After testing dozens of SEO plugins over the past five years, we can confidently say that most WordPress site owners are wasting time juggling multiple tools when they could be using just one. While competitors like Yoast and All in One SEO have their merits, Rank Math has emerged as the undisputed champion of WordPress SEO plugins—and here’s why it might be the last SEO tool you’ll ever need to install.
What sets Rank Math apart isn’t just its impressive feature set (though with 40+ modules, it’s certainly comprehensive). It’s the fact that this single plugin replaces an entire toolkit of SEO solutions that would typically cost hundreds of dollars per month. From advanced keyword optimization and schema markup to local SEO and WooCommerce integration, Rank Math delivers enterprise-level functionality without the enterprise price tag.
Why do you need an SEO Plugin in the first place?
Organic traffic remains the most sought-after kind of website traffic, and you can enjoy this free source of traffic when you write high-ranking blog posts. This is where SEO content writing comes in. SEO content writing is the term used to describe the art of crafting quality content around keywords with viable/ample search volume in a bid to rank for that keyword in search engines and attract organic web traffic.
Unfortunately, creating SEO content can be daunting for some individuals. Most finished content often turns out to be poorly optimized for search traffic. To overcome these challenges, developers like Bhanu Ahluwalia, Nimit Kashyap, and Suraj Vibhute rolled out SEO tools and plugins like Rank Math to assist online business owners and bloggers in optimizing and ranking their blog posts for particular keywords. This Rank Math plugin review will tell us if they succeeded or not.
Rank Math Review: What Features Make Rank Math A Good SEO Plugin for WordPress
Let’s take Rank Math for a quick spin and see what makes it the fast-rising SEO toolkit for WordPress.
Rank Math First-time Setup
Upon installation of the Rank Math SEO plugin, you will be greeted by the plugin’s setup wizard. The setup process is straightforward and can be completed in just a few minutes. There are three (3) setup modes, but you only have access to Easy and Advanced setups in the free version. This is a great approach, as beginners can opt for the easy setup and avoid getting overwhelmed with setting up SEO for their website, while SEO experts can exercise their skills. Rank Math also allows you to switch modes later from the settings panel.
Once you choose your poison, click the Start Wizard button.
After automatically filling in your site details with room for adjustments, you will come across the Connect Google Services step. Connecting your site to Rank Math will help you verify your site, submit your sitemap to Google Search Console, track your page and keyword rankings, set up Google Analytics for you, and suggest relevant keywords for your content. It will also give you access to Rank Math Content AI, which can help you write and optimize your content. You can skip this step if it’s off-putting to you or if you already have Google Analytics linked to your site using a different plugin, such as Google Site Kit.
And that’s all for the Easy setup mode. Nothing too tricky, right?
Rank Math On-Page SEO
Now that we have Rank Math set up, let’s fire up a blog post and see what Rank Math has in store for us under the hood.
Right off the bat, Rank Math already analyzed and scored our content 30/100. You can open up the Rank Math on-page SEO toolbox by clicking on the score in the top right corner.
You first need to enter your focus keyword. Doing this immediately bumped our SEO score to 78/100. You have to click on the Edit Snippet button to open the meta box. There, you can enter and preview your meta title, meta description, and permalink, as well as track the text length.
You can also edit social media metas, including the featured thumbnail, title, and description, by switching from the General tab to Social.
Content Analysis and Optimization
With the focus keyword entered, Rank Math will be able to analyze your content in real-time, identify your SEO mistakes, and provide optimization suggestions to improve readability and search engine ranking, in order to achieve a higher SEO score. Rank Math allows you to use up to five (5) focus keywords for your content and helps you rank for them. It also allows you to make any post “pillar content”.
The Basic SEO analysis will address your meta title, meta description, URL, focus keyword, and content length, ensuring they are properly optimized with your focus keyword. You can make the corrections yourself or use the Rank Math content AI, provided you have connected your site to your Rank Math account.
Taking it further, Rank Math also provides additional SEO analysis that addresses the optimization of subheadings and images with your focus keyword, keyword density, URL length, external and internal linking, and the use of the keyword in previous content.
Once the SEO part is sorted out, you can then attend to the content and title readability to ensure you are writing your content for humans, not search bots. This includes using power words, incorporating sentiments, utilizing paragraphs, creating a table of contents, and incorporating multimedia.
One fantastic thing about Rank Math is that you can see the summarized SEO details of your posts from the Posts List page.
Now, that’s just for optimizing content for on-page SEO, which Rank Math does a pretty decent job of. What other things can Rank Math do? Well, Rank Math comes with 11+ free and three premium modules or features, which can be enabled or disabled with just the click of a button.
When you switch from Easy to Advanced mode, you gain access to additional SEO features, including ACF, 404 monitoring, URL Redirections, and image SEO.
Some of the noteworthy features include:
Content AI
Rank Math Content AI gives you access to a collection of 40+ AI tools to help you write SEO-optimized content. This module, when enabled, provide AI suggestions for optimizing your pages and posts, such as suggesting related keywords and linking, generating meta title and description, polishing content intros and headings, etc.
Instant Indexing
Rank Math will notify search engines when pages and blog posts are added, modified, or deleted for better indexing of your content. This eliminates the need for you to manually resubmit your sitemap to GSC.
Local SEO
Rank Math allows you to optimize your website for Local SEO, allowing you to rank for local search keywords. Rank Math will enable you to set up your business information, including business name, contact details, website URL, business type, business hours, etc.
And you can also provide your Google Maps API key and Geo Coordinates to embed Google Maps on your site with the free version, eliminating the need for another WordPress Maps plugin.
Schema (Structured Data)
When enabled, Rank Math can add schema markup code to your website, which helps search engines understand the type of content on your pages (e.g., article, product, review, course, job posting, service, etc.). This results in richer displays on SERPs and an increase in CTR.
Apart from the general Title and Meta settings, Rank Math lets you modify the schema of individual posts and pages in the Post editor. Yet again, Rank Math eliminates the need to install any plugin for schema.
SEO Analyzer
In order to perform SEO analysis on your website, you have to use third-party websites such as Google pagespeed insights, Moz, and Semrush. But with Rank Math, you can assess your website SEO using the SEO analyzer. The SEO analyzer will provide both an overall SEO score and recommended improvements.
Sitemap Generator
What about one key component of SEO, the Sitemap? Rank Math still shines, creating XML sitemaps for submission to search engines, which helps search bots crawl your website. When enabled, Rank Math will automatically generate XML sitemaps for indexing, Posts, Pages, Categories, and Tags, as well as HTML sitemaps. You can also create a Video and News sitemap with the Pro version.
WooCoommerce
If you own an e-commerce website powered by WooCommerce, Rank Math can help you optimize your product and shop pages by including the metadata and schema for products, displaying your products effectively on SERPs.
Role Manager
Rank Math is packed with a comprehensive SEO role manager that allows you to assign roles and permissions for SEO optimizations. You can do this for all WordPress user types, including Administrator, Editor, Author, Contributor, Subscriber, Customer, and Shop Manager.
Image SEO
This option enables Rank Math to automatically add missing ALT and Title tags to your images to ensure your photos are properly optimized for SEO.
URL Redirections
Rank Math’s advanced mode includes a URL redirection feature, which is also available in the free version. You can create unlimited redirects, including 301 (permanent move), 302 (temporary move), 307 (temporary redirect), 410 (content deleted) and 451 (content unavailable due to legal issues) redirects.
404 Monitor
With Rank Math, you can also monitor 404 errors and identity the wrong URLs for which you can redirect to the right path. This will help resolve issues with missing pages, improve your SEO analysis, and ensure a smooth user experience.
Other Features
Some of the not-so-exciting features of Rank Math include:
- AMP: If you serve the AMP version of your site to mobile devices, this module will automatically add the required tags. This is not a particularly exciting feature, as most WordPress websites use responsive designs to display web pages across various screens and devices.
- ACF: If you or your theme uses advanced custom fields (ACF), this feature will enable Rank Math to read and analyze content written in the advanced custom fields.
- Analytics: When you connect Rank Math with Google Search Console, Rank Math Analytics will be able to provide some key information concerning your SEO directly on your dashboard. However, this is a very limited feature, especially in the free version. In our opinion, it’s best to have this module turned off and use better alternatives, such as Google Site Kit or MonsterInsight, etc.
- Link Counter: This module displays the number of internal and external links within your posts, which can be viewed on the Posts List page.
Rank Math Pro Plugin Price Review
This Rank Math plugin review would not be complete without discussing the Rank Math Pro price. There is no doubt that the Rank Math free version packs a powerful punch. However, the Pro version offers more features, flexibility, and possibilities.
According to Rank Math pricing, Rank Math Pro costs from $5.75/month, with the Business and Agency plans costing $20.99/month and $49.99/month, respectively.
Go to Rank Math’s official website and from the Pricing page, select the plan you intend to buy. Fill in the checkout field and make the payment using a debit/credit card, PayPal, Google Pay, or Amazon Pay. You can proceed to download the Pro version of Rank Math after confirming your purchase. Then, upload and activate the plugin on your site.
Rank Math Review Takeaway
SEO is a very crucial part of website success, and having the right SEO tools can boost visibility and CTRs. Rank Math emerges as one of the best SEO companions, thanks to its numerous available modules. It is the best choice of SEO plugin for beginners and advanced users.
Rank Math Reviews FAQs
Is Rank Math free or paid?
Rank Math offers both free (lite) and paid versions. However, the free version provides more features for SEO and website optimization.
What is the difference between Rank Math Free and Pro?
The Rank Math free version includes 11+ features or modules, while the Pro version features 14+ modules, including more in-depth SEO analysis and recommendations.
Which is better, Yoast or Rank Math?
Rank Math is better because it is more user-friendly and offers additional features that are lacking in Yoast. Additionally, some of Yoast’s paid features are available for free in Rank Math, saving you a significant amount of money.
Which is better, Rank Math or AIOSEO?
Rank Math offers more schema options and comprehensive SEO functionality when compared to AIOSEO.
Is Rank Math Pro worth it?
Yes. Rank Math is worth it. There are amazing features and optimization options only accessible to Rank Math Pro users, some of which you would have otherwise had to install additional plugins for.
