Rank Math WordPress SEO plugin and its Settings for Your Blog SEO

Are you searching for the best free SEO plugin for a WordPress blog? If yes, you landed in the perfect place. This article discusses the most popular and best free WordPress SEO plugin review and its settings. The plugin name is the Rank math SEO plugin. It is the best Yoast SEO alternative plugin.

What is Rank Math?

Rank Math is a new generation SEO plugin for WordPress. All SEO Professionals are waiting for the most popular plugin Yoast SEO. Because of this multiple focus keyword optimization feature. So here is the Rank Math WordPress SEO plugin.

So today, I wish to write about Rank Math WordPress SEO plugin settings in this post. I am using this plugin for a few months.  It is an impressive WordPress SEO plugin for writing SEO-friendly content and ranking higher in search engines in 2020.

Why you need this Rank Math SEO Plugin?

WordPress is the most popular open source Content Management System (CMS) software. By using this CMS, you need to optimize your content as per SEO regulation. So you can rank the content on the first page of the search engines.

This is very difficult for non-techie guys to improve their SEO using no WordPress SEO Plugin. Even webmasters feel boring coding updates to perform all SEO activities on their blog/website by looking at their source code. There are plenty of the best WordPress SEO plugins are available on the WordPress plugin directory.

Rank Math SEO plugin helps you optimize your content for search engines and outrank your competitors. This is the best SEO plugin for WordPress 2021.

Here is the time to goodbye to the code editing process for blog SEO purposes. Here it simplifies your SEO activities from one place.

For WordPress users, WordPress SEO plugins simplify your SEO activities. It helps you to optimize your content for better search visibility to advanced SEO activities by adding Schema Microdata and 404 error monitoring, etc. It is the best SEO plugin for WordPress users.

It comes with awesome features to manage your content and website optimization features like in-built content optimization, keywords managing features, redirection manager and more.

Why is Free? Here the team explained why this plugin is giving free of cost.

Features of Rank Math SEO Plugin

How to install and Configure Rank Math SEO plugin?

A rank Math SEO plugin is free. It is available in the WordPress Plugin repository.

Here are the steps to install.

Step 1: First login into your WordPress blog and

Step 2: go for Plugins > New and type Rank Math in the plugin search box. 

Step 3: Install the Plugin and Activate it

After complete, the plugin installation is done, you will be prompted with an authentication screen with a Rank Math official server like this.

It helps you to get regular updates and support. If you want to know how to install a WordPress plugin, here is the article, and it explains this.

Now the plugin is visible in their menu at the left side column as “Rank Math”.

How to set up Rank Math Plugin for the first time?

Once you install and activate the Rank Math SEO Plugin, you need to grant permission from MyThemeShop’s official site.

To do this, click on Rank Math from the left side column and enter the Rank Math account login and activate the plugin officially.

If you did not have an account in Rank Math official site. Create a new account from here.

It is free. Once authenticated, the plugin performs a compatibility check and shows the Setup Wizard button. Click the button.

Here are the 6 steps

1. Import

• The plugin has the inbuilt feature to import your existing SEO settings from the current SEO plugin. Here the plugin will scan and detects your exited SEO plugin settings, and it allows the required settings to import.
• If you are using the Yoast SEO plugin, you will get the screen like below. Just choose and click on Start Import from SEO. It takes a few seconds to import the data from Yoast SEO to Rank Math SEO.
• Once the process is complete, click the Continue button.

2. Your Site

In this step, enter your blog’s details like blog type, Logo upload, and default social share image details. Once you fill in the details, click on Save and Continue.

• Setup for the general blog: Choose any of the given – Personal blog (or) Personal Portfolio (or) Other Personal Website forms the drop-down-list
• Setup for Business: Choose any of the given – Small Business (or) WebShop (or) other Business Website from the drop-down list

3. Search Console

Connect your Google Search Console account here by clicking the Get Authorization Code.

Enter Google Search Console login details

Grant the access of your account by clicking on Allow button 

Google will provide an authentication code. Just copy the code and paste it in the Search Console settings and click on Allow. 

Choose your blog from the account and click on the save and continue button.

4. Sitemaps

• Sitemaps are the search engine indexing files, and it helps you discover the blog content to index properly.
• It would be best to choose which files to be included in this file like Posts, Pages, Media (images, Videos, and Audio), Products, categories, and tags.
• Just select the options which you want to include in the sitemap of your blog. Finally, click the Save and Continue button to go for the next step.

5. Optimization

This step helps you to optimize your site as per SEO instructions. It provides great SEO value and saves a lot of time. It has No-follow Image links, No-follow External links, redirect status, and Search engine validation zones. Just choose the options as per your SEO requirements.

6. End of Setup

This is the last step of the Rank Math SEO Plugin. Just click the Allow button. Once the site is ready, scroll down and click the link “Return to Dashboard” link for an additional option.

Now Your site ready with Rank Math SEO plugin.

What are the basic options and it’s Rank Math Settings?

The Rank Math WordPress SEO Plugin settings:

1. Dashboard

After installation and activation of this plugin, it will redirect the page to the Plugin Dashboard. This dashboard is having the following options.

• About: This tab gives information about initial guidance.
• Modules: This is the place to Enable/Disable 404 Monitor, Redirections, Rich Snippets, Role Manager, Search Console, SEO Analysis, and Sitemap. You can activate any module as per your site requirements.
• Help: This is a knowledge center. Here, you may get the product support by raising the ticket for technical support.
• System Info: The system info tab gives the complete details of WordPress Environment, Server environment, Client Environment, Theme Information, and Installed Plugin details. It is a helpful option.
• Setup Wizard: It helps you to configure the plugin in 6 steps. The wizard designed in 6 steps–Getting Started, Import, Your Site, Search Console, Sitemaps, Optimization, and Ready to use.
• Import & Export: You can import and Export your plugin settings from one site to another.

2. Analytics

Rank math Analytics feature is a newly added feature with limited features in free version. The complete version is in development mode. May be this feature will be available in the pro version.

First, you have to connect your blog’s Google search console and Google Analytics accounts by completing their systematic authentication process. After a few steps, you get the complete Analytics dashboard.

The Analytics Dashboard is having 4 different tabs. they are Basic dashboard, Site Analysis, SEO performance and Keywords.

• Basic dashboard: This area gives the overall optimization score, General analytics (Search impressions, Total keywords, Search Clicks, and CTR), and keyword positions data. You can check these data from the specified boxes by clicking on the Open report link. This data will be sync from your Google Search Console and Google Analytics accounts.
• Site Analysis: This tab explains the SEO score of your existed posts score-wise. It separated the optimized and unoptimized posts. You can concentrate on the unoptimized posts for further improvements.
• SEO Performance: This is the place to know your blog performance in the Search engines by understanding the data like Search impressions, total keywords, search clicks, CTR, and Average positions of your content.
• Keywords: This is the place to know the positions of your ranked keywords in the search engines.

let us see more advanced features like adsense integration in their Rank Math pro versions.

3. General Settings

To choose this option got for Rank Math > General Settings. You will reach the General options page. Here all the settings will be organized into tabs. Here is the list.

Links: This is the first tab. Here the settings are available that change the behaviour of links of your blog/website.

Images: This is the tab for image SEO. Here it contains 2 settings. They are “Add missing ALT attributes” (helps you to add ALT text) and “Add missing TITLE attributes” (helps you to create image ALT attribute).

Breadcrumbs: This is having only one setting. Just Enable it. (Recommended). Keep all default settings.

Webmaster tools: This is the place to verify the ownership of the site in the various search engine tools. You can verify your site by entering the verification code for various third-party webmaster tools like Google Search Console, Bing Webmaster tools, Pinterest Verification ID, Norton Safe Web verification ID.

Edit robots.txt: You can edit your Robots.txt file from here virtually. Keep this file’s default settings with no change if you are a newbie. If you have an idea about this file, use it. This file gives the direction of crawling and indexing access to index in the search engines.

Edit .htaccess: It is a configuration file that helps users and a search engine to navigate your site. Better to leave this default setting.

404 Monitor: Every website has 404 errors. This option rectifies 404 error problems. Rank Math’s 404 monitor helps you to resolve this issue.

Redirections: This is a built-in redirection manager feature that helps you get rid of 404 errors.

Others: This tab has some additional options like Usage Tracking, RSS content setup.

4. Titles & Meta

On this page, give the details like Global Metadata, Social Media details, Home Page details, Author details, Miscellaneous Pages, Post–Page – media set up as per Google guidelines and Taxonomies configuration like categories–tags details.

Configure this page carefully. Add titles and meta descriptions carefully by using related keywords as per your blog type (or) niche.

5. Sitemap Settings

A sitemap is an important file; it sends the signal from your blog to Search engines after update your blog. It helps you to index your blog post content. In this section, you need to choose which one to include in the sitemap, like Authors, Post types, and taxonomies. Just select the options to have which one in the sitemap.

They turn the sitemap feature ON by default. Keep the default settings with no change.

6. 404 Monitor

404 Errors are not a big problem with this plugin. This plugin monitors 404 errors and informs you. You can redirect the page to other pages. It protects from bad SEO.

7. Redirections

You can set up temporary or permanent redirections by using this option. Combined with the 404 monitors, you can redirect fault URLs on your site or add custom redirections.

If you are getting 404 errors, this option will help you. By using this, you can redirect the error page or broken link to similar or relevant pages without disturbing the reader.

If you want to redirect the broken link or an error page, this is the best option to protect the user’s bad experience by redirection.

8. SEO Analysis

It is an awesome tool added in this plugin to analyze your site SEO from the WordPress Dashboard. This feature will start the Analysis of your site with a simple click.

On-Page optimization is essential for the article ranking in search engines. It depends on some other factors like caching, URL structure, and Pagination. So it would help if you spent hours to rectify these issues. But this feature will save you valuable time. It scans your site within 5 to 10 seconds and will give complete details about your site SEO.

To start this Analysis, just go to Rank Math > SEO Analysis then click the “Start Site-Wide Analysis” button.

The final Reports is here. by following the instructions, you can improve the site SEO.

9. Import and Export

You can Import your previous backed up settings in this section. You can export the Rank Math Settings for further reuse on another blog. In this section, you will have Export settings, Import Settings, Plugin Importer and Backup section.

• In Export Settings, you can export the panel settings by choosing which settings to export, like General settings, Titles & Metas, Sitemap settings, and Role Manager Settings.
• In Import Settings, You can import the plugin settings page from your desktop.
• In Plugin Importer, You can import the existed SEO plugin settings with a simple single click.

How to Optimize Content with Rank Math SEO Plugin?

The Rank Math content SEO and Yoast Content SEO is almost the same. If you have a great experience with the Yoast SEO analysis tool, you can easily optimize Rank Math content.

Here are the 4 parts in the Rank Math SEO analysis tool. This part appears below the post editor. They are

1. General

In the General tab, you will get the complete content analysis tool. Here you can see again 4 places

Here is the Analysing tool interface after optimization. It is optimizing with 4 different aspects like Basic SEO, Additional, Title Readability, and Content Readability.

2. Advance SEO Settings

Under this tab, you can configure Advanced SEO settings. Here you can choose post indexing – deindexing feature, canonical URL addition, Sitemap adding a feature, and Custom redirection setup.

3. Rich Snippets

You can set up a rich snippet feature without messing with Schema and Microdata.

4. Social

You can use this place to configure Social data like Title, Description and featured Image for Facebook, and Twitter.

Rank Math Vs Yoast SEO Vs All-in-One SEO Plugin

Pros and Cons of Rank Math WordPress SEO Plugin

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) on Rank Math Plugin

Final Words on Rank math SEO plugin

Rank Math SEO plugin stores no data within its servers. It stores the data within your WordPress blog database only. So they protect your data. The team is giving more priority to the web master’s data safety. The group adds more features like internal linking in future versions, providing the best performing keywords – pages using the Analytics feature to make it the best website ranking tool.

In the last step of the Wizard setup, we are permitting by clicking the button ALLOW. Here the developers see your Rollbar data only.

The Rollbar is an error tracking and crash-reporting tool. Using this Rollbar data, the developers will suggest the better options according to your site type for better performance and ranking in search engines.

Note: Personally I recommend this free SEO WordPress plugin for all types of blogs and WordPress sites. From Version 1.0.39, the plugin updated with the FAQ Schema feature. It helps you to display the Question and Answers in the SERPs.

No doubt Rank math WordPress SEO plugin is the best Yoast SEO alternative. Rank math becomes the best SEO tool for a WordPress site day by day.