Since Rank Math SEO Plugin is released, it has become a hot favorite SEO Plugin of Bloggers and Web Developers.
Mythemeshop is a well-known company that deals with WordPress themes and plugins. But, this time they come up with a revolutionary SEO Plugin Rank Math SEO.
Since I was the beta tester of the Rank Math SEO Plugin, I have decided to write a review and a complete setup guide.
So without wasting time, let’s get started with its features first.
Rank Math SEO VS Yoast Vs ALL In One SEO Pack: 8 Features That Kill Yoast & AIO
Some of the Killer features of Rank Math Plugins are:
1. Data Import Feature (Yoast and All in One SEO Pack)
Rank Math is a new-level entry in SEO plugin Industry by Mythemeshop.
Right now 1st and 2nd positions are acquired by Yoast & All in One SEO Pack, and Mythemeshop knows with whom they are competing.
If you also use Yoast & All in One SEO Pack, you can switch to Rank Math without facing any issues.
Rank Math’s inbuilt import tool is capable of importing:
- Plugin Settings
- Post Meta Information
- Plugin Data
- Focus Keywords
I have tested its Import feature and it worked like a charm. You can find the Import SEO Setting tool while configuring the Setup wizard.
Also, I have posted the complete Setup Wizard Configuration which you can find later in this Post.
2. Inbuilt 404 Monitor And Redirection
One thing that annoys the reader most is the 404 error (usually known as the not found error).
It’s almost impossible to get rid of 404 errors. But the good thing is, you can control it and improve Technical SEO.
Previously for checking 404 error logs, I was dependent on Google Search Console or you can take the help of another WordPress Plugin.
Keeping it in mind, Rank Math has blended 404 Monitor in it.
This plugin has made the 404 error fixation process very easy. You can use its Redirection feature.
You can direct your user to any destination (page/post) just with a few clicks.
Previously, I was using the Redirection Plugin for doing the same task. Now Rank Math has replaced it.
3. One-Click Rich Snippet & Open Graph
A snippet is simply a description that is shown by Search Engines in the search result.
A regular snippet shows the following info:
- Title
- Site URL
- Description
On the flip side, Rich Snippet shows some extra information related to the post:
- Rating
- Image
- Reviewer Name
- Time
Rich Snippets does not just help Search Engines to understand your content better, but it also increases your CTR. As a result, you will get a ranking boost.
Rank Math Support 11 Rich Snippet type. You can choose anything from the drop-down menu according to the type of content.
Here I have a Selected Recipe Snippet and you have the following option:
Open Graph is a technology developed by Facebook back in 2010. It allows Webmasters to control the elements which need to be displayed on social media while sharing content.
For this purpose, social media sites take the help of specific Meta Tags.
With the help of those Meta tags, you can set separate Post titles, Descriptions, and Featured Images for Facebook and Twitter.
In the case of Facebook, they make use of Open Graph Meta Tags which have the following properties:
By doing this, your blog post looks more appealing on Social Media. That will increase CTR and help in driving more Social Traffic.
Have a look at how your post will look on Social Media:
4. Forget Google Search Console
Google Search Console (previously known as Google Webmaster Tools) is a free service offered by Google to Webmasters.
It contains a different set of tools that helps Webmasters to optimize their site’s online presence.
The search console allows Webmasters to check:
- Backlinks
- Internal Links
- Search Analytics (keywords getting Impressions & Clicks)
- Sitemaps
- Crawl rates
- Penalties
- Hacking and Malware Attacks Report
The Mythemeshop team has incorporated most of the important features of the Search Console in the Rank Math plugin.
You will get a general overview of your Clicks, Impressions, CTR, and Keywords Position History.
It also has an option to check out the keywords that are getting higher impressions and clicks.
Along with that, it gave you a report of Sitemap (Error, Warning, and Index status) and crawl errors (404, Auth permission issue, and other errors).
They are also working on the Keyword tracking feature. At present, there is an option for keyword tracking but it’s showing Comming Soon.
5. Inbuilt SEO Audit Tool
Another great feature of Rank Math is its SEO Analysis tool.
This tool points out what things you can do to enhance your SEO score. And it checkout that are you getting most of your SEO efforts by analyzing your site Performance, Basic & Advance SEO tests.
Its basic SEO report gave you an overview of:
- Permalink Issues
- Blog posts without Focus Keywords
- Post With Missing Focused keyword in SEO Title.
Under the Performance Section it will check out:
- Are you using Caching Plugin or Not?
The caching plugin will help your site to load faster than enhance site performance and increase.
In the advanced section, it will report about:
- Social Sharing Options
- Google Search Console-related Issues
6. Clean UI With Modular Design
UI plays a massive role for both Developers and Users. If the product can provide easy navigation and people found it easy to use everyone will love it.
Rank Math has tried to provide a great User Experience and they have succeeded in it.
It is so easy to use that even a complete newbie can configure and work with it without following any tutorial.
With each option, they have provided a description that makes it easier to understand.
Other than that, they have used the Modular Design approach. Most of the important features are converted into modules and you can enable/disable them with a single click.
If you want to control the Modules you just need to hover over Rank Math> Dashboard> Modules
7. Role Management System
Are you running a Multi-Author Blog or having a team of Contributors and Writers?
If yes, there may be a chance you want to limit the features according to the role of the user.
If this is so, Rank Math will do that for you.
Its Role Management feature limits the features according to their role.
If you want your Authors could only access On-page SEO settings you can assign it with a role management feature.
You can enable different features for Administrator, Editor, Contributor, Author, and Subscriber.
8. Helpful and Knowledgeable Support
It doesn’t matter how Techy person you are, there is always a need for Tech support. Because no product is perfect and there are always some minor issues.
Until your Tech Support Team is ready to hear and solve your problem you will not face any major problems.
The same goes for Mythemeshop (Rank Math) Tech Support. They are always present to hear your problems and guide you with the right solution.
Previously they were only dealing with SEO Optimized Themes and Plugins. And now they have jumped into the SEO Plugins battlefield.
They are already having Support Sections for Themes, Plugins, and Sale related queries.
Now they have created a separate section for Rank Math’s support. There they will only hear & solve only SEO Plugin-related queries.
Rank Math Content & SEO Analysis Tool Overview
Rank Math’s and Yoast’s Content and SEO analysis tools have almost similar features. If you are also addicted to the Yoast SEO analysis Tool you will not find any difficult to understand and use it.
To make it easier for you I am going to break it down so you can take a look at it.
- General
- Advance
- Rich Snippet
- Social
General
General Tab allows you to set up:
- Focus Keyword
- SEO Title (Title showed on Search Engines)
- Permalink Structure (URL structure of your site)
- Meta Description (Description that will give an overview of your post content)
The current version allows adding 3 Focus Keywords to a post & pages.
You can click on each Focus Keyword and Rank Math will show up suggestions to optimize content according to that keyword.
It also shows how your blog post will look over SERPs (both desktop & Mobile Versions) if someone searches for the desired keyword.
Along with that, other analyzer tools are available under general settings:
- Basic SEO:
- Additional:
- Title Readability:
- Content Readability:
Advance SEO Settings:
Under this option, you can configure Advanced SEO settings. Here you can add Canonical URLs and set up custom redirections.
Rich Snippet:
Here you can set up a rich snippet feature without messing with schema & Microdata.
Social:
Under this option, you can configure different Titles, Descriptions, and Featured Images for Facebook and Twitter, and there is also an option to use Facebook Data for Twitter.
How To Get Started with Rank Math: Complete Setup Guide
To install the Rank Math Plugin in your WordPress dashboard follow these steps:
- Download the Rank Math Plugin from your Mythemeshop account.
- Sign in to your WordPress Dashboard and head over to Plugins> Add New> Upload and click on Install. Click on Activate Plugin.
- Now it will ask you to provide your Mythemeshop account details to register it. Fill in your accounts detail and hit Register Rank Math.
Now you have successfully installed the Rank Math SEO plugin.
Just after plugin activation, the next thing that will flash out on your screen is about Setup Wizard.
I will suggest you complete the Setup Wizard Process especially if you were previously using other SEO plugins.
Follow these steps to configure the Rank Math Plugin:
1. Import SEO Settings:
The first option you will get is to Import SEO settings. Currently, it can import SEO data from Yoast and All in One SEO pack.
Shortly, it is expected that it will support other SEO plugins.
2. Site Info:
The next step is to full fill in your site’s information.
3. Search Console Setting:
The third step is to Authorize Search Console so Rank Math can access Search Console data and display it directly in your Dashboard.
To authorize it just click over the Get Authorization code and you will get a piece of code. Just copy that code and fill it in the label and click authorize.
After authorization, in the Search Console profile option click on the drop-down menu and select the property.
Here property meant the different sites or different versions of your sites you have added to Google Search Console. In my case, I have added only one website to this account with both HTTP and HTTPS versions.
I selected the HTTPS version and clicked on Save and Continue.
4. Sitemaps:
In the next step, you can control your Sitemap settings. You can Enable/Disable Sitemap with one click.
I suggest you keep Sitemaps active because it helps in site Indexing.
You also got the option to add images to the Sitemaps. I would not recommend ticking this option.
But if you are running a blog that contains lots of images such as the Food and Lifestyle blog you can enable this option.
Below that they will ask you to select the type of posts for that SEO options need to be enabled.
5. Optimizations:
The last option is SEO Tweaks. You can set up some universal settings from here such as:
- Adding No-Follow Attributes to Images
- Making external links No-Follow
- Open External links in the new tab
- Redirect Images/attachments to the root page
6. Ready to Go:
If you have followed the above steps you will see a screen showing you have successfully configured the Rank Math plugin and are ready to go.
Get Rid of Low Ranking Once and For All With Rank Math Setup
One thing that I liked most about Rank Math is:
Their well-organized setting panels. You will get each setting option in an organized form and that’s also according to their types.
For instance, under the Links panel, you got all options related to links and under the Images panel, you got full control over image settings.
So without wasting further time, let’s get straight to the point.
1. General Settings:
It is a place where you can fix most of the technical and on-site SEO issues.
Links:
The first option you got under General settings is for links and URLs. With this option, you can control your URL structure, manage redirects, and other links related settings.
If you have followed the Setup wizard you may notice most of the settings here resemble the SEO Tweaks tab of the Setup wizard.
So I am not going to explain all the options in the Links tab.
Here you got 2-3 different options that are worth to setup.
The first option is Strip Category Base
If you enable this option what it will do is, it will strip out the Category slug from your Archive pages.
A normal archive page URL structure looks like this:
But when you enable this option it will strip out the Category slug from the URL and your URL structure will look like this:
I have enabled this option because it makes my Permalink structure look cleaner.
But you need to take care of that, your category slug does not match your post permalink otherwise it will cause conflicts.
Another option you need to take a look at is:
Remove Stop Words from Permalinks
You always should try to make your site’s permalink short and it must contain the Focus Keyword in it. For instance, you are writing a blog post What is a Blog? Its permalink will be:
Domain.com/what-is-a-blog
But if you enable this option your permalink will be reduced to
Domain.com/what-is-blog
If you ask me if should I enable this option or not? I will say it’s up to you. I don’t enable this option because I want full control over the permalink structure.
It will be going to help if your Permalink is too long and contains lots of stop words. In that case, it will strip out stop words and make your permalink shorter.
Images:
This tab has settings related to image SEO and media appearances.
Here you mainly got 2 options that will help to strengthen your On-Site SEO by optimizing your Image for SEO.
The first option is for:
Adding Missing Alt Tags
The second option is for:
Adding missing Title Attributes
You can make use of the following operators to control the attribute format.
- Post Title: Title of the current post/page
- Post Title of parent page: Title of the parent page of the current post/page
- Separator Character: Separator character, as set in the Title Settings
- Site Title: Title of the site
- Site Description: Description of the site
- Date Published: Publication date of the current post/page OR specified date on date archives
- Date Modified: Last modification date of the current post/page
- Post Excerpt: Excerpt of the current post (or auto-generated if it does not exist)
- Post Excerpt: Excerpt of the current post (without auto-generation)
- Post Tag: First tag (alphabetically) associated with the current post OR current tag on tag archives
- Post Tags: Comma-separated list of tags associated with the current post
- Post Category: First category (alphabetically) associated with the current post OR current category on category archives
- Post Categories: Comma-separated list of categories associated with the current post
- Current Term: Current term name
- Term Description: Current term description
- Search Query: Search query (only available on the search results page)
- Post-Author: Display the author’s nickname of the current post, page, or author archive.
- Author Description: Author’s biographical info of the current post, page, or author archive.
- File Name: File Name of the attachment
- Author ID: Author’s user ID of the current post, page, or author archive.
- Post ID: ID of the current post/page
- Focus Keyword: Focus Keyword of the current post
- Page: Page number with context (i.e. page 2 of 4). Only displayed on pages 2 and above.
- Max Pages: Max page number
- Page Number: Current page number
- Current Time: Current server time
- Current Date: Current server date
- Current Day: Current server day
- Current Month: Current server month
- Current Year: Current server year
- Post Type Name Singular: Name of current post type (singular)
- Post Type Name Plural: Name of current post type (plural)
- Custom Field (advanced): Custom field value.
- Date Published (advanced): Publish date with custom formatting pattern.
- Date Modified (advanced): A modified date with a custom formatting pattern.
- Current Time (advanced): Current server time with custom formatting pattern.
- Categories (advanced): Output a list of categories associated with the current post, with customization options.
- Tags (advanced): Output a list of tags associated with the current post, with customization options.
- The counter function starts at 0 and increments by 1: undefined
Breadcrumbs:
This option helps you to enable Breadcrumbs on your site.
Breadcrumbs are navigational links that guide users about their current location on the site.
Along with that, it also helps Search Engines understand the hierarchy of your site.
If your theme doesn’t support breadcrumbs you can make use of this option.
But, if you are using SEO optimized theme like I am using (Genesis) you don’t need to enable this option because there is an Inbuilt feature for breadcrumbs in it.
Webmaster Tools:
Under this tab, you can enter verification codes of various Webmaster tools including Google, Bing, and Baidu.
Edit Robots.txt:
Here you can edit the Robots.txt file easily.
Robots.txt file guides Search Engine bots and lets them understand which part of the site is important and needs to be crawled and which part needs to be ignored.
Previously for editing the Robots.txt file, we had to sign in to Search Console. But with the help of this feature editing the Robots.txt file has become easy.
One thing you need to understand is:
It is a virtual Robots.txt file and it will only work if you already don’t have a Robots.txt file in your website core.
And if you want this file to work you can delete the original Robots.txt. But I don’t recommend that.
Edit .htaccess:
This option gave you the option to edit the .htaccess file without logging into your Hosting Dashboard.
With .htaccess you can control Sites Permalink and redirection and many more useful features.
404 Monitors:
404 monitor will take records of your site’s not found errors and show you the details.
Redirections:
Here you can control the universal settings of redirection type for your site. You have 3 options to choose from as shown in the image below.
Search Console:
Here you got the option to link your Search Console accounts with the Rank Math plugin. I have already covered this portion in the Setup Wizard portion. you can check it out.
Others:
This is the last option for general settings. It consists of options for Usage tracking and RSS feed settings.
2. Title & Metas:
This menu contains Title and Meta tags related to settings for Post, Pages, and Taxonomies.
This tab is divided into 3 sections. The first section provides you feature to control Global, Social, and Misc pages and Meta Tags.
Whereas the Post Type section gave you the freedom to control SEO options for the post, pages, and media attachments.
And the last section gave provides you feature to control SEO settings for Categories and Tags.
Most of the options provided here can be edited individually on the post-editor screen. In any case, if you forget to make changes in Post editor settings these global settings will be applied.
3. Sitemaps Settings:
This option gave you full control over the Sitemap settings. It’s up to you what you choose to add to sitemaps.
You can set up different settings for the post, pages, Author archives, and media attachments from this menu.
4. Role Manager:
I have covered Role Manager in the feature section of the Rank Math plugin.
5. 404 Monitors:
Refer to the feature section.
6. Redirections:
This is already covered in the featured section.
7. Search Console:
Again check out the Featured section of the Rank Math SEO plugin.
8. SEO Analysis:
Check out the featured section.
9. Import & Export:
In any case, if you decide to switch away from Rank Math Plugin (I am sure you’ll not) you can save the current settings by creating an export file. You can also Import the current settings once you again decide to switch back.
10. Help & Support:
This section contains knowledge base articles that make it easy for you to understand its core features. And you can get out of most of the worst scenarios by following these guides.
Is Rank Math Worthy?
There is no doubt Rank Math is one of the best SEO Plugins for WordPress and with new features, it’s gonna kill its competitors.
It has lots of new features that are currently unavailable in Yoast and All in One SEO Pack.
And more features are yet to come in later updates. Developers are working hard enough to change the SEO game forever.
You can install Rank Math directly inside your WordPress dashboard. And if you want technical support you can join a Facebook Group and sign up to Mythemeshop.
Have any queries or advice drop a comment below.
