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How to Use the Rank Math SEO Plugin: Step By Step Tutorial
Almost every WordPress website has an SEO plugin installed, but not everyone knows how to use them.
I’ve used Rank Math since 2021 when I finally ditched Yoast (major site speed issues at the time), and spent years learning the ins and outs of the program. Honestly, it’s not that hard to use. But I like to break things down to find out every possible use case.
You don’t need to do that, because I’ve done it for you and laid it all out here! I’ve figured out what pages to index, to how the heck to index anything, to what optimization tips from Rank Math are B.S.
Remember: an SEO plugin is not a substitute for an SEO strategy.
It can be used to benefit your SEO strategy if you’re using it properly – or to completely undo it if you’re misusing the plugin.
👉 Download the best free SEO plugin today (psst… it’s Rank Math!)
Rank Math Free vs. Paid Plan
Rank Math has a free and a paid option. I’ve had both.
The paid plan has tiers for bloggers/single website owners (“Pro”), and agencies (“Business” and “Agency”). I’ll cover the free and Pro plans here.
| Features | Free Plan | Pro Plan |
|---|---|---|
| Price | $0 | $6.99/mo or $95.88/year |
| Number of Sites | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| Install Google Analytics and Other Search Engines Code | Yes | Yes |
| 18 Schema Types | Yes | Yes +6 extra +custom generator |
| Image SEO | Yes | Yes +Advanced |
| Keywords Per Post | 5 | 50 |
| Customize Meta Description, Post URL, SEO Title, Social Media Image and Title, No Follow Settings | Yes | Yes |
| Detect Orphan Posts | No | Yes |
| Redirections | Yes | Yes |
| Elementor and Divi Custom Schema and SEO | No | Yes |
| Watermark Social Media Images | No | Yes |
| Local SEO, Podcast SEO, News SEO, and Video SEO | No | Yes |
| Keyword Rank Tracking | No | Up to 500 |
| WooCommerce SEO | No | Yes |
| Track Google Indexing | No | Yes |
| Instant Index | Yes | Yes |
| Advanced G4 Analytics | No | Yes |
| Free Content AI Credits | 0 | 5,000 |
| Bing, Google, Pinterest, and Google Site Verification | Yes | Yes |
| Sitemaps and Breadcrumbs | Yes | Yes |
Unless your blog has a podcast, is a news site, or you are focused on local SEO, I don’t recommend upgrading to Rank Math Pro.
You just don’t need it.
ChatGPT can help you custom create schema so that you don’t need to pay for Rank Math Pro to do it for you. And I don’t recommend trying to track 50 keywords per blog post.
I downgraded after 1 year and have kept the free plan ever since.
How to Install Rank Math
Rank Math is a free plugin for WordPress websites. You can find it in the Plugin Library.
Simply “Add New Plugin”, and search for Rank Math (the space is needed). It will be the first thing to come up.
Click “Install” and then “Activate”.
The plugin won’t work just yet. You’ll have to go through the Setup Wizard to connect it to your analytics, give it information for your schema, and start setting up your site settings.
👉 Download the best free SEO plugin today (psst… it’s Rank Math!)
Rank Math Setup Wizard
Now that you’ve activated Rank Math, it’s time to set it up.
Rank Math has a “Setup Wizard” you need to go through to turn on different features.
It can be a bit overwhelming the first time you see it, but I’ll walk ya through it step by step!
If you’re new to Rank Math, it’ll redirect you to this page the moment you “Activate” the plugin.
However, if you have Rank Math already and need to change something, you’ll go to RankMath -> “Dashboard” -> “Setup Wizard” (It’s in the top menu tabs).
This will open up the start of the Wizard. You need to choose between Easy, Advanced, or Custom. We want “Advanced” to get more specifics, but not so advanced you need to be a developer.
Before you advance the Wizard, it will check for any conflicting plugins or out of date PHP versions. Make sure nothing is conflicting before clicking the “Start Wizard”.
If you have another SEO plugin installed currently, this is where you’ll find the conflict and be able to import the old data from that plugin (instructions here).
Your Site
“Your Site” is where you fill in sitewide schema for your site. It’s really simple, you just fill in the entry boxes.
You need to specify:
| Field | Description |
|---|---|
| Type of Site | “Personal Blog” if it’s a blog, “Small Business Site” for a small business, and “Webshop” for an e-commerce business. I use “Personal Blog” for all my sites. |
| Website Name | Full name of the site. I.e. “She Knows SEO”. |
| Website Alternate Name | Acronym or short form version of the website’s name. I.e. “SKS”. |
| Person/Organization Name | Name of the person or company running the website. This will be picked up by Google for the Knowledge Panel. For example, “Alphabet” is the company behind “Google”. And “Nina Clapperton” is the person behind “She Knows SEO”. |
| Logo for Google | Upload a 112×122 px SVG file of your logo. This will be used by the search engine, not shown on your site. |
| Default Social Share Image | If a blog post or other URL from your site doesn’t have a Featured Image, this will be the default image shown instead. This is usually a header image showing the full name of the website. It may or may not include the logo. It should be 1200×630 px and usually is a JPG. |
Analytics
The “Analytics” tab is where you connect your Google accounts to Rank Math.
You connect the plugin to a Google account – make sure it’s the one that your Google Search Console and Google Analytics are connected to! – here with a single click.
If you have multiple websites under the account, you will need to select from the “Property” dropdown which website you want.
I recommend turning on the following:
- “Index Status Tab” under the “Search Console”. This encourages Rank Math to automatically push new posts to Google Search Console for indexing. Then you can also see which URLs are indexed, crawled, or blocked.
- “Install Analytics Code” under the “Analytics”. to install your G4 code if you haven’t installed it manually or with another plugin. Do not have the code more than once on your website!
- “Exclude Logged-in Users” to prevent G4 from tracking your pageviews when you are checking your site while logged in. This means it will only track real traffic from users.
Adsense installation is now a “Pro” option. It used to be able to install your Adsense code automatically, but I don’t think it’s worth the cost to upgrade for this.
If you have Pro, it will operate the same as the Analytics above. Select the proper site within the AdSense account, and it’ll add the code to run Adsense ads.
I don’t allow email reports, but you can turn this on to get email reports from Google Analytics about your analytics.
You can see these on your site, so I don’t see a need for more junk in my inbox.
Sitemaps
A Sitemap is essentially a library list of your website’s posts/pages/images URLs. It shows a search engine all of the posts, pages, and more elements of your site so Google can understand that they exist.
Every page is a book being categorized in this .XML file library so Google can find it.
You need to select what you want included.
I turn on:
- Sitemaps
- Include Images
- Public Post Types -> Posts, Pages, Stories (if you have web stories). I do not turn on Elements or anything that’s not something I’d index, like Kadence Elements.
- Public Taxonomies -> Categories
Optimization
The Optimize section is also called “SEO Tweaks”. This is where you can set site-wide SEO rules.
I turn on:
- “Noindex Empty Category and Tag Archives”
- “Open External Links in New Tab/Window”
But I turn off “Nofollow External Links”. Sometimes we do want Google to follow our external links, so we don’t want to automatically set them all to this.
Advanced Rank Math Settings
Once you have finished your standard setup, the final page is called “Ready”. Click on the “Setup Advanced Options” button in the bottom right corner.
Role Manager
Role Manager allows you to set which user roles on your website have access to certain Rank Math settings.
It defaults to the admin having all the access, while subscribers have no access.
I leave these in their default settings.
404 + Redirection
The 404 Monitor allows you to turn on detection of 404 pages. It will help you find any page on your website that is a broken link where the user ends up on a “this page doesn’t exist” warning.
You can also turn on Redirections here to redirect broken links or changed URLs to the proper address. This stops users from encountering these error pages.
I turn on both of these settings.
Schema Markup
Schema is a type of metadata code that tells Google what your website is.
In the “Your Site” section earlier, we told Google who you are, but not what your website is. This is where we set that up at a page level.
Turn on “Schema Type” and select the proper schema for your blog posts, pages, and any other element.
Posts should always be an “Article” -> “Blog Post”. While pages are typically an “Article” -> “Article”.
However, if you have a news website, you will want a “News Article” type.
If an element is not meant to be included in your sitemap, do not give it a schema type.
Save that and your settings are configured!
Video Tutorial
Migrating from Yoast or All In One SEO
The Free and Pro plans both include a 1 Click Import for Yoast, AIO SEO, and SEOPress.
It’s very easy to make the switch. I switched over from Yoast this way:
- Do not deactivate or delete the other plugin yet!
- Before you start the wizard, Rank Math will tell you that you have a conflict with the SEO plugin
- Click “Deactivate Plugin” from this menu listing the conflicts. This will deactivate it, but save the data.
- Rank Math will prompt you to “Import SEO Settings” on a new page. I recommend importing all of the settings (“select all). This will import your tracked keywords, sitemaps, and meta data.
- Wait until the import says “100% complete” then “Continue” onto the rest of the setup.
This is the easiest way to transfer content from one SEO plugin to another.
You can also do this in the manual “import” area under Rank Math -> “Status & Tools” -> “Import & Export”.
If you use any Yoast schema, such as the FAQ blocks, you will need to convert them to Rank Math.
That can be done under Rank Math -> “Status & Tools” -> “Database Tools”. Select the “Yoast Block Converter” and click “Convert Blocks”.
This will automatically switch them over. You can do the same for any other schema with the “Schema Converter” on the same page.
In just a couple clicks, you’ll have all your data easily transferred over!
Custom Rank Math SEO Dashboard Settings
You can continue to customize Rank Math so it does exactly what works for your site.
I’ll share my exact settings with y’all for each option.
Dashboard
The Rank Math Dashboard shows different “Modules” (aka. extra options you can turn on or off for Rank Math).
| Module | Description | Setting |
|---|---|---|
| Content AI | Rank Math’s built in AI writer | Off, unless using the Rank Math AI |
| 404 Monitor | Tracks 404 errors on your website | On |
| ACF | Reads Advanced Custom Fields and analyzes the content | Off, unless using Advanced Custom Fields for content sections |
| AMP | Creates Accelerated Mobile Pages with less code for faster mobile sites (not best practice for Google) | Off |
| Analytics | Connects Rank Math to GSC and GA | On |
| bbPress | Adds meta tags to bbPress forums | Off, unless you’re running a bbPress forum |
| BuddyPress | Adds meta tags to BuddyPress forums | Off, unless you’re running a BuddyPress forum |
| Image SEO | Advanced image SEO, including automated Alt text and Title tags | On |
| Instant Indexing | Automatically notifies all search engines of changes to the sitemap (new posts, deleted posts, no indexed posts, updated posts) | On |
| Link Counter | Counts outbound and inbound internal links to a post, and external links from a post on the Posts list page | On |
| Local SEO | Optimize site for local SEO knowledge graph | Off, unless you’re a local physical business |
| News Sitemap | Create a news sitemap for news content sites | Off, unless it’s a news site |
| Podcast | Connect podcast RSS to Google Podcasts, Apple Podcasts, etc. with schema | Off, unless it’s a podcast website |
| Redirections | Redirects links to new URLs on the same website | On |
| Schema (Structured Data) | Adds schema data to a website to ensure Google understand the content and knowledge better | On |
| Role Manager | Control which user roles can access which parts of Rank Math | On |
| SEO Analyzer | At a glance analysis of the entire website’s SEO, such as which posts have a “green” Rank Math score | On |
| Sitemap | Creates a sitemap that search engines can crawl. Supports hreflang tag for multi-lingual sites | On |
| Video Sitemap | Improve video rankings | Off (publish your videos to Youtube and embed them. They’ll rank on Youtube which has better video schema) |
| Google Web Stories | Connect Google Web Stories to proper schema and meta data | Off, unless you’re using Google Web Stories |
| WooCommerce | Add product schema to e-commerce products in WooCommerce | Off, unless you have Woo |
Analytics
The Analytics area shows you summaries of your website’s analytics. The dashboard here shows you how many blog posts on your website are optimized to a good, fair, poor, or “no data” level according to Rank Math.
I ignore this metric.
SEO Performance pulls data from your Google Search Console to show your impressions, keywords positions, and clicks.
If you have Pro, you’ll also be able to see how many keywords you have in each position on Google, and what your best/worst keywords were in the last period.
The Rank Tracker will track up to 500 keywords on Pro.
The Index Status shows you that status of each URL on your site if you’re on the Pro plan. This can help you find posts that aren’t indexed, but are meant to be indexed.
General Settings
General Settings will help you further customize your site.
There’s a fair amount to cover here, so I’m going to put it in h4 headers for each tab with tables for the settings to make it easier to follow.
Links:
| Field | Description | Setting |
|---|---|---|
| Strip Category Base | Removes the “/category/” from the URL for category archives. It would change it from https://sheknowsseo.co/category/seo to https://sheknowsseo.co/seo. Doesn’t make a huge difference for SEO, but it looks cleaner without | Doesn’t matter |
| Redirect Attachments | Redirects all URLs from attachments to the posts they appear in. It doesn’t matter hugely, because you shouldn’t be uploading attachments to your website (i.e. PDFs) | On |
| Redirect Orphan Attachments | Any attachment that isn’t tied to a specific post will have its URL redirected to whatever URL you type in here | Type in a URL. I do my homepage. |
| Nofollow External Links | Marks every external link as nofollow. We want search engines to see some external links, but this would mark every single one for Google to ignore it | Off |
| Nofollow Image File Links | Marks every image URL as nofollow so search engines cannot see the URL. This could have implications on ranking these images in Google’s image search if turned on | Off |
| Open External Links in New Tab/Window | Opens all external links in a new tab or new window, to ensure the user still has your tab/window open on their device and can come back to your content | On |
Breadcrumbs:
Breadcrumbs are like Hansel and Gretel: they are a way for search engines to find their way to your website’s home from the page it’s on.
It’s usually structured: [Homepage] > [Category] > [Blog Post]
| Field | Description | Setting |
|---|---|---|
| Enable breadcrumbs function | Turns on breadcrumbs site-wide | On |
| Separator Character | Choose the icon type to separate the individual pages/posts/categories in the breadcrumbs. I use “>>” | Select one |
| Show Homepage Link | Includes “Home” in the breadcrumbs structure. | On |
| Homepage label | Type in what you want the homepage to be called. I use “Home” | Type in text |
| Homepage Link | The URL of your homepage | Type in the URL |
| Prefix Breadcrumb | Text before the breadcrumb path | Leave blank |
| Archive Format | Text label for archive pages. Mine defaults to “Archives for” | Type in text |
| Search Results Format | Text label at the top of the search results within your site. Mine defaults to “You searched for” | Type in text |
| 404 label | Text label for 404 error pages. Mine defaults to “Error 404: Page not found” | Type in text |
| Hide Post Title | Hides the blog post title from showing in the breadcrumb structure | Off |
| Show Category(s) | Shows every category if the category is a “child” or subcategory (i.e. Home > SEO > Keyword > [Blog Post]) | On |
| Hide Taxonomy Name | Taxonomies refer to categories, tags, etc. in Rankmath. This specifically hides the category name in your breadcrumbs. | Off |
| Show Blog Page | Shows the name of a blog page in the breadcrumbs. This can be on or off, but most pages don’t have breadcrumbs showing (think about a blog homepage. It doesn’t make sense and ruins the aesthetics) | Off |
Images:
The images are allows you to automatically add missing alt and title text to an image.
This sounds great, HOWEVER it has a big catch. It’s going to auto insert text from something like the file name or blog post title.
That isn’t good alt text, it isn’t image specific, and it isn’t helpful to the user.
I recommend keeping these both off and manually adding proper alt text and titles, especially if you’re not giving your images relevant file names.
Webmaster Tools:
Add in verification codes for different search engines, like Bing, Yandex, Pinterest, and Google Search Console. This is an easy way to connect third party webmaster tools to get data from your website and track performance.
Edit robots.txt:
Leave this alone!
Unless you’re a developer, do not touch this. This is your robots.txt file. It tells search engine bots what not to go visit/crawl of your website. It autogenerates with your no index tags, so leave it alone.
Others:
| Field | Description | Setting |
|---|---|---|
| Headless CMS Support | Separates the back and front ends of your site. This is mostly for mobile apps | Off |
| Show SEO Score to Visitors | Shows the Rank Math SEO score of each blog post to visitors | Off |
| RSS Before Content | Add content before every post in the website’s feed. You can only input meta data like a link to an author page. I leave it empty | Customize |
| RSS After Content | Add content after every post in the website’s feed. You can only input meta data like a link to an author page. I leave it empty | Customize |
Blocks:
Customize the Table of Contents block by Rank Math.
I don’t use this block. I prefer Easy Table of Contents, but if I did I would use these settings:
- Title: Table of Contents
- List: Unordered
- Exclude Headings: H4, H5, H6
Edit .htaccess:
Allows you to change settings on your website’s server directly from your WordPress dashboard. This can affect how your website’s URLs look, improve security, manage visitor access, and more, but should be used carefully as incorrect settings can disrupt your site’s operation.
If, like me, you’re not a developer, leave this alone.
404 Monitor:
I use the “Simple” 404 log. It only shows up to 100 errors – you’ll get some random ones so it prioritizes the ones with the most hits.
For example if someone types in “https://sheknowsseo.co/ajfg;senrgks;rjtnbkljdnrglkjn” they are going to get an error.
That’s ok! It’s not a real page and their cat probably stepped on the keyboard, so they probably didn’t even want to find that page.
You can exclude paths if, for example, you deleted a whole category recently and don’t want to be alerted to any 404 notices.
I turn on “Ignore Query Parameters”. This ignores the code after a “?” in a code. It’s the default, so I leave it on.
Redirections:
This area lets you auto set redirect rules.
I keep everything in the default options here, except for the “Fallback Behaviour”. I want to redirect to my homepage rather than a 404 if there isn’t a relevant post. At least that way there’s a chance they’ll find some helpful info to keep them on my website.
It’s a 301 move, and no debug or auto redirects in the other defaults.
Analytics:
Inherits from the “Analytics” in the Setup Wizard.
Title & Meta
Global Meta
| Field | Description | Setting |
|---|---|---|
| Robots Meta | Set defaults for all posts on the website. Choose between indexing or no indexing, no following or no archiving, and opting out of snippets | Select “Index” |
| Advanced Robots Meta | Set limits for the length/size of snippets, videos, and images | Leave defaults (-1) for no maximum |
| Noindex Empty Category and Tag Archives | Prevents search engines from reading categories and tags that have no content | On |
| Separator Character | Choose the character that separates elements in a meta title (i.e. between a post title and the site name). I use the default “-” | Choose any |
| Capitalize Titles | Automatically use title case (aka. the first letter of every word in the title is capitalized) | Choose either |
| OpenGraph Thumbnail | Default image when there’s no featured image to be shared on socials (auto populates from the Setup Wizard) | Upload an image that is 1200×630 px |
| Twitter Card Type | Type of preview shown on Twitter when shared (this will be copied for Facebook as well). Choose just a summary or a summary with an image | Summary and image |
Local SEO
Inherits from the “Your Site” in the Setup Wizard.
Social Meta
Connect your relevant social profiles to Rank Math. This will populate schema for your website to tie the accounts to your profiles.
You can add any specific URLs that there aren’t fields for, you can add the full URL into the “Additional Profiles” area.
Homepage
If you have a static homepage, you won’t have settings here. You will set these on your “Home” page.
Otherwise, you can add the information here such as the meta description, the title to share on socials, and a picture for social media.
Authors
These settings are for author archive pages – and they can impact your author boxes. These are the pages that house a list of every blog post a user on your blog has written.
| Field | Description | Setting |
|---|---|---|
| Author Archives | Turns on author archives | Enabled |
| Author Base | The base text to show that this is an author page. Typically “author” | Customize |
| Author Robots Meta | Allows you to set custom metas for all author pages | On |
| Author Robots Meta | Customize the author meta, such as indexing or no following. You want these pages indexed. However, if you have extra users on your site who are not writing content as authors, you will want to no index this and manually index individual author pages. | Index |
| Author Advanced Robots | Sets maximum length/size for snippets, videos and image previews on search engines. -1 means there is no maximum | Default (-1) |
| Author Archive Title | The title that shows for author pages on search engines. It defaults to pull the person’s name, the site name, and the page number | Default (%name%, Author at %sitename% %page%) |
| Author Archive Description | The meta description for the author archive. You can customize this at a user level, which is better. Leave it blank here | Leave blank |
| Slack Enhanced Sharing | Adds author name and total number of posts when the link is shared on Slack | Enabled |
| Add SEO Controls | Adds unique SEO controls per author page so you can customize them | Enabled |
Misc Pages
Customize SEO for additional pages.
| Field | Description | Setting |
|---|---|---|
| Date Archives | Date based archives (i.e. all posts published in December 2023) | Disable |
| 404 Title | Search engine result meta title for 404 pages | Default (Page not found %sep% %sitename%) |
| Search Results Title | Search engine result meta title for search results within the website | Default (You searched for %search_query% %page% %sep% %sitename%) |
| Noindex Search Results | Prevent search engines from crawling onsite search pages | On |
| Noindex Subpages | Prevent search engines from crawling subpages (i.e. blog archive page 2) | On |
| Noindex Paginated Single Pages | Prevent search engines from crawling the first of paginated pages (i.e. blog archive page 1 | Either, depending on value |
| Noindex Password Protected Pages | Prevent search engines from crawling password protected pages | On |
Posts
These are the default settings that every blog post will have across your website. You can customize individual posts.
| Field | Description | Setting |
|---|---|---|
| Single Post Title | Meta title of the blog post. Naturally inherits from the blog post. Remove extraneous meta data like the site name. Max 60 characters | %title% |
| Single Post Description | Meta description that shows in the search engine results. Maximum 160 characters | %excerpt% |
| Schema Type | Default schema type for blog posts | Article |
| Headline | A headline for users to read on the page for the title of the post | %seo_title% |
| Description | Meta description that shows to summarize the post | %seo_description% |
| Article Type | Schema type for the specific blog post | Blog Post |
| Post Robots Meta | Enables custom SEO options | Enable |
| Post Robots Meta | Allows you to set whether posts are indexable | Index |
| Post Advanced Robots Meta | Sets maximum length/size for snippets, videos and image previews on search engines. -1 means there is no maximum | -1, -1, Large |
| Link Suggestions | Suggests internal links (I find it pretty glitchy. I prefer Link Whisper) | Disable |
| Link Suggestion Titles | Choose whether the title or the focus keyword (as set in Rank Math) | Either |
| Primary Taxonomy | The taxonomy to show in breadcrumbs | Category |
| Slack Enhanced Sharing | Adds author name and total number of posts when the link is shared on Slack | Enabled |
| Add SEO Controls | Adds unique SEO controls per author page so you can customize them | Enabled |
| Bulk Editing | Allow bulk editing within the WordPress dashboard post list screen | Enable |
| Custom Fields | Any custom fields to include | Add whatever, I leave it empty |
Pages
Copy the same from “Posts”, but the “Article Type” is “Article”.
Attachments
This allows you to set meta tags for attachments. We previously set this to redirect, so we won’t have options here.
You should be storing attachments like PDFs off site, so you shouldn’t need this.
Stories, Elements, Etc.
These may or may not show up, depending on your theme. These are extra “post types”.
Copy the “posts” settings.
Categories
| Field | Description | Setting |
|---|---|---|
| Category Archive Titles | SEO title for category pages in search engines | %term% Archives %page% %sep% %sitename% |
| Category Archive Descriptions | Meta description for category archive pages in search engines | %term_description% |
| Category Archives Robots Meta | Enables custom SEO options | On |
| Category Archives Robots Meta | Allows you to set whether categories are indexable | Index |
| Category Archives Advanced Robots Meta | Sets maximum length/size for snippets, videos and image previews on search engines. -1 means there is no maximum | -1, -1, Large |
| Slack Enhanced Sharing | Adds author name and total number of posts when the link is shared on Slack | On |
| Add SEO Controls | Adds unique SEO controls per author page so you can customize them | On |
| Remove Snippet Data | Removes schema data from category | Off |
Tags
Copy the same from the category section. However, I recommend no indexing tags.
Sitemap Settings
Specific settings for you sitemap. This is the map for search engines robots to understand your entire website.
General
| Field | Description | Setting |
|---|---|---|
| Links Per Sitemap | Set the maximum number of links per sitemap page | 200 |
| Images in Sitemaps | Include links to images in your sitemap | On |
| Include Featured Images | Include featured images in your sitemap | On |
| Exclude Posts | IDs of any posts/pages you don’t want included in your sitemap. The IDs are the number that is autogenerated by Google before you change the slug URL | Add IDs |
| Exclude Terms | IDs of any categories/tags you don’t want included in your sitemap. The IDs are the number that is autogenerated by Google before you change the slug URL | Add IDs |
HTML Sitemap
This sitemap is for human users of a site to navigate a hierarchical structured version of the website. You’ll often see these linked in website footers.
Posts
Set whether or not you want to include posts in sitemaps. I turn on sitemap and HTML sitemap.
Pages
See “Posts” above.
Attachments
Turn all off.
Elements, Stories, etc.
See “Posts” above.
Categories
Include in sitemap and HTML sitemap, but exclude empty terms.
Tags
Exclude from sitemaps.
Instant Indexing
Submit any URLs you specifically want indexed that have not yet been indexed with search engines.
You will need to select the post types for it to automatically submit in the “Settings” subtab.
History will show every post that has an index request (every time you update a post it will send a new request). It shows the last 100 requests.
Role Manager
See the “Role Manager” settings from the Setup Wizard.
404 Monitor
Lists every 404 error log, and the last time they were accessed. This helps you find any URLs that are regularly getting 404 errors and will help you figure out what posts require redirects for the URLs.
Redirections
This page shows every redirect on your site and is where you can create new redirects.
Redirects go from one URL to another.
You may need a redirect if you have changed a post’s URL, or if you have deleted an old post and need to point it to a new URL instead.
The report includes the “hits” – aka. the uses of this redirect – since it was created. If it is used very often, you will want to keep it.
If only one person uses it, it’s not really necessary to have the redirect in place.
SEO Analyzer
This is the SEO Analyzer from the “Analytics” area expanded upon.
This is an SEO report for your website that runs general tests, like images missing alt text, site speed, and keywords used on the site.
I don’t really use this feature, but it can be interesting to check out.
Status & Tools
Developers can use this area to understand the current model of Rank Math running.
Users can use the “Import” area to switch over from another SEO plugin to Rank Math.
If your site’s database is bloated, you can use the “Database Tools” to clear caches and remove historic data, like the 404 error log.
Help & Support
This will redirect you to the contact area for Rank Math to get support with any errors.
How to Use Rank Math to SEO Optimize a Blog Post
Now that your Rank Math settings are properly calibrated, we can use Rank Math to help individual blog posts and pages rank on search engines like Google.
Please remember that an SEO plugin is a guide. It does not guarantee rankings!
Rank Math Sidebar
On the right sidebar, you will find the Rank Math settings that are post-specific.
You can access them by clicking on the square icon with an “/100” score. It will be 0 to start and grey. The colour will change from red to yellow to green depending on your “score” for optimizing the post.
Under the “General” settings, you can set the following (click “Edit Snippet” to access the extras):
| Field | Description | Setting |
|---|---|---|
| Focus Keyword | Up to 5 keywords on the free plan, or up to 50 keywords on Pro, to track in the blog post. These only show up internally. They have no bearing on search engines | Input your primary keyword and any secondary keywords. Input your primary keyword first |
| Title | The SEO title for your blog post. This automatically inherits from your blog post title (we set this up earlier in the custom settings). You can override this by deleting the text auto populated and writing in a new title. I only do this if the blog post title is too long (over 60 characters) | Leave as is, unless title is too long |
| Permalink | Customize the URL for this specific blog post, also called the “slug”. Keep this short and sweet, with no dates. It must be a unique URL so it doesn’t conflict with another blog post or page on your website | Input your primary keyword as the permalink |
| Meta Description | A 160 character description of the blog post that will show in the search results as a preview for your blog post. | Write a 1-2 sentence description of the blog post to encourage people to read it. Include the primary keyword |
Under the “Advanced” tab (it’s the little toolbox), you can adjust the post’s meta:
- Index (default)
- No Index
- Nofollow
- No Archive
- No Image Index
- No Snippet
You likely will only ever need to no index a blog post out of these options.
You can also set the canonical URL here, or set a redirect.
You will not need to adjust the schema unless you have the Pro plan and are writing a specific type of post that isn’t a blog post, such as a course page or a job posting.
Most of the schema in this function can be done for free with WPRM (a free recipe plugin) or Mediavine Create.
You can set the social OpenGraph data in the last button option. Click “Edit Snippet” to see a preview, change the image for socials, or change the text that will post when someone shares the blog post.
Rank Math also allows you to set a piece of content as “Pillar Content”.
Most people confuse pillar content, silo content, and cluster content.
Marking a piece of content as Pillar Content in Rank Math has no bearing on its rankings. It just makes Rank Math suggest it more often for link suggestions, if you have that setting turned on.
I don’t turn this on.
Rank Math Post Schema
Rank Math has built in Gutenberg blocks with schema.
Schema is structured data that helps search engines understand what a piece of content is. For example, an image has meta data that says “this is an image”.
Rank Math has 4 blocks that you can implement on the free plan:
| Schema Type | Description |
|---|---|
| FAQ | Identifies a block as an FAQ question and answer |
| Table of Contents | Creates a Table of Contents for the post/page. Inherits settings from the Custom Settings area |
| HowTo | Identifies a how to/step-by-step tutorial. Often used with craft sites |
| Schema | Custom schema block |
Rank Math Post Optimization Checklist
Rank Math, just like any SEO plugin, suggests ways to optimize a blog post for SEO.
The suggestions are extremely out of date. It’s very 2010 SEO.
Unfortunately, people often try to turn the “Focus Keyword” green (81+ out of the 100 points for optimization).
Google punishes sites that over optimize their content. I don’t want your content to suffer because you trust a plugin too much – I’ve been there!
Rank Math can only match exact uses of the keyword. “Things to do in Rome” will count, but “Rome things to do” won’t count. Always use your common sense: you are smarter than this automated checklist.
When I say “yes” to following these recommendations, it is a general rule. There are always exceptions to the rule!
Let’s go through the options one by one:
| Field | Description | Should You Do It? |
|---|---|---|
| Add Focus Keyword to the SEO title. | Include your primary keyword in your blog title (specifically, the SEO title that search engines see). This helps users know that the post will answer their query | Yes |
| Add Focus Keyword to your SEO Meta Description. | Include your primary keyword in the post’s meta description. This helps users determine if the content is relevant to their query | Yes |
| Use Focus Keyword in the URL. | Include the primary keyword in the URL for this webpage. This helps keep it clear what the focus of the page is, but it also ensures you don’t have multiple pages with the same URL | Yes |
| Use Focus Keyword at the beginning of your content. | If relevant, try to include the primary keyword in the first 100 words of the content. This helps users understand that | Maybe |
| Use Focus Keyword in the content. | Include the primary keyword at least one time in the blog post. This helps the user and search engines know that you are answering the query | Yes |
| Content should be 600-2500 words long. | A recommended minimum length for a blog post for SEO. This length varies by keyword, but it is best to have over 600 words of content | Yes |
| Use Focus Keyword in subheading(s) like H2, H3, H4, etc. | Depending on the keyword and the post, it can be beneficial to use the keyword in one header inside the blog post. You need to be careful of overusing the keyword though | Maybe |
| Add an image with your Focus Keyword as alt text. | 99% of blog posts benefit from having an image to break up content or demonstrate a point. Image alt text should be descriptive and informative, which often means referencing or alluding to a keyword. Do not force a keyword into the alt text | Maybe |
| Keyword Density is 0. Aim for around 1% Keyword Density. | Google used to rely on the number of times a keyword was used to determine if it was on topic. That hasn’t been the case for years, but SEO plugins haven’t updated this. I never look at keyword density and don’t recommend you do | No!! |
| URL unavailable. Add a short URL. | Every blog post should have a custom URL. It is recommended that a URL is up to 75 characters long. Short and sweet is best, where possible, since it’s easier to remember to type in | Yes |
| Link out to external resources. | It is best practice to link out to external resources, usually to back up information with sources. I recommend 3 per blog post | Yes |
| Add DoFollow links pointing to external resources. | You need links to external sources. If they aren’t do follow, search engines can’t see them. This field means you need to have external links that aren’t affiliate links (which should be marked no follow) | Yes |
| Add internal links in your content. | You should have at least 10 internal links in every post/page | Yes |
| Set a Focus Keyword for this content. | Every piece of content should have a keyword for it to rank on a search engine, but having it set in Rank Math has no bearing on SEO | Doesn’t impact SEO |
| Use Content AI to optimise the Post. | Rank Math wants you to use the built in Content AI tool to write part of your blog post. You do not need to use the AI tool to help your SEO | Doesn’t impact SEO |
| Use the Focus Keyword near the beginning of SEO title. | Include your primary keyword in your title, and as close to the front as possible, to immediately show your user that you are answering their query | Yes |
| Titles with positive or negative sentiment work best for higher CTR. | Some blog posts do better with an evocative title, like “best” or “worst”. But not all! If relevant, and not clickbait, you should try to include an emotive word | No |
| Add power words to your title to increase CTR. | Power words are often emotional, sensory or seductive. They can be things like “free” or “new”. When possible, try to use them for more clicks. But it doesn’t necessarily impact rankability and can actually be incredibly awkward in some titles | No |
| Add a number to your title to improve CTR. | List posts should always have a number. Odd numbers especially help with CTR – BUT other posts don’t need numbers. Don’t add them just to “game” the system | No |
| Use Table of Content to break-down your text. | Table of Contents in a blog post are helpful for user experience. Users like to be able to get an at-a-glance view of the content in a blog post. You can use any Table of Content block or plugin and Rank Math will recognize it | Yes |
| Add short and concise paragraphs for better readability and UX. | 1-3 sentence paragraphs perform best for online readers. No one wants to read a dissertation while they skim read informational content on their phone. Keep it short and sweet | Yes |
| Add a few images and/or videos to make your content appealing. | Walls of text are boring. Break it up with images, videos, or other multimedia elements. Even tables like this help break up content. Almost every blog post is benefited by having 1 image – but keep images and videos relevant to the content! | Yes |
Yoast vs. Rank Math: Which is Better?
Yoast and Rank Math are both SEO plugins that can help you optimize your blog to rank on search engines. Yoast has more limitations and a heavier code that slowed down my site.
I switched to Rank Math for the faster speeds, better schema, and the ability to add 5 keywords for optimization on the free plan.
Ultimately, neither is perfect. An SEO plugin doesn’t replace an SEO strategy.
But if I’m going to use one, I want to use the one that won’t hurt my site speed, has easy to implement schema, and offers the most functionality. (Aka. Rank Math!)
👉 Download the best free SEO plugin today (psst… it’s Rank Math!)
Conclusion
SEO plugins are just that: plugins. They are meant to aid your actual SEO strategy but they cannot replace a proper SEO strategy.
I see posts in Facebook groups constantly asking “why am I not ranking? All my posts are green according to Rank Math!”
Ultimately, you know better than a free plugin – or even a plugin that costs under $100 a year. If it was smart enough to guarantee rankings on Google, it’d cost thousands per month!
I do recommend having an SEO plugin installed for easy schema and analytics connections, but take everything else with a grain of salt.
Focus instead on an excellent SEO strategy to improve your rankings. That starts with a clearly defined niche and audience research before you move onto anything else.
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