Rank Math, best SEO plugin for WordPress –

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As a content manager, WordPress provides us with a versatile, flexible and powerful platform for all kinds and sizes; from small corporate websites with only informative pages to large ones with payment gateways and email marketing campaigns.

However, from the point of view of OnPage positioning optimization, WordPress only offers a few tools among its configuration options and a large part of this task should be done by directly editing the WordPress files or the installed theme.

Fortunately, plugins like or offer us many options to facilitate the task of OnPage optimization without having to gut the guts of WordPress or the theme, as it is integrated into the WordPress control panel and the page and post editor.

With the arrival of Math Rank a new “player” appears in this scenario. After almost a year and a half since its launch, back in late 2018, this plugin is emerging not as one of the best SEO plugins for WordPress, but as the best without a doubt.

In this article, we are going to see in detail what we can do with Rank Math, what it offers that other similar plugins do not have, and how we can install and configure it on our websites to ensure that OnPage SEO optimization is not a “bad drink”.

What is RankMath?

The short answer would be to say that it is a OnPage SEO optimization pluginbut that would detract from all its qualities compared to the rest of the SEO plugins that have been with us for so long.

Because, yes, it is an SEO plugin, but not just another SEO plugin, but “THE” SEO plugin.

Not only does it incorporate features that other SEO plugins don’t even have, but many of them are features that you can only have in other plugins if you pay for them. In other words, it is completely free.

In addition to the features that we are already used to in SEO plugins, such as the editing of meta-tags and the configuration and indexing of pages and posts, which of course we will also find in Rank Math, in Rank Math we can find others that are either of payment in other plugins or, simply, they do not even contemplate, and that will help us enormously in OnPage SEO optimization, such as:

• Schema Structured Data integration for up to 14 content types (and growing), so we don’t have to use other plugins or our theme doesn’t have full Schema support.
• Integrated tool for keyword analysis using LSI (“Latent Semantic Index”), so that our content is closer to the user’s search intention.
• Monitoring of the positioning of our main keywords, through various metrics, such as CTR, from the WordPress control panel.
• A tool that detects the main OnPage SEO problems that our website may have.
• Integrated support for monitoring 404 errors (web page not found) and a redirection mechanism of various types (301, 302, 307, etc.).
• Integrated tool to generate bread crumbs, as well as the corresponding structured data.
• Integration of the main Google Search Console reports and metrics in the WordPress control panel, in a more readable format than Search Console itself.
• User role management system, useful for websites with several users and each one of them can only use some of the functions of Rank Math.
• Modular design of its main functions, so that we only activate those that we need.
• Designed to be small and fast: it is currently the SEO plugin that takes up the least space and has the least load on WordPress.

Despite the high number of functions that Rank Math includes, this does not mean that it is complicated to use and configure.

On the contrary, thanks to its modular design, we will only see what we have activated and, furthermore, it is very well integrated into the WordPress control panel, with a fast and intuitive learning curve.

As a final detail, if we are users of Yoast SEO or All-in-One, Rank Math includes a data import tool, so that we do not lose any of the configurations and optimizations that we have done with it.

Therefore, if this tool convinces you, the migration from one to another will not be traumatic at all.

The following video takes a tour of this plugin, from its installation to its configuration and fine-tuning, through its activation, as a preview of what we will see in detail throughout this article:

Install RankMath

The installation of Rank Math follows the same process as any other WordPress plugin: we can do it from the WordPress control panel or download the ZIP file of the plugin from the Rank Math website and upload it later in our WordPress.

The fastest is to do it directly from our WordPress.

To do this, we simply have to select the “Add new” option in the Plugins menu, search for the “rank math” plugin and, when the list appears, press the “Install now” button that appears next to the plugin, as shown below. continuation:

Sign up for Rank Math

Once installed, we must activate the plugin and this is where the process differs from most plugins.

In order to activate it, the plugin asks us to enter a website account of .

As we said, RankMath is free so we just need to go to their website and create a free account, whose email and password we will use to activate the plugin:

When we press the “Activate Rank Math” button, the plugin shows us the data of the account and the website, so that we can confirm that both data are correct. If so, press the “OK” button:

Configure Rank Math with the wizard

After activating the plugin, it shows us the setup wizard screento make a first quick plugin configuration of the most relevant aspects of the plugin.

The setup wizard guides us through six steps in this process.

The first thing it shows us is if our website is compatible with the plugin. It’s not something we should worry about: the compatibility It refers to the version of our WordPress and of PHP language of the server, in addition to being installed some PHP extensions on the server:

If our version of WordPress is old, we must consider the possibility to update it.

In the case of the rest of the points, if there is any incompatibility, it is best to notify our hosting support team, who will be the most appropriate to resolve it.

Now let’s look at each 6 steps of the setup wizard:

1. Import SEO settings

By now, we are probably all using Yoast SEO or All-in-One as a plugin for SEO. On-page SEO optimization. What It is not recommended to have two SEO plugins installed and active simultaneously, if Rank Math detects that there is already one, disables it.

Logically, when we start using Rank Math, we don’t want to lose the configuration we had with one or the other, especially those corresponding to the meta tags of each post or page of our website.

To prevent this, the Rank Math setup wizard includes the ability to import these settings with just one click of mouse

In fact, Rank Math already detects for us which SEO plugin we had installed and, if we wish, we can proceed with the import:

2. Your website

Next, we need to enter some data from our website, which will be used to fill in the corresponding meta tags and Schema structured data fields.

Rank Math tries to detect them for us but we must confirm them or, if we consider it convenient, modify them:

In the first option, we must indicate what we have (a personal blog, a corporate website, an online store, etc.). We must choose what is closest to our website, as it will be part of the structured data.

3.Google Search Console

As we mentioned before, the Rank Math integration with Google Search Console It is quite good, with a very friendly and easy-to-read presentation of reports and metrics.

But, to be able to integrate them in the WordPress control panel, it is necessary connect to Search Console and authorize Rank Math so you can download this information.

We must carry out this process in this tab, in which we must enter an authorization code in the text box that is shown:

To do this, we must click on the “Get authorization code” link, which opens a window where we will select our Google account associated with the Search Console profile corresponding to our website:

In case we had more than one profile, we would select it from the “Search Console Profile” dropdown list.

4. Sitemaps

The Site Map (or sitemap.xml file) contains which pages, posts and other resources (files) of our website we want to be visited and indexed by search engine crawlers.

Although not essential, facilitates the analysis that crawlers make of the structure and content of the website.

In this tab, then, we must indicate if we want a sitemap.xml file (that is, we leave it active, as it comes by default) and what resources we want to be in it; in principle, entries, pages and images, as well as categories.

If our website has other types of resources, we must decide whether to include them in the sitemap:

This file later we will have to upload it to Google Search Consolein a similar way to how we should do with the SEO plugin that we had before.

5. Optimization (SEO adjustments)

The next step of the setup wizard optimize some general SEO settings to the website; specifically, the indexing of archive or index pages and how external links will be treated:

Let’s see what each option on this tab means:

• Empty “noindex” tag and category files, which sets the meta-robot tag to “noindex” on the tag and category index pages, so that search engines do not index them, since from a positioning point of view, they do not usually add value or interest to users during searches.
• Nofollow external links, which adds the “nofollow” attribute to all links on our website that point to other websites, so that they do not convey any part of our domain authority. In principle, it is convenient to leave it deactivated, since on some occasion we will want to transmit authority.
• Open external links in a new tab/window. This option, on the other hand, is interesting to have always activated, since it means that, when a user follows an external link on our website, a…