There are several WordPress SEO plugins available. Most of us are aware of Yoast. The most widely used SEO plugin for WordPress at the moment, it is present on more than 5 million websites. There are, however, less well-known options that perform just as well and include a variety of capabilities to control your page’s SEO.

Rank Math was founded in 2018 and is based in New Delhi, India. In less than two years since its release, Rank Math has experienced an enormous surge in popularity. It doesn’t rank 1st as WordPress’s most popular SEO plugin, however, given its recent surge in popularity, it is unquestionably the second-most successful SEO plugin of 2020.

Why has it achieved such success? Other SEO plugins can’t compare to the remarkable collection of free features offered by Rank Math. Although a Premium edition is offered, many people just require the free version.

How Rank Math Works?

Each page on your website receives a score from the plugin that indicates how effective it is at SEO. You receive pointers and practical guidance for raising that score, which ought to boost your SEO ranks. In all, Rank Math rates your material on more than 100 variables, which is very thorough for a free plugin.

You may use Rank Math’s free version to optimize each page’s content for up to five emphasis keywords. Most other free WordPress SEO tools, in contrast, only allow you to use one keyword per page. Based on those keywords, Rank Math will analyze your content, headings, and post structure, and make recommendations on how to improve your SEO score. You get real-time score changes as you make changes to your post based on those recommendations.

You may also get site-wide optimization tools from Rank Math. If there are any issues, such as missing alt attributes for photos, 404 errors, pages without titles, and more, the plugin can conduct full-site audits for you and notify you of them.

How to Install Rank Math SEO

  • Navigate to Plugin > Add New
  • Search Rank Math and click on install.
  • Click on Activate

How to Set up Rank Math SEO

  • The setup procedure is automatically started when you click on Activate. However, you have the choice to stop the setup procedure and make the necessary changes manually or to resume it later.
    If the setup wizard was not used when you initially installed Rank Math, you may navigate to the WordPress Dashboard > Rank Math > Dashboard > Setup Wizard option to rerun it.
  • You must create a free account on Rank Math’s site. This step is essential if you want to have access to all of the plugin’s tools. Click on Connect Account and proceed to create a new account. You can now connect your newly created account to your website.
  • On the Getting Started tab, select Advanced Mode.
    You can choose from any of the 3 options; Easy, Advanced, and Custom. However, only Rank Math PRO users are presently able to utilize the Custom mode. The Easy and Advanced Modes are similar to one another. There are more stages in the advanced mode with more complex parameters to customize.  This will give you full control over optimizing your website to rank well in search engines. You also get all free features available, which you wouldn’t find in easy mode.
  • Fill in the details of your website; the nature of your website (whether it’s a personal blog or business website), and upload your site logo. By selecting the right choice, Rank Math will be able to add the proper information, which will aid Google in determining whether this website represents an individual or a business and enable its usage in Knowledge Graph. You will be able to select your precise company category from our comprehensive range of business kinds if it is not displayed here.
  • The Import tab allows you to import your settings from Yoast SEO. It shows all the input data available on your website from other SEO plugins, which you can import to Rank Math.
  • Rank Math ensures that you don’t lose anything while migrating to Rank Math by importing the other plugins’ data.
  • During the next step, you’ll be able to connect your website with Google Search Console and Google Analytics. If you’re not using both services yet, we recommend setting up accounts since they can provide you with invaluable information.

There are a lot of plugins that you can use to integrate these services with WordPress.

  • When you choose Connect Google Services, Rank Math will request your consent to access your account information. To complete this step of the procedure, click Allow.
  • Now, we get to the Rank Math XML sitemap. Rank Math will ask you if you want the plugin to generate a sitemap for your website, whether to include images, and what content it should map. According to Google Developers, a sitemap is “a file where you provide information about the pages, videos, and other files on your site and the relationships between them.” With this file, search engines can crawl your website easily, taking note of the important pages.
    You can omit any custom pages and posts from the sitemap of your website if you don’t want to include them.
  • Before returning you to the dashboard, Rank Math will walk you through a few last optimizations. The plugin will let you choose whether to apply the “nofollow” attribute to external links and “noindex” categories and tags without any content.

In subsequent articles, we’ll go more into detail about everyday use and how it stacks up against the current number one SEO plugin, Yoast. For now, you should have installed it by now. Explore the settings and tips the plugin provides. While SEO plugins are great at streamlining your content for high ranks in search engines, it is important to adopt certain practices that will ensure you have the maximum chance of improving your position on search engines. We discussed these practices in this article. What do you think of Rank Math? Have you used it before and how was your experience? Let us know in the comments!

SEO Optimisation 101- Best SEO Practices for your Blog/Website

 

The fastest way to improve your organic rank on search engines and drive traffic to your website is through SEO. SEO (stands for Search Engine Optimisation) is a collection of processes that drive traffic from free and organic search results on search engines. Popular search engines include Google, Bing and Yahoo. Improving the SEO on your website means organically improving your positions on these search engines. People rarely go past the first results page since that page will most likely have what they are searching for. While you may want to try Google Ads, organic rank is free, and therefore it’s worth it to improve your position. So for businesses and blogs trying to gain traction on their websites, this article will explore the best SEO practices to yield great results.

 

Have a Focus Keyword

When you publish an article for your blog, it usually has a general idea you’re trying to pitch, just like this article. I’m writing about SEO, which has been clear to this point because human beings can deduce intent without sufficient data. However, this is different for AI and machine learning. Without enough data, you won’t get a conclusive inference. A focus keyword is a word people are likely to use to search for particular topic areas. When someone is searching for something, they type in search terms directly and straight to the point. The search engine will then match search terms to articles with the same search terms (keywords) littered throughout the post. For instance, if someone was trying to learn about SEO, they may type SEO in the search bar. So having SEO as your focus keyword is vital if you want your website to be displayed. Other keyword tips are;

  • Include the focus keyword in the title
  • Make sure to add it to the meta description of the page or post.
  • Make it a point to mention it throughout the post. For the best results, you should have a 1-2% keyword density. That means the keyword should appear 1-2 times per 100-word copy.
  • The keyword should be included in the permalink of the post or page.

 

Good User Experience

A website with a bad UI/UX structure is painful to visit. If you want to learn how to create a free blog site, click here
The website you’re trying to drive traffic to must be easy to navigate, and there must be a clear path if you want users to take action. If you want users to book a service, there should be a “Book” button on the home page, while also detailing everything about your business on the same page. If visitors have to click more to find details like pricing or location, they may leave your website without converting. Update your website to remove dead links and error pages from the website.

Not only does this help visitors to your site, but it also allows Google to properly crawl and index your website. A poorly indexed website means that important pages or posts may not display in search results even though they’re relevant to the searcher.

 

Link Your Socials

In my experience, businesses with both a website and social media accounts notice that their Social media (whether Instagram or Facebook) perform higher on Search Results at the beginning of their operation. That is because Facebook and Instagram are being crawled daily by Google. So anyone searching for your company will see your Social media accounts first. That is not a bad thing, except you want traction on your website. The next course of action is to link your website on your Instagram bio or under every one of your Facebook posts. That way, when people see your social media account pages in the search results, they can go to your website off of that page.

 

Connect Your Website to the Google Search Console

Another tip to have your website crawled and indexed by Google is to connect your website to the Google Search Console. The Search Console provides analytical tools about your rank on Google Search, search terms that trigger your website, and details about users on your website. Submitting your website to the Search Console is not a shortcut to speed the crawling process but it will help greatly.

There are dozens of other tips for you to improve your website rank on search engines. Stay tuned as we’ll publish more articles on other best SEO practices you should undertake for your website.

Check out this article: Best Practices For a Successful Google Ads Campaign-2022