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Rank Math is one of the best SEO plugins for WordPress, designed to help you easily optimize your website for search engines. Unlike other SEO plugins, Rank Math offers a comprehensive suite of tools to simplify the optimization process while allowing you control over every aspect of your site’s SEO.
One of Rank Math’s unique offerings is its Modular Framework, allowing users to enable or disable specific features based on their needs, ensuring a clutter-free experience. Additionally, Rank Math’s 404 Monitor and Redirection Manager are integrated directly into the plugin, eliminating the need for additional plugins and providing a seamless way to manage broken links and redirects.
Another standout feature is Rank Math’s Content AI integration, which provides keyword suggestions and content analysis powered by AI, helping you create content that ranks well and resonates with your audience.
You can learn more about Rank Math features and uses here.
Table of Contents
Setting up Rank Math
After installing and activating Rank Math you get access to your Rank Math dashboard, here you can activate the Rank Math SEO features you need and deactivate the Rank Math SEO features you don’t need.
Configuring Basic SEO Settings
1. Titles and Meta: Go to Rank Math > Titles & Meta > Global Meta. Here you can set default SEO titles and meta descriptions for your posts, pages, and other content types.
2. Social Meta: Configure how your content appears when shared on social media platforms by navigating to Rank Math > Titles & Meta > Social Meta.
3. Sitemap Settings: An XML sitemap helps search engines understand your website’s structure and find all your pages, Rank Math automatically generates and updates your XML sitemap.
Configure how your content appears on search engines under Rank Math > Sitemap Settings. Here, you can customize which content types, such as posts, pages, categories, and tags, to include in your XML sitemap by clicking on the content and enabling the ‘Include in Sitemap’ option.
Submit your sitemap to Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster to help search engines crawl and index your site more efficiently.
How to submit sitemap to Google|How to submit sitemap to Bing.
You can view your sitemap to verify that it is generated correctly by clicking on the link at the top of the settings page in Sitemap Settings > General.
Advanced Configuration
For more advanced SEO configurations, explore the following options:
Note: Features like ‘404 monitor’ and ‘Redirections’ need to be enabled from the Rank Math dashboard to be used.
1. Instant Indexing: Rank Maths’ Instant indexing auto-submit your content directly to search engines like Google and Bing for immediate indexing. This feature ensures that your new posts or updates are shown in Search Engine Result Pages (SERP) within minutes rather than taking hours or days to be visible on search engines, this helps you gain more visibility and attract more traffic to your website.
To ensure this feature works correctly, navigate to Rank Math > Instant Indexing > Settings. Click on the ‘Check key’ button and you will be redirected to a new tab containing your API key, if the API key is displayed on the new page it means the instant indexing feature is working, if not you need to manually insert the API key into your WordPress site to allow instant indexing.
To do that copy and save your API key in <yourapikey>.txt format, upload the file to the main root of your WordPress site, or contact your hosting provider for assistance in placing the file.
Type yourdomainname.com/yourapikey.txt in the browser to check if your API key has been uploaded correctly. If a page displaying your API key is shown, then the Rank Math instant indexing feature has been configured correctly.
You can also select the type of content you want to be auto-submitted for instant indexing from the Instant Indexing > Settings page.
2. 404 Monitor: A 404 error occurs when a page is not found, these errors can negatively impact user experience and SEO. Rank Math’s 404 monitor helps you identify and fix broken links.
Track and identify 404 errors on your site from Rank Math > 404 Monitor.
Fix and manage 404 errors by navigating to Rank Math > General Settings > 404 Monitor.
3. Redirections: Set up and manage URL redirections from Rank Math > Redirections > Add New to fix broken links by adding redirects to relevant pages and improve user experience.
4. SEO Analysis: Navigate to Rank Math > SEO Analyzer > Start SEO Analyzer, to perform a detailed SEO analysis of your site to identify areas for improvement.
Using Rank Math for SEO Optimization
With Rank Math configured you can start optimizing your content for search engines. When creating or editing a post/page, click the Rank Math icon in the upper right corner. This will open the Rank Math analysis feature of your content.
1. Content Analysis: Rank Math provides an SEO score and improvement suggestions for Basic SEO, title readability, and content readability. Make sure to complete as many tasks as possible to increase the SEO score of your post.
2. Keyword Optimization: Enter your focus keyword and follow Rank Math’s recommendations to optimize your content.
3. Schema Markup: Add rich snippets to your content to enhance its appearance in search results, by clicking on ‘Edit Snippet’
Here you can set the meta title, meta link, and meta description.
4. Internal Linking: Rank Math will suggest internal links to enhance your SEO as you write or edit content. Use descriptive and keyword-rich anchor text for internal links to improve site structure and SEO.
Conclusion
Rank Math is invaluable for any WordPress website owner looking to improve their search engine rankings. Feel free to customize the settings according to your specific needs and keep exploring Rank Math’s features to maximize your website’s SEO.
