Rank Math SEO Plugin is a completely free tool for WordPress websites that helps to boost search engine traffic. It offers a rich set of search engine optimization features. The developer of this plugin is very responsive to user feedback and constantly updates the tool to meet everyone’s expectations.
Soon to settle down among the best WP SEO plugins
By using the Rank Math SEO plugin, you can expect a higher rank and more visitors on your website in no time. SEO can bring many benefits to your website, but finding the right tool for website optimization isn?t an easy task.
The plugin we’re reviewing today is often called the main competitor to Yoast and All in One SEO, which is considered as the top two in the WordPress SEO plugins game.
In short, the developer of the plugin works really hard and his efforts need to be praised, especially because the tool is 100% free. However, it is a little too early to rate it as one of the best SEO plugins.
It definitely cannot be called Yoast’s alternative at the moment, but we’d say give it some time. Soon enough, it might become the runner-up in the WordPress SEO Plugins game!
In this review, we’ll take a look at Rank Math’s features and explain how these can help your website’s SEO.
Overview of Rank Math’s SEO features
Easy installation
When it comes to installation, the Rank Math plugin relies on auto-configuration, which makes the process easy and quick. Consequently, you won’t have to waste your time on manual website configurations to make it SEO-friendly. A step-by-step configuration wizard lets you meddle with the SEO settings manually and add custom data.
An even more useful feature this plugin offers is automatic SEO settings import. For instance, if you have been using another WP SEO plugin previously, Rank Math can pick up settings from it so you won’t have to set your preferences manually again.
Interface benefits
Everyone knows that SEO optimization is a lengthy and complicated process that covers many little areas on a website. Therefore, users need a tool that has an easy interface and is understandable.
The dashboard interface of Rank Math showcases the most important tips about your domain, allowing you to input necessary data with ease.
Rank Math SEO Settings
Rank Math Settings are parted into Links, Images, Breadcrumbs, Webmaster Tools, Edit robots.txt, Edit .htaccess, and Others. This way, you cannot get lost between numerous settings.
In Links Tab, you can do typical things like remove category base from permalinks, but what caught our eye is an option to remove stop words from permalinks automatically. For images, you can choose to add missing ALT and TITLE attributes. Next, you can choose whether you want breadcrumbs on or off.
In Webmaster Tools, as typical, you can connect your site with tools such as Google Search Console. You can also add Norton Safe Web ID here.
Next, the plugin allows editing Robots.txt and .htaccess files in seconds. The last, the Others tab, allows choosing whether you want to provide plugin usage data and alter the appearance of RSS content.
In SEO Titles & Meta part, you can arrange SEO options for your content, for example, Local SEO, Social Meta, Authors, Misc Pages, and more. You can also change how your category or post page titles look and much more.
In Settings, you can also find Role Manager and Sitemap Settings. What is useful is that Rank Math allows exporting SEO data for free (this feature comes with a Premium subscription in Yoast).
Optimizing Keywords & Content Analysis
Since keywords are the essence of SEO, it is right to believe that a good SEO tool should help you optimize them. Rank Math plugin allows adding up to 5 focus keywords for your posts and gives you a chance to rank for multiple keywords well. Multiple keywords feature is an advantage since other plugins provide this feature only in paid versions.
The SEO plugin shares tips for your keywords so you can make the most out of them. When it comes to Content analysis, Rank Math gives great tips. It divides its insights into 4 sections:
- Basic SEO. Here, it checks the length of your content and keyword positioning in the most important places, such as permalink, SEO title, and the beginning of the post.
- Additional. Here, the plugin provides a checklist of whether you have positioned your keywords in other important areas such as ALT attributes, subheadings. It also checks whether you link to external resources and informs you about keyword density.
- Title Readability. This is where Rank Math gets interesting. It cares about your SEO Title and attempts to make it catchy. Therefore, it recommends using a number in it, positive or negative sentiment, and power words. Of course, it recommends locating the keyword at the beginning of the SEO title.
- Content Readability. Here, the plugin suggests installing the Table of Contents plugin, if you do not have one yet. It also checks whether you are using visual content like images or videos, the length of your paragraphs, and gives Flesch Readability Score.
Wide site SEO Analysis
One of the most exceptional features is SEO Analysis. Rank Math does its magic by providing an SEO audit that is based on 40 factors. The analysis comes with advice to improve the website’s SEO. We find it as another exceptional feature you get absolutely for free. To begin the audit, go to Rank Math > SEO Analysis > Start Wide Site Analysis.
Using this tool, you can find little SEO mistakes you accidentally overlooked, such as missing ALT texts. The whole analysis is divided into such categories: Basic SEO, Advanced SEO, Performance, Security, and Social SEO.
Rich snippet support
Rich Snippets describe structured data markup, and they can help to drive even more traffic to your website – they help to display the most important parts of your content in search results, making you stand out from the others.
This way, you can expect a higher click-through-rate since rich snippets capture the user’s attention. Usually, Schema.org is used for rich snippets; however, the plugin we discuss today takes care of it. Rank Math SEO plugin provides rich snippets for articles, products, recipes, events, videos, and local businesses.
Rank Math automatically pings search engines
Rank Math automatically pings search engines like Google, Bing, or Yahoo and lets them know that you have uploaded or updated something. Automatic pinging allows indexing your posts more quickly, attracting traffic instantly.
More options right before publishing your posts
Rank Math lets you add customized titles and meta descriptions for your posts easily. It also allows customizing Robots Meta settings and adding canonical URLs. Finally, it gives you Facebook and Twitter Previews.
All year round support
People want to get answers to their questions rapidly, therefore, no matter how good a plugin is, it needs to provide excellent support for its users. Rank Math provides all year round support which is available 24/7/365.
More features on the way
Rank Math strives to become the best WordPress SEO plugin, therefore it promises its users to deliver some outstanding features very soon.
- Integration of Google Webmaster Central. The plugin developers set themselves a task to provide users with keywords they rank for, reports about indexing issues, and sitemap status.
- Integration of Google Trends Tool. Soon enough the plugin will be able to ease the keyword research for you, as it plans to provide comparisons of keyword trends.
- Submitting Websites on Google News. The feature of the news sitemap is coming to Rank Math really soon.
- Submitting Video Sitemap.
- Link Builder. This tool should ease the internal linking struggle.
- Email Ranking Reports. Email reports from the plugin about your SEO and ranking situation.
Rank Math – best features for free
The plugin developers need to continue working as hard as it does now, and one day it might become a competitor to the top SEO plugins for WordPress. Right now, more users need to try it in order for a good word to spread. What is more, many users report little bugs they run into, so the developer must test the plugin and especially the future features more consistently.
We have to say that it is an outstanding free plugin. In fact, if you cannot decide whether it is worth the splurge on a paid plugin, we’d say save your money and try Rank Math first. In our opinion, it is a plugin that gives you a rich set of features absolutely for free, so why not take advantage of it?
