Discover the Rank Math plugin

Improve SEO optimization using the Rank Math plugin

We’ve already talked about the  Yoast SEO plugin , one of the most widely used in WordPress, but it’s not the only one. Today we want to talk about the Rank Math plugin, which we use in our  digital marketing agency in Madrid  and which we implement in every SEO project we work on.

Thanks to web design platforms like WordPress, we can find a large number of tools that help us improve website performance and optimize it for all the changes that occur. 

The Rank Math plugin plays a big role when it comes to SEO, so in today’s post you’ll be able to learn everything about this plugin to get the most out of it,

Before we begin to break down this plugin, we’d like to share our  SEO GUIDE , the most comprehensive in Spanish, where you’ll discover all the secrets to getting a project off the ground.

What is the Rank Math plugin?

The Rank Math plugin is a plugin for on-page SEO optimization. It consists of several optimal features, including elements that can only be accessed through the paid option. Thanks to this plugin, we have access to these functions for free.

It allows you to work with meta tags and configure and index pages and posts, but in addition to this we find other functionalities such as the integration of  Structured Data Schema , a keyword analysis tool using LSI (Latent Semantic Index), positioning monitoring, monitoring of 404 errors, a tool to generate breadcrumbs…

Even with all its features, the Rank Math plugin is a very easy-to-use tool, offering a well-integrated design that provides a quick and intuitive learning curve.

How to install the Rank Math plugin?

To install the Rank Math plugin, you need to follow the same process as with any other WordPress plugin: either from your WordPress dashboard or by downloading the plugin’s ZIP file from the  Rank Math website  and then uploading it to WordPress.

The easiest way is to do it directly from WordPress, by selecting the “Add New” option in the plugins menu, searching for the Rank Math plugin, and clicking the “Install Now” button.

Initial configuration of the Rank Math plugin 

Once we have activated the Rank Math plugin, we must move on to the initial configuration, and we can use the help of a wizard that will guide us through each step. 

The first thing it shows is whether the website is compatible with the Rank Math plugin, that is, whether the version of WordPress and the PHP language are compatible, which will require keeping the website updated with the latest versions of all its components or extensions. 

Next, we must perform the following steps to configure:

Import SEO settings

We’ve previously used another SEO plugin, and since it’s not recommended to have two plugins installed and active at the same time, the Rank Math plugin will take care of deactivating the other one.

It’s important not to lose the information we had about the other plugin’s configuration, especially the meta tag information for each page or post. Therefore, we should import these settings with a single click; even the new Rank Math plugin detects this to make the import more convenient.

If this is the first SEO plugin installed, this step will be skipped.

The website

Now, in this step, you need to enter information about the website, filling out the meta tags and Schema structured data fields. Although the Rank Math plugin detects these for you, you must confirm them and make the appropriate changes.

The first option we need to choose is the type of website we have in WordPress, whether it’s a personal blog, a website, an online store…

Additionally, we must provide the logo, the image we want to display on social media, and the business name. The Rank Math plugin requests this information so that when unoptimized meta tags are displayed by default, it can display branded content.

Google Search Console

The integration between Google Search Console and Rank Math is very good, offering easy-to-interpret reporting and metrics. To do this, you need to connect WordPress to Search Console and authorize the Rank Math plugin.

We’ve talked countless times about the importance of Google Search Console, and the more information we can provide through the Rank Math plugin, the better.

Site maps

A sitemap is a file containing the pages, posts, and other resources on our website that we want to crawl and index. It helps crawlers analyze a website’s structure and content. 

This is why in this tab we must indicate if we want a sitemap.xml file and the resources we want to be in it.

Here’s a link to discuss the importance of  sitemaps  for improving a website’s SEO ranking.

Optimization

In this step, you need to optimize some of the website’s more general SEO settings, specifically the indexing of archive or index pages and how external links will be treated. 

Within this tab of the Rank Math plugin we find several options, which are:

• Empty “noindex” tag and category archives, which are set for tags and categories that search engines should not index.
• Nofollow internal links, for those links on our website that point to other websites and will not transmit any domain authority.
• Opening external links in a new tab is a good idea. It’s important to always have this enabled so that when the user clicks on the external link, the website opens in a new tab, keeping your website always open.

Last step

Once you’ve reached this step, you’ve finished configuring the Rank Math plugin, and you can now begin configuring the plugin’s automatic settings that display your website’s SEO score. 

Rank Math Plugin Advanced Configuration 

Once we’ve made progress through the setup wizard, the Rank Math plugin offers us the option to configure some of the advanced settings. This is a step we’ll end up doing sooner or later, so it’s a good idea to configure it from the start.

Profile Manager

The Rank Math plugin is designed with modules for different functions and its own configuration panel. This way, even if a website is managed by different people, everyone can access and modify these settings. 

For these cases, the profile management option is useful. It associates each WordPress profile with the modules and settings that profile has access to and can configure.

This prevents less technically savvy users from making changes to SEO optimization settings. 

Monitor 404 and redirects

When working on SEO, it’s important to be careful with 404 errors, which can cause user rejection, prompting them to search for another website that offers the information they need. 

So, with the Rank Math plugin, we can know when this error occurs and create a redirect to the correct URL.

The redirection module is also very valuable for restructuring the website and redirecting old URLs to new ones.

Schema markup

Appearing on Google through rich snippets is an opportunity to grab the public’s attention and thus achieve a higher click-through rate. To achieve this, you need to use structured data, and with the Rank Math plugin, you can configure the Schema structured data type to associate with each piece of content on your website.

To do this, we must activate the following data:

• For posts: Schema type “article” and article type “blog post”.
• For generic informational pages: Schema type “article” and article type “article” or “news article”.
• For more specific pages, choose the appropriate Schema type.

Features and functionalities of the Rank Math plugin 

The Rank Math plugin offers two-level configuration of its features and functionality: for the entire website and for each page and post. As mentioned before, it features extensive module management, enabling the ones you want to use.

Modules

It has 14 modules available, some of which we’ve already seen in the setup wizard. By default, the Rank Math plugin has the following modules enabled:

• Monitor 404 and redirects.
• Link Counter.
• Structured Data Schema.
• Profile manager.
• Search Console.
• SEO Analysis.
• Sitemap.

In addition to those mentioned, we can activate:

• ACF.
• AMP.
• bbPress / BuddyPress.
• Local SEO & Google Knowledge Graph.
• WooCommerce.

It is interesting to delve into three of these modules, given the role they play.

Link Counter

When you activate this module, the list of posts or pages displays this information about the links in a post or page. This is what each number represents:

• Number of internal links pointing to the post.
• Number of outgoing external links the post has.
• Number of incoming external links pointing to this page from other sites. 

We all know the importance of linking, both internal and external, and this Rank Math plugin extension allows us to keep all this information well-accounted for.

SEO Analysis

A basic SEO audit is performed on the website, and a report is issued with the detected issues. This allows us to improve our website’s on-page SEO and better focus our SEO strategy.

Local SEO & Google Knowledge Graph

Essential to maintain consistency of our NAP (Name, Address, and Phone) data and correctly mark it as structured data with Schema. 

Local SEO is one of the most useful strategies for services and stores in a specific geographic location. The Rank Math plugin also takes this into account to implement it correctly.

Global settings

Here we configure aspects that encompass the website as a whole and the specific settings of the modules we have activated.

• General Settings:  Such as links, images, breadcrumbs, Webmaster Tools and editing robots.txt.
• Titles and SEO Metas:  To configure the meta robots and meta tags for posts and pages. You can also configure the content of the title and description tags for posts, pages, and category and tag pages.

Post and page settings

The Rank Math plugin includes a configuration box when editing a post or page, allowing you to modify any necessary values. This box shows how the snippet would appear on the results page, including the title and description that will appear appropriately.

All its modules 

It’s very interesting that we can choose the different modules we want to activate. We can classify these modules as follows:

• The essentials: link counter, Rich Snippets and Sitemap.
• Recommended: 404 monitor, Redirections, Search Console and SEO Analysis.
• Depending on the case: AMP, Local SEO, Role Manager and WooCommerce.

Below we show the different modules of the Rank Math plugin

• Post and page metadata:  Also known as titles and metas, these are essential for ranking in Google. We can add two very interesting features: Link Suggestions, which suggests links and allows us to mark the article or page as pillar content, or Link Suggestion Titles, which allows us to choose between using titles or the main keyword as the default text when linking to other content. 
• Links:  We can customize the use of links to make URLs more user-friendly or decide whether we want to follow external links.
• Images:  Image optimization is also very important, both in terms of weight and metadata.
• Sitemaps:  These help search engines better understand the structure of a website, facilitating indexing and improving ranking. The Rank Math plugin offers a high level of customization for each type of content you want to rank. 
•  Local SEO : With this option, we can choose whether we are an individual or a company, the company’s name, logo, URL, address, email, etc.
• AMP:  This initiative aims to improve pages to make them faster for mobile devices. This improves the user experience and website ranking.
• Authors:  This element is more important on digital media websites, where a prestigious author can bring more traffic than a current news story.  In the case of a personal blog, it’s recommended to disable it, because if only one person posts, the author page will be identical to the blog page.
• Rich Snippets:  Display content in search results in a more engaging and practical way.
• Social:  It’s a good idea to create default thumbnails for social media and set up Twitter cards.
•  404 Errors : It is possible to see the website’s 404 errors from the WordPress installation itself, those pages that cannot be found.
• Redirects:  Helps create 301, 302, and 307 redirects along with 410 and 451 maintenance codes.
• Robots.txt File Editor:  We can edit the robots.txt file to tell search engines what to do.
• .htaccess Editor:  This file can be edited from Rank Math, and to avoid problems, the plugin will automatically make a backup before saving changes.
• SEO Audit:  The Rank Math plugin offers a very simple on-page SEO analysis, with results divided into three scores: pass, danger, fail.
• Role manager:  Provides a user manager who can be assigned different permissions and access levels to Rank Math settings.
• Search Console Integration:  Among all the modules found in the Rank Math plugin, we mention this one, with which we can access the most important Search Console data without leaving the control panel: overview, search analytics, status of sitemaps indexed by Google, crawl errors, and keyword tracking.
• WooCommerce Integration:  The Rank Math plugin’s features are used to optimize your online store’s product pages. It’s enhanced with product rich snippets, an internal link builder, and Search Console.
• Import, export, and backup:  As we’ve mentioned in other sections, it’s possible to import settings from other SEO plugins, such as Yoast, so we can export all the settings to import them from another application. Additionally, it’s possible to back up the settings, which is very useful for testing changes. We create a backup, apply the changes, and wait for a while before analyzing the results.

Rank Math plugin vs Yoast SEO plugin 

To better understand the main differences between the Rank Math plugin and the Yoast SEO plugin, the two most commonly used plugins for WordPress SEO, we need to be clear about their main features. 

• Installation and configuration:  Both plugins are very easy to install and offer a setup wizard with a good user experience. The Rank Math plugin actually offers more options in this area, allowing you to configure aspects like Search Console and sitemaps more efficiently than Yoast SEO.
• User Interface:  Both have a decent user interface and are very easy to use. Yoast SEO is more streamlined, focusing more on functionality than aesthetics, while Rank Math is more visually appealing without losing focus on functionality.
• Keyword Assignment:  The free version of the Yoast plugin only allows you to enter one keyword per post, so if you want to use more, you’ll need to upgrade to the paid version. The Rank Math plugin, on the other hand, allows you to add up to five keywords per post.
• Performance:  They offer very similar performance, with virtually no differences. It’s worth noting that, on the technical side, Rank Math is lighter, has fewer files, and fewer lines of code than Yoast.
• Price:  The Rank Math plugin is free, while Yoast SEO has a paid version that allows you to access some features. We mustn’t forget that some modules, such as Local SEO and WooCommerce, are available for free in Rank Math, but you have to pay for them in Yoast.
• Updates:  It’s true that Rank Math is updated much more frequently than Yoast SEO, which means that Rank Math receives many bug and issue reports and needs to be updated frequently. It can also be interpreted as adding new features and improvements more frequently. 

When working on a website’s structure, it’s important to always use tools that help us achieve optimal optimization and performance. The Rank Math plugin is extremely useful because it allows you to better understand a website’s ranking performance, improving the visibility of each post or page in search engines. 

We hope this article about the Rank Math plugin has helped you fully understand how to use it and all the features you can get.

As always, we’ll be happy to answer your questions about the Rank Math plugin from Digitalvar. As SEO agency professionals in Madrid , we’ll be happy to hear from you!

Digitalvar digital marketing agency

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