The Rank Math plugin is an exciting new WordPress SEO plugin that gives you all the tools you need to optimize your website for search engines.
It includes features only found in the premium versions of other SEO plugins, like Yoast and All in One SEO Pack, absolutely free. The Rank Math team seems to have a different business model in mind – one that doesn’t require payment for essential features.
Here are 20 reasons to use the Rank Math plugin.
What is Rank Math?
Rank Math is a free WordPress SEO plugin that makes it easy to optimize your website. With 15 modules and 40 SEO tests built-in, it’s no wonder it’s described as the Swiss Army knife of WordPress SEO.
The plugin is used by 400,000+ websites and has a 5-star rating.
I’m not going to cover all the features it offers here. Instead, I’m going to share the features that convinced me to switch from Yoast to Rank Math.
1. Free SEO Analyzer
Rank Math offers a free SEO Analyzer on its website that you can use to analyzes any page of your website. It provides a basic overview of what your website is doing well and what needs attention.
To get started, enter any URL on your website and click enter.
The report itself provides an easy-to-understand 0-100 score so you know right away if you’re in doing well or not doing well. The report is broken down into four categories
- Basic SEO
- Advanced SEO
- Performance
- Security
The expandable “How to fix” link next to each issue explains what you need to do to resolve issues.
If you decide to install the Rank Math plugin, you’ll find this SEO Analyzer built-in and can run site-wide tests from your WordPress dashboard.
2. Rank Math Includes Premium Features for Free
One of the most popular ways a plugin makes money is by offering two versions – free and premium. The free version usually includes the basics while the premium version includes the juicy features.
The free version of Rank Math includes the features found in the premium versions of competing plugins. The team behind Rank Math isn’t just creating another SEO plugin, they’re creating something better. Their competition may consider it disruptive, but for the rest of us … it just makes sense.
Rank Math gives you everything you need to optimize your website, free.
3. Target Multiple Keywords
This was the feature that first caught my attention.
Rank Math allows you to target up to five keywords on any page or post. Being able to optimize your content for multiple keywords is a helpful feature, as it enables you to target keyword variations.
All you have to do is enter your first keyword, hit tab, and enter your second keyword.
When optimizing your content, you can click each keyword you’ve added and Rank Math will let you know how well your content is optimized for that keyword.
4. LSI Keyword Tool
If you’re not sure what keyword or keyword variations to target with your content, Rank Math can help.
Like most SEO plugins, the Rank Math plugin has a field where you can enter your focus keyword. This tells the plugin which keyword you’re targeting with your content. Unlike other plugins, Rank Math includes an LSI Keyword Tool built-in. This tool recommends keywords and variations based on what you enter in the focus keyword field.
It may not show you the details of each keyword, such as estimated search volume or difficulty, but it’s fast and a convenient way to discover related keywords.
5. Internal Link Suggestions & Pillar Content
An internal link is a link that points from one page or your website to another page of your website. These play an important role in SEO, as they help search engines discover related content on your website.
It’s easy to overlook, but creating a link from your new content to your old content can help people and search engines discover more of your website. Rank Math provides a Link Suggestion box that highlights your pillar content that relates to the content you’re currently creating. These suggestions are based on the categorization of your content, so be sure to identify your pillar content and select at least one category or tag whenever you publish something new.
6. Redirection Manager
If you need to re-organize the content on your website and it’s already indexed by Google, you need to consider redirecting your old URLs to your new URLs. This prevents visitors from encountering 404 errors, better known as “page not found” errors.
Rank Math includes a redirection manager free, so there’s no need to install an entirely different plugin. The fewer plugins you need to install the better.
7. 404 Monitor
A 404 is a type of error you encounter when you visit a page that doesn’t exist. This can occur for a variety of reasons, but the most common involve changing URLs, removing content, and broken links.
When someone encounters a 404 error on your website, regardless of the reason, Rank Math records the URL and saves it for review. You can log into Search Console to identify 404s or you can use the 404 Monitor built into Rank Math. If you’re using the Redirection Manager, you can select a URL from the list of 404s and click redirect to begin creating a new redirect.
8. Social Previews
Rank Math includes a Social tab where you can preview how your new page or post will appear when you share it on your social media profiles.
This feature allows you to see how your post will look on each social network before you publish it. No more deleting and re-sharing. This is particularly helpful if you create dedicated images or descriptions for each social profile.
9. Clean Design
The visual design of the Rank Math user interface is clean and simple.
This is a big deal to me because it allows me to focus on my work instead of how the design could be better. Every area of the Rank Math plugin, website, and support community is presented beautifully.
Kudos to Rank Math for creating such an enjoyable and intuitive interface.
10. Lean Code
I don’t know much about plugin code, but it’s pretty impressive Rank Math packed so much functionality into 32k lines of code. To give you a comparison, the Yoast plugin contains 95.8k lines of code and doesn’t provide the same level of functionality.
The code is lean and optimized for speed, making it the fastest SEO plugin for WordPress available.
11. Search Console Integration & Dashboard
Most SEO plugins will let you enter your webmaster information somewhere in the settings, but Rank Math takes it a step farther. In addition to letting you enter verification codes from third-party webmaster tools, like Google and Bing, Rank Math actually pulls data from Google Search Console.
You no longer have to leave your website to view important metrics from Google Search Console. You can even track keywords.
I still prefer using other third-party tools for this, but the Rank Math plugin does a good job pulling the data and presenting it in one place.
12. Schema Options
Depending on the type of website you’re creating, you may be able to increase your visibility in search engines using the various schema markup options.
Schema structures your content behind the scenes in a way that makes it easier for Google to understand. The benefit of doing this is Google might feature your content in a way that draws more attention to your content directly in the search results. You can see examples of this when looking for recipes, how-to articles, and local business information.
Rank Math also offers schema blocks you can integrate into your content using the Gutenberg editor.
This feature makes it super easy to add FAQ, how-to, and other markup needed to win rich results in the SERPs.
13. External Link Control
Including external links to related resources throughout your content is a nice gesture. It introduces your visitors to related content across the web and also helps other websites gain more exposure.
A lot of business owners are worried about linking out to other websites because they believe they’ll lose the visitor. Fortunately, you can craft external links so they open in a new tab. You can hard-code each link to do this or you can use a plugin designed to do this automatically.
Rank Math gives you this option so you don’t have to install another plugin.
14. Breadcrumbs
Breadcrumbs form a navigational path so your visitors know where they are on your website. These are particularly helpful if you organize your content using parent pages and child pages.
These are also important from an SEO perspective, as they allow search engines to navigate your content and understand how it’s organized. Rank Math includes a snippet of code and shortcode for you if you opt to include breadcrumb navigation.
15. Compatible with Other Plugins
There are a ton of awesome WordPress themes and plugins available today. In most cases, you won’t have an issue regarding compatibility between two different plugins, but it does happen every now and then.
The Rank Math plugin is compatible with any theme or plugin using the WordPress Codex ensuring you never run into a problem.
I wanted to mention this here because Rank Math provides a selection of certified themes and plugins they’ve specifically tested for compatibility. This list includes a few plugins I use and recommend, including Elementor and WP Rocket.
16. Excellent Support
I really like the way Rank Math support is set up.
Once you sign up for an account on the Rank Math website, you will be able to customize your profile and engage with the support community. Here, you will find a knowledge base of information about the plugin as well as a searchable index of their support tickets organized by topic.
If you have a problem, search the existing support tickets to find out if the problem has already been answered. If you can’t find the answer you need, open a ticket and wait for the support team to respond. The community is helpful and the Rank Math support team is extremely fast.
They also host a private group on Facebook with over 24,387 members.
17. Easy Setup Wizard
Setting up Rank Math is easy-peasy.
After you install and activate the Rank Math plugin, it will verify the settings of your website and recommend ideal Rank Math settings to help you get started.
As you go through the step-by-step setup wizard, you can select your desired settings. Their website also provides detailed documentation so you know how to setup Rank Math quickly.
18. Importer
One of the biggest barriers of switching SEO plugins involves the concern that you’ll lose all of your work. Fortunately, you can export your data for specific plugins using WordPress.
This makes it easy to import your existing work to a new plugin, like Rank Math, should you decide to make the switch. Rank Math currently provides an import option for Yoast and All-in-One SEO Pack.
19. Roadmap
If you want to know what features and functionality may be coming to future versions of the Rank Math plugin, take a look at their Roadmap.
This area of their website gives you a birds-eye-view of what they’re working on and what you can look forward to in the near future.
20. Pro Version in the Works
The Rank Math team is working on Rank Math PRO, which promises to help you tackle your competition. The details aren’t available yet, but I’m guessing this version of the plugin will be competing with premium 3rd-party SEO tools.
These types of tools are usually used by professional SEOs and can cost thousands of dollars per year. Based on what Rank Math did with the free version, I wouldn’t be surprised if they brought that same level of competition and affordability to the pro version.
Conclusion
The Rank Math Plugin is the best SEO plugin available today.
The free version includes premium features, support is excellent, and the team has consistently rolled out additional enhancements. Whether you’re just getting started or you’re looking for more functionality from your SEO plugin, Rank Math may be right for you.
If you’re happy with your current SEO plugin, rock on. It’s working for you and that’s all that really matters.
Will the Rank Math plugin help you rank better than other plugins? Yes and no – some features, like schema, will help your content qualify to rank as a rich result, but that doesn’t mean Google will consider your content the best fit for your target keyword. The goal of all SEO plugins is to give you the tools you need to optimize your website, they don’t do it for you.
These are just a few reasons why I switched to the Rank Math plugin and recommend you check it out.
