`RankMath is a WordPress plugin designed to help you get better search engine rankings. It does this by improving your link structure and internal linking and optimizing your content for search engines in the most optimal manner possible.
Ranking higher in search engines takes time and effort, but the RankMath plugin saves you a ton of work and helps you reach better rankings much faster. Discover how to improve your rankings with RankMath and why you NEED it for your WordPress site.
The following is a review of the RankMath WordPress plugin. This article will tell you what RankMath is and how you can use it to increase your website's rankings on Google.
What is RankMath plugins?
There are so many solutions available today for on-page SEO that it can get difficult to choose the best option for your WordPress website. I’ve been using the popular Yoast SEO plugin for a long time but have had a few issues with it. When RankMath came to my notice, I decided to give it a try and have been loving it since then.
RankMath is a relatively new WordPress plugin that aims to be “The Swiss Army Knife of SEO Plugins for WordPress”. It has all the features you need to optimize your content for search engines as well as social media platforms, and is extremely easy to use too.
Rank Math is an SEO plugin for WordPress. It combines the functionality of many different plugins into one. It's a relatively new plugin, but it has already over 1,000,000 active installs and a 4.9 out of 5 rating on Wordpress.org
Quick Overview
Rank Math is part of the MyThemeShop family of WordPress plugins. MyThemeShop also makes the Astra theme, which is very popular and has over 1,000,000 active installs on Wordpress.rg too.
The Rank Math plugin is available in both free and paid versions. They call it a "freemium" plugin — the core features are free but you can upgrade to a paid version for extra features. Here's how their pricing works:
Free: The core plugin is free and adds basic SEO features to your WordPress site
Pro Single ($59): Adds more features for local businesses, eCommerce sites, video sites, and personal blogs
Pro Agency ($199): If you run an agency that manages multiple WordPress sites, this version lets you install Rank Math on up to 100 websites
Rankmath's Sitemaps, Redirections and SEO Import/Export
Sitemaps:
Rankmath's Sitemaps
The Rankmath SEO plugin has amazing sitemap functionalities that can help you with the indexing of your pages.
Rankmath automatically generates a sitemap once you activate the plugin. The plugin even allows you to specify which user roles can view the sitemap.
For the uninitiated, a sitemap is an XML file that tells search engines which pages you want indexed.
RankMath creates sitemaps for your posts and pages, as well as your author archives, media attachments and custom post types. It also lets you choose which taxonomies you want to include in your sitemap (e.g. Categories, Tags and other custom categories)
Out of the box, RankMath will automatically create XML sitemaps for your content. You can access the sitemaps by going to the following URLs:
Main sitemap: yoursite.com/sitemap_index.xml
Posts sitemap: yoursite.com/post-sitemap.xml
Pages: yoursite.com/page-sitemap.xml
Another feature I really love about Rankmath is its ability to notify Google, Bing and Yandex about a change in your sitemap once you publish content on your site. This would ensure that search engines crawl and index your content immediately it gets published.
Rankmath's Redirections
One of the most important aspects of any website is getting your redirects to work properly. If you are redirecting pages, either because you have deleted some content or made structural changes, you do not want to lose search engine ranking or traffic. You also want to avoid 404 errors when someone tries to access non-existent pages.
For those who are new to redirects, these are instructions that tell a web browser where to go if it attempts to access a page that no longer exists. Ideally, they will send your users and search engines towards newer content that has replaced the old content.
Rankmath makes this easy with its redirection module, which allows you to set up permanent or temporary redirects for your website. It also gives you the ability to create wildcard redirects that direct traffic from entire folders of your website elsewhere.
Rankmath's SEO Import/Export:
Importing and exporting is a breeze with Rank Math. You can import your settings from Yoast SEO, AIO SEO and others or export them to easily transfer them to another website.
Rankmath's title, Description, and Keywords Analysis
Rankmath's Title analysis:
RankMath's Title analysis is extremely detailed.
The first section shows you the title length, and gives you a preview of what this title will look like in Google's search results page (SERP), including the meta description and structured data (if any). This is what I love about RankMath. It takes all aspects of SEO into consideration.
The tool tells you whether your title is too long, or not long enough, in terms of pixels. The Keyword density checker tells you if your keyword is present in your focus keyword (the one we specified). It also checks if your focus keyword appears at the beginning or end of the title tag.
If your title tag has a pipe symbol (|) in it, RankMath will let you know. I often see titles with two pipes (||), and RankMath flags that too. This is good stuff!
Rankmath's Description Analysis:
One of the most important parts of your page’s SEO is your description. Your description is what appears in search engine results, and it should be unique and convincing to entice people to click it.
Rankmath's Description Analysis feature is a very useful tool that suggests the right length of Meta Description, telling you if it is too long or too short.
The next thing you need to look at here is whether your focus keyword has been used in the meta description? The plugin will show a red cross if the keyword isn't present in your meta description.
If you have added your focus keyword right in the first part of the meta description then you will see a green tick mark against it.
In Rankmath, the Description Analysis tab will help you write a better description. It will take your current meta description and check it against several factors.
First, it checks for important keywords. This is important because you want to make sure that your keywords appear in the most important places on your page!
Second, it checks that your description is within the proper length. A good length for a meta description is around 160 characters or less. Your description can be longer than this, but you’ll have to keep in mind that Google will cut off your description after 155-160 characters if it’s too long.
Third, it checks for duplicates. If you have multiple pages with the same meta descriptions, Google might only display one of them on search engine results pages (SERPs). This means that some of your pages might not show up on search engines at all!
Rankmath Keyword Analysis
Rankmath’s Keyword Analysis section helps you find the best keyword to target for a particular piece of content.
The plugin allows you to add 5 keywords that you intend to target and it will display the following information:
Keyword Density: This shows how often your keyword appears on your website and is one of the most important ranking factors for Google. Try to keep the density within 1% – 3%.
Keyword Prominence: This shows where your target keyword appears within your article. It is recommended that your keyword should appear at least once in the first 100 words of your article.
Keyword Distance (LSI): This indicates how close or far apart two similar keywords are in a piece of content. For example, if you are targeting the keyword “best WordPress plugins”, then the words “good WordPress plugins” should be close together, but not too close as it may look spammy.`
Pros and Cons of using RankMath SEO plugin
Pros:
RankMath Pros
Easy Installation. RankMath is easy to install. You just need to download it from the website and upload it to your WordPress site.
Easy Setup. The setup wizard is so easy, even a novice can do it with ease. Even if you’re not sure what some of the settings mean, you can always leave them on default.
Easy To Use Interface. I love the User Interface of this plugin. It’s very easy to use and understand and you will get used to it in no time.
Google Search Console integration. This plugin allows you to connect your WordPress site with Google Search Console which will make it easier for you to identify SEO errors and take appropriate actions accordingly.
Automatic Schema Integration. Schema is a code that helps search engines understand the content of your web pages better, thus helping them to rank higher in the search results. With RankMath, integrating schema into your WordPress site is very easy and takes only a few minutes with their Schema Generator tool.
SEO Analysis Tool for Posts and Pages. RankMath provides an SEO analysis tool that gives you a complete overview of how well optimized your post or page is for certain keywords based on several criteria such as focus keyword usage, URL optimization
Cons:
If you’re using the RankMath plugin, you can directly import all your Google Search Console data in just a few clicks. This is a great way to jump start your SEO efforts with RankMath as it gives you access to tons of important SEO insights right out of the box.
My only issue with this feature is that it doesn’t work well for sites with huge amounts of traffic. I have a blog that gets over 100,000 visits per month, and trying to import the data into the plugin’s database caused my site to crash twice. As a result, I had to request support from my hosting provider to help fix the errors caused by RankMath.
That said, this was a one-off experience for me and didn’t happen on any other sites that I manage. So if you have a smaller website, this shouldn’t be an issue for you.
Conclussion:
In the end, RankMath does many things that one needs to do with their websites in order to get better rankings in search engines. It makes various changes, suggestions and helps you optimize your website for all the major search engines (Google, Bing, Yahoo, Ask and AOL). The plugin is no doubt one of the best SEO plugins available for WordPress sites.