Rank Math SEO Plugin Review 2024: Best Yoast SEO Competitor?

You may know that Google and other search engines are your website's best organic traffic sources. However, you need to focus on search engine optimization to ensure you receive enough traffic from search engines. Abbreviated as SEO, it’s one of the most important marketing strategies. 

Various aspects come into play in boosting the overall website rankings. You have meta titles, meta descriptions, keywords, keyword density, keyword length, Schema markup, XML sitemaps, and other details. 

To apply the best SEO tactics, it’s best to install a WordPress SEO plugin. While many WordPress SEO plugins are available, Rank Math is undoubtedly one of the fastest-growing options. To convince you, I have written a detailed review of the Rank Math WordPress plugin. 

In my Rank Math SEO plugin review, I will discuss the wizard setup, the most important features, the pros and cons, and the pricing of Rank Math. 

What is Rank Math?

Founded in 2018 by MyThemeShop, the Rank Math SEO plugin’s popularity is growing exponentially. With over 2 million active installations, it has become one of the best SEO plugins for WordPress. 

Rank Math offers a complete set of features that can boost your website's SEO and attract more organic traffic. Rank Math can cater to everyone, whether you have a small business or a large enterprise. 

Rank Math

• Google Analytics 4 integration
• Track Google index status
• Keyword rank tracker
• WooCommerce SEO Pro
• Advanced schema generator

Notably, Rank Math has numerous on-page SEO tools that will improve each of your web page’s SEO rankings. When you use Rank Math, you can optimize content for up to five keywords. Sounds great, right?

Are you eager to learn more about Rank Math’s core features? What are you waiting for? Jump into the next section of my Rank Math SEO plugin review now!

Rank Math Review: Setup Wizard

During the Rank Math wizard setup, you will have two options: Basic and Advanced. The basic options will help you tweak the standard SEO aspects, whereas the Advanced options are more appropriate for local SEO experts. 

Remember that you can only tweak the Advanced options after you complete the Basic options. Bear with me as I highlight each option thoroughly. 

1. Standard options

Before exploring how to install the Rank Math plugin, you need to know how to install the Rank Math plugin. The process is super easy, with no technical involvement. All you need to do is visit the plugin section of your WordPress website, search Rank Math, and activate the plugin. 

Once you activate the plugin, it will launch a wizard setup automatically. This way, you can configure the basic yet important aspects of your website. 

On the first page of the Rank Math setup wizard, you will see an option to connect to your Rank Math site by creating a free account. This may seem a little misleading, as it does seem like you must create a Rank Math account to access the plugin. 

However, this is not accurate. You don’t need to create or connect to a Rank Math account to access the plugin. But, connecting to a plugin will let you access some additional features like an SEO analysis tool. 

After that, it will open a page allowing you to choose your preferred setup mode. If you have less knowledge of SEO, you need to choose Easy mode, which will create a simplistic experience. 

But if you’re an SEO expert who wants to control different aspects of their website’s SEO algorithms, make sure you choose the Advanced mode. Once you choose your preferred option, click on the Start Wizard button to advance to the next step. 

Next, you will have an Import option. I feel this feature is really helpful for people who are switching to Rank Math from their previous SEO plugin. 

As you can see, Rank Math allows me to import SEO data from the Yoast SEO plugin. This is because I have Yoast installed on my website. If you don’t have any plugin installed, the Import option won’t come. 

Whether you’re using Yoast SEO or any other SEO plugin, you will be able to import numerous essential data items to Rank Math. Hence, you can save effort and time. If you don’t want to import, skip this step. But keep in mind that skipping this step will deactivate your existing SEO plugin. 

Now, in the next step, you can add some basic sitewide Schema markup. This includes your website name, website alternative name, and a site logo for Google. 

Make sure you choose the brand logo here. Uploading something different will confuse Google search engine crawlers and your audience. 

On the next screen, Rank Math will again ask you to connect to an account if you haven’t connected it already. 

But as I have mentioned before, this is not a mandatory instruction to use the Rank Math plugin. However, if you can leverage extra benefits of connecting to a Rank Math account. 

Next, Rank Math provides you with the flexibility to structure your XML sitemaps. This is one of the most important things you need to remember when setting up Rank Math. 

If you’re using WordPress, it can now create XML sitemaps all by itself, something WordPress developers recently added to its features list. However, Rank Math provides you with more controls. Remember that WordPress itself will enhance your business's SEO aspects.

On the last page, you can implement more advanced SEO solutions and customizations. This includes options like the Noindex Empty Category, Open External Links, and Nofollow External Links. 

If you don’t have knowledge of these SEO customization options, it’s better to leave them as defaults. You can always change them later according to your unique needs. 

And there you have it. You have successfully installed and personalized Rank Math according to your business’s SEO needs. 

While Rank Math does offer more advanced settings, you should check them out as you enhance your SEO game. Keep in mind that Rank Math releases occasional updates. The best way to stay updated is by enabling the auto-updation option. 

2. Advanced options

When you’re done with the basic options, you can either choose to return to your Rank Math homepage or set up the Advanced options. To do that, all you need to do is click on the Setup Advanced Options, and a new page will appear. 

The Advanced options are quite limited compared to the Basic options. The first one is Role Manager. 

The Role Manager will let you determine who can edit or view the Rank Math settings. You can turn on the Role Manager option if you have a large team and don’t want everyone to tweak the SEO settings. From there, you can select who controls which aspects of SEO. 

After you complete the Role Manager step, the next option is 404 Monitor. You can create default values for the 404 Monitor from this page. 

When you turn on the 404 Monitor option, you can know if web visitors encounter any errors while browsing your website. You can also turn on the Redirections to create a permanent or temporary redirection plugin.

Last but not least, the Schema Markup. Schema includes metadata to your website, making it achieve higher rankings in SERPs and gain more organic traffic. 

Once you enable all the options, click on the Save and Continue button. Now you’re completely done setting up the Basic and Advanced options. 

Remember that the Advanced options are not mandatory to set up. If you’re a beginner with less knowledge of complex SEO algorithms, I suggest you don’t tweak the Advanced options. 

Keep in mind that the wizard setup will have a massive impact on the Rank Math features you get on the dashboard. So, choose accordingly. If you don't know something, keep it in default.

Rank Math SEO Plugin Review: Standout features

Now, let’s come to the main aspects of my article. I’ll be affecting the article quality drastically if I don’t explain the core features in detail. 

So, bear with me as I explain why Rank Math should be the default SEO plugin for your WordPress website. Let’s get started. 

1. Primary Dashboard Overview

After you complete the setup wizard, you will be redirected to the primary dashboard of Rank Math. Now, this is where things get pretty interesting. 

As an SEO content writer, I have used numerous SEO plugins, but Rank Math’s dashboard is super intuitive and simple, hands down. You can control everything, and I mean every aspect of your SEO, directly from the dashboard. 

The first thing that will capture your attention is the modular fashion of the dashboard. You can easily toggle the features on and off depending on your needs without tweaking any code or complex segment. When you enable any feature, it will automatically appear as a new option on the sidebar menu. 

If you’re getting overwhelmed with lots of features, you can choose the Easy Mode, available in the top right corner. This will remove numerous features and settings. There’s a question mark icon just beside this option, which will redirect you to the documentation page. 

You can also access the essential Rank Math features from the WordPress admin bar menu. You don’t need to visit the Dashboard every time. 

This is everything you need to know about the Rank Math dashboard. Don’t worry! Neither this article nor the features are concluding. Let’s take a look at what SEO features you can expect from Rank Math. 

2. Content Analysis

The primary feature or the star of the show in Rank Math is its content analysis. If you have used Yoast SEO or any other competitor plugin before, you will find Rank Math pretty similar to them. However, Rank Math has some drastic changes and updates. 

You will find the Content Analysis feature on the right side of your WordPress editor. Just open any blog you want and this option will pop up automatically. 

Don’t be confused. It’s simpler than writing a blog. The first thing you need to do is enter a focus keyword in the respective field. The best part? You don’t need to type the entire keyword manually. Once you start typing, Rank Math will automatically fetch keyword suggestions from Google. 

The keyword suggestion feature will not only help you choose one or multiple keywords easily but is also excellent for collecting many keyword ideas. This is because you can add more than one keyword (I will be discussing this soon). Once you enter the focus keyword, the Rank Math plugin will analyze your content to determine SEO optimization. 

3. Core SEO Optimization

Can you guess how Rank Math determines the overall SEO optimization of your blog posts or articles? It does so by checking certain SEO-optimizing aspects. 

Rank Math splits the on-page SEO tips into four different categories. Make sure you pay close attention to each category, as they will determine the overall SEO score of your content. 

As you can see from the metrics above, Rank Math not only just reviews the on-page optimization of your blog but also focuses on user-friendliness and readability. While it doesn’t feature a specific readability section like Yoast SEO, it’s still super useful. 

4. Multiple Keyword Optimization

Even if you’re using the free plugin, you can still pick multiple keywords for your blog post. Just go to the focus keyword field and enter another two or three keywords. Although I use the Premium version of Rank Math, I am shocked to see this feature in the free version. 

Rank Math will highlight the optimization of individual keywords through color coding. For instance, if it’s deep green, it’s the primary keyword. 

The main keyword will also be marked with a star. To see the optimization level, click on any keyword. Make sure you don’t use any irrelevant focus keywords here. If you’re facing problems understanding anything, just click on the question mark icon. 

However, I have a criticism that I must share. The content analysis always look like it’s revolving around the focus keyword only. So, if all parts are appearing together in a sentence but not in sequence, it won’t count. 

Plus, you cannot edit the focus keyword once adding it. If you do need to change the focus keyword, you need to delete it and start from all over again. 

5. Pillar Content and Link Suggestions

The Pillar Content and Link Suggestions are another two core features of Rank Math. When you choose an article to be Pillar Content, you tell the plugin that it’s one of the most important pieces of evergreen content on your website. 

When you choose it, the tagged option will show under the Link Suggestions option. However, you need to turn this feature on from the Titles & Metas section. When activated, it will appear under the normal sidebar (Not in Rank Math sidebar). 

Make sure you link to the most important content under the relevant category. Unfortunately, this only works with the pillar content. While there is an option to copy URLs or enter the link to your content, both fail to work upon testing. 

6. Control Search Appearance

Apart from the content analysis tool, Rank Math also allows you to control how your blogs and articles appear on social media platforms and search engines. For instance, every post will have an Edit Snippet option for further customization. 

When you click on the Edit Snippet option, it will open a pop-up. This will let you preview and customize how your blog posts and articles look on Google search engine. 

At the top, you will notice a preview option. This will let you switch between desktop and mobile views. Thus, you can know how your articles or blog posts look on different devices. 

Below that, you will find the title, permalink, and description field. The title will automatically fill with the variables that you’ve set on the Titles & Meta. However, you can edit both the title and the description automatically. 

I personally find the color indicator super beneficial as it prevents me from making meta titles or descriptions that are too long. For instance, if you look at the title, the color indicator is green, implying that it’s short and under 60 characters. However, while the meta description is within the character limit, the px is longer. 

7. Social Appearance and Preview

At the top of the Edit Snippet page, you will find a social tab. From this tab, you can upload your content on Twitter and Facebook. 

Add a relevant image, choose personalized titles and descriptions, and choose whether you want to use icon overlay to make your content look GIF or video. While you can make your content GIF to increase click rate, it’s not very ethical. 

8. Advanced & Schema Options

Rank Math comes with an Advanced section. However, keep in mind that it’s not available when your Rank Math dashboard is set to easy mode. 

From here, you can set Robots Meta settings such as No Index, Nofollow, Index, etc. If you want to define a canonical URL, you can also set it from here. 

Additionally, under the Schema section, you will be able to use the Schema.org markup for this specific piece of content. 

You can use the Schema Generator to choose the most relevant type of content. Then, you can personalize it with additional information. This will help you stand out on the Google search results page. 

9. Bulk Editing

Finally, Rank Math allows you to edit all the SEO-related information for all of your content in bulk. When you activate the Rank Math plugin, you will find an additional column for SEO Details directly under the Post and Pages dashboard. 

For instance, you can edit the SEO Title, SEO Details, and SEO Description. However, you need to enable them from the Screen Options at the top. 

Here, you can see the SEO details. While I chose not to enable other options, you can do it for more convenience. When you click on the pen option, you can edit all the information. 

Whenever you make any edits, you can save them by clicking on the Save All Edits option. This option will save. This option will save all the changes you make, despite the changes you make. 

There you have it. The complete features of Rank Math. I believe you now have the necessary knowledge to use rank Math and enhance your business's SEO objectives.

Rank Math SEO Plugin Review: Pros and Cons

Now that you know the features, let’s quickly go through the pros and cons of Rank Math. With tons of Rank Math SEO reviews available on the internet, you can rely on it without worrying about anything. 

As you can see, the advanatges of Rank Math SEO plugin outweighs the drawbacks. But you need to use the premium version to leverage its best benefits.

Rank Math Pricing

Now that you know the features, let's take a look at the Rank Math SEO price. Rank Math offers three different pricing plans. Remember that Rank Math Content AI is priced separately.

The Rank Math Pro version individuals, bloggers, and solopreneurs. If you run a small business, the Rank Math Business plan would prove suitable for you. The most expensive pricing plan is more tailored to major businesses and agency owners.

Is Rank Math better than Yoast SEO?

That wraps up my Rank Math SEO plugin review. I believe you now have a proper understanding of the core features and capabilities of the Rank Math SEO plugin for WordPress. 

Is Rank Math Pro worth it? In short, Yes. Rank Math is a versatile SEO plugin perfect for websites of all sizes. While Yoast Premium is definitely a good plugin, Rank Math is better in terms of features like SEO aspects, readability, Schema markup, etc. 

What’s your opinion on my Rank Math SEO plugin review? If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to share your thoughts in the comment box below. 

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