.
As you can see above, just turn on the image SEO from the plugin settings and it automatically adds alt attributes for images without alt tags. Similarly, you can turn on the missing title attributions functionality to add titles for all images that don’t have any title attribute.
Must read: Image SEO: How to Optimize Your Blog Images to Get More Traffic
6. Redirection manager
Most SEO plugins including the free version of Yoast SEO plugin don’t offer redirection out of the box. But it’s not the same case with RankMath as it offers you an advanced redirection manager.
You can pick several redirection types including;
- 301 permanent move
- 302 temporary move
- 307 temporary redirects
- 410 content deleted
- 451 content unavailable etc
Apart from the redirection manager, you can also edit the two most important files on your site which are;
- .htaccess Editor (you can easily edit and modify your .htaccess file right from your WP dashboard and Rank Math automatically backs up your .htaccess file before saving any changes to avoid accidental issues)
- robots.txt Editor (you can easily create and update your robots.txt file right from your WordPress dashboard)
7. 404 monitor helps you fix your 404 error pages quickly
A 404 error occurs when you try to visit a page that doesn’t exist. 404 errors are bad for your website’s SEO as they can create a bad experience for the website users.
That’s why you always need to keep an eye on your website’s 404 error pages.
RankMath makes it so much easier as it offers an exclusive feature called 404 monitor. It helps you easily check where your website users are seeing 404 errors and redirect them from your dashboard.
404 monitor basically offers two modes.
- The simple mode only captures 404 errors
- The advanced mode captures everything including the error page, referring page including the user agent
By regularly keeping an eye on RankMath’s 404 monitor, you can not only fix those 404 errors but provide a better experience to your website visitors.
Read: How to Remove Bad Backlinks to Boost Your Site’s SEO
8. Social media integration
We all know SEO is powerful but if you’re looking for quicker ways to boost your traffic, social media can come in handy. To get the most out of social media, you need to create appealing and unique images, title tags etc.
Luckily, RankMath offers social media integration in Social Tab that you can find in Rank Math’s Meta Box.
Here’s how it looks like;
As you can see above, RankMath is currently offering social previews for two of the most popular social networks which are Facebook and Twitter.
You can easily use these two platforms Open Graph feature to add unique titles, description and images of your posts while sharing on FB and Twitter.
9. Offers you LSI keyword suggestions
Did you know that you can get automatic LSI keyword suggestions around your focus keyword when you’re using RankMath?
As you can see, RankMath starts suggesting relevant LSI keywords automatically so you can optimize your content for better rankings (without keyword stuffing).
Whether you know it or not, using LSI keywords (Latent Semantic Keywords) can help you with better search traffic. In fact, you can rank for multiple keywords from one page (if you use LSI keywords).
So if you’re looking to boost your organic traffic with LSI keywords, you don’t need any extra tool as RankMath helps you with that. You just need to connect your Rank Math account to get unlimited keyword suggestions from Google.
10. Offers modular framework
Unlike most other SEO plugins (including Yoast SEO), RankMath offers a modular framework. That means, you can use only what you need and disable the rest of the modules you don’t need.
As you can see above, there are a ton of modules offered by RankMath. You can decide which module to use and which one to keep aside. That means you have complete control of your website and you can disable or enable modules whenever you want.
Yoast SEO vs RankMath SEO: What’s the Difference?
Before we discuss the differences between Yoast SEO and Rank Math, have a look at the following illustration.
As you can see above, RankMath uses less coding, fewer PHP requests (hence it offers more speed than Yoast SEO).
So if you’re looking for a lightweight plugin to install on your WordPress sites, using RankMath over Yoast is a no brainer.
Apart from speed, the major difference lies in their features. What Yoast SEO offers in its premium version is what you get for free in RankMath. Isn’t it amazing?
Here are some of the notable features of both Yoast SEO and RankMath SEO plugins.
Yoast SEO vs. Rank Math Keyword Optimization: You can optimize for only one focus keyword using Yoast but its premium version allows you to optimize for multiple keywords. With RankMath, you can optimize for up to 5 keywords (free version).
Winner? RankMath
Yoast SEO vs. Rank Math Content Analysis: Yoast SEO content analysis tells you if the optimization of your posts is Good or Bad, that’s all! But RankMath gives you an SEO score out of 100. Anything above 80 is actually a good score!
Winner? RankMath
Google Schema Integration in RankMath: RankMath offers you in-built Google Schema Rich Snippets integration for different categories such as articles, books, reviews, events etc. But you can’t find this amazing feature in Yoast SEO.
Winner? RankMath
Free or paid: RankMath offers almost every single feature that’s offered by Yoast plugin and it’s completely free to use (at least for now). Yoast SEO offers both free and premium versions. Their paid version costs you $89 per year where you’ll unlock all of their features including;
- You can optimize for up to 5 keywords (available for free in RankMath)
- Internal linking suggestions (available for free in RankMath)
- URL redirection feature (available for free in RankMath)
- Social media preview (available for free in RankMath)
In fact, you can go through our detailed review of Yoast free vs premium to know more details.
So the overall winner? It’s clearly RankMath for now.
Rank Math Settings
Quick note: We’re not going into in-depth details on Rank Math settings as their official blog already has an excellent tutorial on setting up Rank Math SEO plugin. So we’ll talk about the basic (yet essential) things that you need to do after installing the plugin.
If you’re already using an optimization plugin like Yoast SEO, you can import all your SEO settings to RankMath. That means, you don’t have to manually do all the optimization part for your individual blog posts or pages.
The good thing is, Rank Math will automatically detect which SEO plugin you’re currently using and helps you easily decide which settings you can import.
For instance, if you’re already using Yoast SEO, here’s how the import section looks like;
As you can see above, you can import everything from;
- Settings
- Term meta
- Post meta
- Redirections
- Author meta
Once it’s done, you need to implement a couple of things which include;
- Selecting your site (personal blog, ecommerce store etc)
- Connect your site with Google search console
- Sitemaps
All the above-mentioned steps are easy if you’ve already used Yoast SEO or any other SEO optimization plugin on WordPress sites.
Here are a few simple optimization settings that you can implement on RankMath for better rankings.
- Noindex Empty Category and Tag Archives
- Nofollow Image File Links
- Nofollow External Links (you can enable it if you don’t want to pass any link juice to external sites)
- Open External Links New Tab/Window (this option is what we recommend and we’re following the same method for a long time at Bloggers Passion)
- Strip Category Base (enable it)
Once the above things are done, click the “Save and Continue” button to finish the process.
Here’s how it looks like;
That’s it, you’re done.
At post level, here’s how the Rank Math SEO settings look like;
As you can see above, there are multiple things you’ll notice including;
- Your blog post preview (where you can add or edit your title including meta description)
- Focus keywords (you can target multiple focus keywords for a single post)
- Basic SEO suggestions (it suggests you where to insert keywords for better optimization)
- Optimization score (it also gives you a score so you can easily find out how well your page is optimized for your focus keywords)
You can also add unique previews for social media. Using it, you can easily customize your title, description and images while sharing on Facebook and Twitter.
Pros & Cons of Rank Math
This Rank Math review will be incomplete if we don’t talk about the benefits and limitations. Here are some of the notable pros & cons of Rank Math SEO Plugin.
Pros:
- It is extremely easy to use as it offers an intuitive layout which helps you use the plugin pretty much out of the box
- You can easily import settings from other SEO plugins such as Yoast, AIO plugin etc
- Absolutely free to use on any number of sites you own (How can this incredible plugin be FREE?)
- Offers Google Search Console Integration which helps you with everything from crawling issues to keyword tracking
- It’s a lightweight plugin (doesn’t affect your site speed at all)
- Offers rich snippets (so no extra plugin needed)
- It has a great community on the Facebook group (they also offer 24/7 customer support on their website)
- Offers a redirection module
- Lets you optimize for up to 5 keywords
- It is compatible with almost all the WordPress themes
- Automatically adds alt tags for missing images
- Helpful support as they have a dedicated forum as well
Cons:
- Other WordPress SEO plugins do NOT support import from RankMath as of now (so if you want to move from RankMath to any other SEO plugin after using it for a while, you’ll face difficulties)
Why We Moved from Yoast to Rank Math?
We’ve used the premium version of Yoast SEO plugin for several years on Bloggers Passion. We REALLY liked it. At the same time, we’re spending around $100 a year on it.
RankMath is offering almost every feature that’s offered in the premium version of Yoast at FREE of cost.
In fact, we’re extremely surprised to see the features and benefits of FREE RankMath plugin. To be honest, pricing is the major reason why we moved from Yoast.
Why spend 100 bucks a year if you’re getting the same (in fact, extra features) features in a free plugin?
Besides the pricing, there’s ONE more reason we migrated from Yoast to RankMath.
RankMath helped us disable multiple plugins.
Here some of those plugins;
- Schema plugin (RankMath offers schema integration in-built)
- Redirection plugin (it offers you redirects by default)
- AMP compatibility for accelerated mobile pages
- 404 error monitor (RankMath offers it by default)
So yes, if a plugin is saving our money and additional usage of plugins – why not use it?
Even if they start charging by offering a few more useful features, we’d be glad to pay for RankMath!
So if you’ve never used any WordPress SEO plugin, you should definitely install RankMath and simply follow their setup wizard and watch your rankings grow.
If you’re already using a plugin like Yoast SEO, you can try RankMath and make sure to import settings with just one click and enjoy all the additional benefits.
FAQs About Rank Math SEO Plugin
Here are some of the most interesting and frequently asked questions around the #1 optimization plugin i.e RankMath.
Do I have to remove other WordPress SEO plugins if I install Rank Math?
Yes, you should. If you’re already using other WordPress SEO plugins like Yoast, AIO etc, it’s always preferred to deactivate those plugins. RankMath is an all in one SEO related plugin that helps you with everything related to on-page optimization. In fact, you can easily import your existing data from Yoast or AIO plugins with just one click.
Is Rank Math really free?
Yes, it’s completely free for now. You can get all of their current features using their free plugin and you can download it from here. You can also use this plugin on any number of sites that you own.
RankMath vs Yoast SEO: Which is better?
Rank Math is better as it offers almost every feature that you need with on-page SEO. In fact, you can grab all the features offered in Yoast SEO premium for free when you’re using RankMath and it also has a lot of extra features.
Is it easy to migrate to Rank Math from other plugins?
Yes, it’s extremely easy. Once you install RankMath plugin, it will automatically detect the SEO plugin you’re using and helps you easily import all your SEO settings with the click of a button from several SEO plugins including;
- Yoast SEO
- AIO plugin
- SEOPress SEO
- All In One Schema Rich Snippets
- Redirection plugin
What if I need any help with Rank Math plugin?
If you ever need any help with Rank Math plugin, you can go through the following links.
Final Thoughts on Rank Math SEO Review
Whether you are a newbie blogger or an SEO expert, Rank Math can definitely help you with better optimization.
We’re pretty sure RankMath will soon introduce their premium version (by offering a few more features) but for now, it’s the BEST SEO plugin for WordPress users.
So which SEO plugin are you currently using? Do you have any more questions about RankMath plugin? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.
Anil Agarwal who owns Bloggerspassion.com, is a full-time blogger and SEO expert who has been helping people build profitable blogs for over a decade. Bloggers Passion has been featured on premium online sites like Forbes.com, Huffingtonpost, SEMrush, Problogger, Crazy Egg, The Next Web and so on.
Keep reading the article at BloggersPassion: Learn SEO Blogging with An Expert. The article was originally written by Anil Agarwal on 2020-03-06 01:07:59.
The article was hand-picked and curated for you by the Editorial Team of WP Archives.