Rank Math SEO tutorial: learn how to work with this plugin

At 2manydots, we have been using Rank Math for quite some time, especially for our Resultsmatter clients who we support in improving their online visibility. RankMath proves to be an ideal tool. Not only to make websites more attractive for search engine optimization (SEO), but also to take the implementation of Structured Data to the next level. With this Rank Math SEO guide, we make it super easy for you to get started yourself with the basic settings and completing the window on your page optimally.

What is Rank Math SEO?

Rank Math SEO is a versatile WordPress SEO plugin that helps website administrators optimize their content for search engines. With a user-friendly interface, it provides tools for improving visibility and ranking in search results. The Rank Math plugin automates many SEO tasks, such as metadata management, technical SEO settings. In addition, Rank Math provides you with several analysis functions. Rank Math is designed to support both beginners and advanced SEO strategies. Rank Math does this with detailed recommendations and real-time insights.

Rank Math PRO

Rank Math PRO is the premium version of the Rank Math SEO plugin, which offers advanced features on top of the basic version. Think analytics options, tracking how your keywords are performing and improvements for WooCommerce SEO. With this pro version, you also get access to premium support and updates. So the premium version of Rank Math is actually a must-have for anyone serious about growing their online presence.

Are you a customer of 2manydots? Then we always install Rank Math Pro on your website!

How does the plugin work?

Rank Math analyzes your content and provides suggestions to improve it for search engines. Once you install the Rank Math SEO plugin, it starts scanning your pages and posts. At first, Rank Math’s focus is primarily on titles, descriptions and use of focus keywords. Rank Math provides real-time feedback and recommendations based on SEO best practices. All of this is done through a user-friendly interface, allowing you to easily make adjustments and increase the SEO value of your site. The beauty is that Rank Math is designed to support both beginners and advanced SEO strategy.

General tab

The General tab in Rank Math is your central control panel for SEO settings on a page or post. Here you can set the SEO title, meta description and focus keywords. You also control things like indexing preferences and social media previews here. This tab makes managing the important SEO elements of your content streamlined and efficient, so you can make changes quickly and immediately see how they affect your SEO performance.

Focus keyword

The focus keyword is the pillar of your page or post optimization in Rank Math. You choose a keyword you want your content to be found on, and Rank Math analyzes how well your content aligns with it. It provides specific recommendations to improve your text, titles and meta descriptions to better match your chosen keyword. This helps to structure your content so that it is attractive to your visitors as well as search engines.

SEO title

The SEO title is what people see in search results and often determines whether they click on your link. Rank Math helps you create a powerful, keyword-rich title that grabs attention. With the ability to use dynamic variables, you can have titles automatically adapt to the content of the page. This provides an efficient and effective way to optimize your titles for SEO.

Permalink

A clean, clear permalink is important for both user experience and SEO. Rank Math makes it easy to edit your permalinks so that they not only contain your focus keyword, but are short and easy to remember. This improves the findability of your pages and contributes to a better structure of your website in the eyes of search engines.

Meta description

The meta description is actually a short summary of your page or post in search results. With Rank Math, you can optimize these descriptions so that they not only contain the focus keyword but also prompt action. A good meta description makes the difference between getting clicked or not in search results. So a very important part of your SEO strategy.

Additional checks & readability check

Rank Math offers, in addition to core SEO settings, additional checks and a readability check to further refine your content. It develops aspects such as the structure of your text, the presence of internal and external links and checks whether your content is easy to read. This helps improve your SEO score, but also ensures that your visitors have a pleasant reading experience.

Advanced tab

On Rank Math’s Advanced tab, you dive deeper into your website’s technical SEO settings. This is where you customize the robots meta tags to specify exactly which pages search engines should index and track. You can also set canonical URLs here, which is important to avoid duplicate content and tell search engines which version of a page is preferred. Use this tab to make detailed adjustments that ensure your website is optimally indexed and presented in search engine results.

Schedule tab

The Schema tab within Rank Math is your tool for setting schema markup, which allows you to better define your website content for search engines. In the schema tab, choose the appropriate schema type for your page or post, such as Article, Product or FAQ. Setting schema markup correctly not only improves your SEO, it also increases the chances of your content being highlighted as rich snippets in search results and it makes for a powerful xml sitemap. Follow the steps on this tab to provide your content with the right schemas to increase search engine visibility.

Social tab

The Social tab in Rank Math facilitates specific settings for how your content is displayed on social media. Consider setting up unique titles, descriptions and images for platforms such as Facebook and Twitter. By optimizing these social media previews, you can greatly improve the attractiveness and sharing of your content on social networks. A good presentation on social media results in more traffic to your site and it increases overall engagement. Follow the instructions on this tab to ensure your content is always ready to make a strong impression on social media.

Not everything has to be green!

When optimizing your website with Rank Math, you may be aiming for all-green indicators, thinking this is the key to SEO success. We will relieve you of that concern immediately. Not everything has to be green to perform well in search engines. SEO is a complex field in which search intent, content quality and user experience can outweigh strict adherence to all recommendations. A page can rank extremely well with a few orange or red points, as long as the content is valuable and relevant to its intended audience.

Blindly chasing green scores can lead to over-optimization, which damages the readability and authenticity of your content. Therefore, focus on creating rich, user-centric content while using Rank Math’s SEO practices as guidelines. Not as immutable rules.

Our content checklist

With this handy guide, you can be sure you won’t overlook anything. From SEO tips to writing advice, our checklist will help you create content that reads like a train and ranks high in Google. Make your content creation process more efficient and effective. Click now, download our content checklist for free, and start publishing content that really gets results!

Download and install Rank Math

Are you a customer of 2manydots? Then we will install Rank Math for you!

Contact

Step 1: To get started, install Rank Math through the WordPress plugin repository. You do this as follows. Log in to your WordPress dashboard. Navigate to ‘Plugins’ > ‘Add New’.

Step 2: In the search bar, search for “Rank Math SEO.

Step 3: You’ll see the Rank Math SEO plugin appear. Click “Install Now. Wait for the installation to complete and then click “Activate.

Starting Rank Math Wizard

Step 1: After activation, Rank Math automatically opens the Setup Wizard. Click on “Start Wizard” to begin.

Step 2: Follow the steps in the wizard. You will be asked to choose your website type (blog, web shop, etc.), and fill in your social profiles.

Step 3: Set Google Analytics settings and choose other basic configurations such as sitemap settings. Click “Save and Continue” after each section.

Connecting to Google Services

Step 1: In the Setup Wizard, you’ll encounter a section to connect Rank Math with Google Services, such as Google Analytics and Search Console.

Step 2: Click “Connect to Google Services” and follow the steps to link your Google account. This provides insight into your site performance directly in the WordPress dashboard.

Step 3: Choose the relevant Google Analytics and Search Console profiles for your website and save your preferences.

Set up sitemap

Step 1: Within the Setup Wizard or through Rank Math’s dashboard, navigate to the sitemap settings.

Step 2: Enable the sitemap feature if it is not already active. Next, configure which content types (posts, pages, products) you want to include in your sitemap.

Step 3: Adjust advanced sitemap settings as needed, such as frequency of updates or excluding specific posts. Save your changes.

Also name news & video sitemap

Setting SEO tweaks

Step 1: After the basic setup, Rank Math offers the opportunity to further fine-tune with SEO Tweaks. This can be found under ‘Rank Math’ > ‘Dashboard’ > ‘General Settings’.

Step 2: Here you can adjust settings such as noindex statuses, configure breadcrumbs, and how meta tags are displayed.

Step 3: Use the recommended settings or adjust them to your preference. Be sure to always click ‘Save Changes’ after making changes.

Finally: advanced options

These settings allow you to further fine-tune how your site is indexed and presented in search engines. For example, you can adjust detailed settings for sitemaps, breadcrumbs and social media integrations. You can also control how meta tags are used, analyze your site’s performance and set page accessibility for search engines.

Role manager

Rank Math’s Role Manager feature is a powerful tool for Web sites with multiple users. It allows you to control which users have access to various SEO features within the Rank Math plugin. This is particularly useful in an environment where multiple authors, editors or site administrators work together. For example, you can set up that only certain roles can make changes to SEO settings, while other roles can only view certain SEO data. This helps maintain the integrity of your SEO strategy and ensures that only authorized users can make changes.

404 + redirections

Rank Math’s 404 + Redirections module is a tool for managing non-found pages and redirecting traffic to appropriate content. It helps identify 404 errors. This is a notification you get when a page is not found. Then you can easily set up redirects to automatically redirect visitors to relevant pages, improving the user experience and reducing potential SEO drawbacks. This tool is important for maintaining a healthy site structure, especially for larger sites that regularly update or delete content.

Schedule markup

Schema markup is an SEO feature in Rank Math that helps you generate rich snippets in search engine results. By adding schema markup to your pages, you can give search engines detailed information about the content of your pages. This boosts your online visibility by helping to display featured snippets, star ratings and other information directly in search results. Setting schema markup correctly leads to higher clickthrough rates and more traffic to your website.

Switching from Yoast to Rank Math

Rank Math offers an import feature that allows you to transfer existing SEO data from Yoast SEO directly to Rank Math without losing data. This includes titles, descriptions, meta data and even focus keywords. This transition allows you to take advantage of Rank Math’s advanced features without the worry of manually transferring data or rebuilding your SEO settings from scratch.

Additional useful features of the SEO plugin

• ACF: ACF(Advanced Custom Fields) integration with Rank Math allows SEO data to be dynamically added to fields created by ACF. This means you can leverage custom fields for SEO purposes. This integration ensures that even the most unique content can be fully SEO-optimized, giving your site a better chance of ranking high in search engine results.
• Image SEO: This is a feature of Rank Math that automatically applies optimizations to your images. Consider adding ALT text and titles based on parameters you set. Images thus become a valuable part of your SEO strategy, making your site not only visually appealing but also ranking better in search results.
• Instant Indexing: Ensures that your content is picked up faster by search engines. This feature allows you to send pages, posts and other content types directly to Google for indexing. This is especially useful for quickly gaining visibility for new or updated content, eliminating the need to wait for search engines to naturally crawl your site.
• Local SEO: This is a set of optimization features in Rank Math specifically aimed at businesses that operate locally. It helps you optimize your website for local searches, including adding structured data for businesses. Consider opening hours, location and contact information. This increases your chances of appearing in local search results and Google Maps.
• Link counter: This feature helps you keep track of internal and external links in your content. It gives insight into how your pages are connected. Very important for good site structure and SEO. By maintaining a healthy balance of internal links, you can improve the user experience and help search engines understand the relevance of your pages.
• Schema (structured data): In Rank Math makes it easy to add structured data to your content. This data helps search engines better understand the context of your pages. By using schema markup correctly, you not only improve your SEO, but also the way your content is presented in search results.
• SEO Analyzer: This is a feature of Rank Math that vets your website for general SEO issues. It generates a detailed report with recommendations for improvements in areas such as site speed, mobile usability, basic SEO settings and more. This tool provides valuable insights to optimize your site and identify potential issues that could affect your ranking.

Let a specialist do the work!

Want your website to be found better, but don’t have time to become an SEO expert? Then let us help! Our SEO experts know exactly how to boost your site with Rank Math, getting you higher in Google without doing much yourself. Give yourself the space to focus on what you love most, while we take care of the technical side. Sound good? Contact us and let’s get started together!