Rank Math SEO – WP Media Mastery

Rank Math SEO is fast becoming the WordPress SEO plugin of choice. It offers many features and functionalities that were previously only available from paid plugins. A single mouse click allows you to conduct your own SEO audit and along with a number of additional settings, you can now take your SEO to a whole new level.

Most of us are scared to switch our SEO plugins. And understandably so. We’re creatures of habit. And I’m sorry to say it but most of us are also sheep. We prefer to stick around in our comfort zone and let others do the testing and then provide us with sufficient social proof before we follow suit.

Well let me tell you something. The Rank Math SEO plugin may be new on the scene, but it’s fast gaining momentum. It’s sleek, bloat free, light as a feather, low on CPU usage and eliminates the need for a number of other plugins thereby also having a very positive effect on website speed.

Pair this up with fast hosting, aggressive caching and my other speed optimization hacks and you’ll land up with the fastest, SEO optimized site on the planet.

Rank Math SEO Standout Features

Lightweight, bloat free and low on CPU resources.
Built in Rich Snippets.
1-Click SEO audit.
Integrates Google keyword suggestions.
Optimize up to 5 keywords (Free).
Link suggestions (Free).
Fallback meta data insertion.
Redirection Manager (Free).
Does the work of 3 to 4 other plugins thereby speeding up your site.
24/7/365 support (Free).

Let’s Understand What An SEO Plugin Should Do For You.

There are already a number of Rank Math reviews floating around the internet.

Some good, some bad.

I suppose that’s only natural. But I think it’s also because many of us don’t understand what an SEO plugin is really supposed to do. And when things don’t magically transform our SERP rankings the way we expect them to, we post negative reviews about the product.

Don’t believe everything you read. Sometimes bloggers don’t even realize that the assumptions they make are incorrect. Oftentimes it’s more likely that these folks didn’t have the plugin properly configured.

I’m not here to protect the Rank Math SEO product but rather to put things into the correct perspective from the outset.

What I’m about to say applies to ALL SEO plugins across the board.

An SEO plugin is not some magical tool that’s suddenly going to get you into, or raise your rankings, in SERP unless there are features available that facilitate better SEO practice.

I’ve seen reviews (written and Youtube) that attempt to use Google analytics graphs to support claims of increased traffic from the moment they installed the plugin. One such video portrayed this using a brand new website without any prior track record of traffic over a reasonable period of time. Something you just can’t do! I’m certain, however, that the data was either purely coincidental or part of a normal, overall trend that was taken out of context.

I know that all you want right now is for me to tell you just how great Rank Math SEO is, so that you can be on your way with one more vote of confidence for the product.

Truth be told. Rank Math is great! It really is.

But in saying that, I want you to understand that my decision is backed up with a fair amount of relevant SEO knowledge.

SEO plugins are designed to assist you, as best as possible, to make full use of all of the on-page SEO practices that you need to adopt in order to stand a fair chance of reaching #1 in Google SERP.

Let’s face it, the good SEO pluguns are ALL going to help you to optimize your titles, subheadings, content, keywords, keyword density, post length, image alt tags, internal and external links and the like.

But it doesn’t follow that ALL of the suggestions are 100% correct.

To support what I’m saying, keyword densities and use of keywords in X amount of subheadings is mostly over-exaggerated. Furthermore, keyword stuffing is not generally useful for users because the content is manipulated to include words that appear out of place, making your content read poorly. This is more likely to appear spammy to search engines, a practice that will quickly get your site down-ranked in SERPS.

You’ll be better served by concentrating on optimizing your existing content for the best user experience whilst ensuring that all new content matches user intent and is absolutely killer!

But beyond these things, some of the most important functions of an SEO plugin are to help you to:

Include a separate SEO title for Google snippets and automatically insert it into your HTML.
Optimize your meta descriptions.
Automatically insert those meta descriptions into the HTML of the post or page without you having to do so yourself.
Keep your sitemap up to date, thereby ensuring that ALL your content is indexed by search engines.
Ping the search engines when you publish or update a post or page.

And any decent SEO plugin will do all of these things for you.

So what makes Rank Math SEO different to the rest? What makes it better?

Quite simply, the additional, FREE, features and functionalities it includes, under one roof, to make your life easier and your site faster.

The table below compares the features of the plugin with Yoast and All In One.

I’ll expand on these features while taking you through the ideal settings and configuration of Rank Math, making this the most comprehensive and definitive guide on the Rank Math SEO plugin.

Enjoy!

Rank Math SEO Features And Functionalities

Feature	Rank Math	Yoast SEO	All In One
Installs With Optimal Settings	Y	N	N
Setup Wizard	Y	Y	N
Site Compatibility Check	Y	N	N
Automatic Canonical URLs	Y	Y	Y
Integrates LSI Keyword Tool	Y	N	N
Keyword Rank Tracking	Y	N	N
Integrates Google Search Console	Y	Y	Y
Import From Yoast	Y	–	Y
Import From AIO	Y	N	–
Import AIO Rich Snippets	Y	N	N
Import From SEOPress	Y	N	?
Advanced SEO Analysis Tool	Y	N	N
70+ SEO Tests	Y	N	N
Actual SEO Analysis Score	Y	N	N
SEO Warnings	Y	Y	Y
SEO Failed Tests	Y	N	N
Auto Image SEO	Y	N	N
Custom Post Type	Y	Y	Y
Bulk Edit Titles & Descriptions	Y	Y	N
Google SERP Preview	Y	Y	N
Analysis Of Content	Y	Y	N
Title, Page, Meta Description Control	Y	Y	Y
Auto Add Additional Meta Data	Y	N	N
Focus Keyword	Y	Y	Y
Robots Meta	Y	Y	Y
Google Keyword Suggestion	Y	N	N
Optimize 5 Keywords	Y	N	N
Pillar Content	Y	Y	N
Internal Link Suggest	Y	Y	N
Capitalize Titles	Y	N	N
Google Crawl Error Fix	Y	Y	N
XML Sitemap	Y	Y	Y
Includes Redirection Manager	Y	N	N
Auto Post Redirect (Changed URL)	Y	N	N
301, 302, 307, 410,451 Redirects	Y	N	N
Regex Support	Y	N	N
Redirect Attachments To Parent	Y	Y	Y
Finds All 404’s	Y	N	N
WP Role Manager	Y	N	N
Google Schema Rich Snippets	Y	N	N
Rich Snippet Types: Article, Book, Course, Event, Job Posting, Local Business, Music, Person, Product, Recipe, Restaurant, Review, Service, Software/App, Video	Y	N	N
FAQ Block For Gutenberg	Y	Y	?
193 Local Business Types	Y	N	N
Optimize Social Media	Y	Y	Y
Overlay Icons On Social Images	Y	N	N
Open Graph Thumbnail	Y	Y	Y
Facebook Open Graph	Y	Y	N
FB Authorship	Y	Y	Y
FB Open Graph For Homepage	Y	Y	Y
Twitter Meta Cards	Y	Y	Y
Default Twitter Card Type	Y	Y	Y
Social Previews	Y	N	N
Default Image For Sharing	Y	Y	Y
Knowledge Graph Support	Y	Y	Y
URL For SERPS: Google+, Linkedin, Instagram, YouTube, Pinterest, SoundCloud, Tumblr, Myspace	Y	N	N
Represent Site As Person/Company	Y	Y	Y
Separator Choice	Y	Y	N
Modify Global Meta	Y	Y	Y
Strip Category Base	Y	Y	N
Remove Stopwords From URLs	Y	Y	N
Verify Site With Google, Bing	Y	Y	Y
Verify Site With Baidu	Y	Y	N
Verify Site With Yandex	Y	Y	N
Verify Site With Alexa	Y	N	N
Verify Site With Pinterest	Y	N	Y
SEO Breadcrumbs	Y	Y	N
Advanced Link Options	Y	N	N
Nofollow External Image Links	Y	N	N
Nofollow External Links	Y	N	N
External Links In New Tab	Y	N	N
Ping Search Engines	Y	Y	Y
Contact Info Shortcode	Y	N	N
EDD Compatible	Y	Y	Y
PHP-FIG Coding Standards	Y	N	N
Archive Pages Optimization	Y	Y	N
Author Pages Optimization	Y	N	N
Robots & .htaccess Editor	Y	Y	Y
Optimize RSS	Y	Y	N
Multisite Compatible	Y	Y	Y
Detailed Documentation	Y	Y	N
Contextual Help	Y	Y	Y
Round The Clock Support	Y	?	?

Setting Up Rank Math SEO Using The Wizard

Step1. Import Settings

If you were using another plugin, deactivate it first. Then go to the dashboard and select the Import / Export tab.

Rank Math SEO will determine what plugin you’ve been using and import your existing settings. You can skip the import if you wish.

If you were also using a redirection plugin, you can import your redirects. Once the setup is complete, go ahead and delete your old redirection plugin.

Run the Import.

Choose the settings you want to import.

Import Settings – Imports all settings and existing metadata.
Import Term Meta – Imports metadata for categories, tags and any other taxonomies.
Import Redirections – Imports existing redirects.
Import Post Meta – Imports metadata for posts, pages, and custom posts. Includes title, description, OpenGraph data and robots meta, among others.
Import Author Meta – Imports metadata for author pages.

I would suggest you keep all options checked. You can always manually change settings after the setup is complete.

The easiest way to set Rank Math SEO for the first time is to run the setup wizard which will configure everything you need with all the default / best settings.

You can, however, safely select the advanced option as this guide will walk you through everything.

You’ll be greeted with the wizard the first time you install and activate the plugin.

Thereafter, you can run through each individual screen and fine tune the settings you want to.

Before the setup starts the plugin automatically checks compatibility with your site.

Click the Start Wizard button to begin.

Step 2. Your Site

Choose whether your site is represented by a person or a company.
Add your logo.
Add a default social share image (aka an Open Graph thumbnail) – In short, when sharing posts from your site, information is passed to social sites via Open Graph meta tags which are included in your HTML page. If your page doesn’t have a featured image, it’s best to add a thumbnail that will appear on all posts sent to social media sites. If you don’t add a thumbnail, you will probably find an irrelevant image from your post being displayed.

Step 3. Search Console

One of the really nice features with Rank Math SEO is the ability to fetch and display Google Search Console information directly in your dashboard.

You’ll be able to see crawl errors, keywords that you rank for and other important information that is crucial in identifying content strategies and low hanging fruits, i.e. other keywords that you can easily rank for if you create content around them.

Once you get your authorization code, select the relevant website (if you have more than one).

I don’t want to state the obvious but in order to have a property in Google Search Console you must first have added and verified your site with Google Webmaster Tools.

Step 4. Sitemaps

A sitemap is basically a table of contents used by search engines to find all the content on a site. It can include posts, pages, archives, categories, tags and other taxonomies when configured to do so.

Sitemaps – Toggle sitemaps on and off.
Include images – References images from posts (recommended). This helps Google to index your most important images.
Public Post Types – Choose whether to include posts, pages or both in sitemaps.
Public Taxonomies – Choose whether to include categories in sitemaps.

I don’t recommend including categories in sitemaps as category pages can lead to duplicate content. Besides the sitemap inclusion / exclusion, I also apply a rel=”noindex” tag to categories so as to prevent indexing by search engines. This can be done in Titles and Meta > Categories.

Step 5. Optimization (SEO Tweaks)

These options help you to automate some of your tasks.

Noindex Empty Category and Tag Archives – I suggest you set this to “noindex”. What I’m not so enamored with is that the setting will switch automatically to “index” when your first post appears on a category or tag archive page. It’s best to apply a global noindex meta tag on the Titles and Meta >> Category / Tags screens.
Nofollow External Links – Not good SEO practice. Google may see you as gaming the algorithm and down-rank your site. There’s really no need to be paranoid about nofollowing external links. If you really need to apply an occasional nofollow, add this to your code using the text editor, e.g. <a href=”https://www.example.com/post-about-links/” rel=”nofollow” target=”_blank”></a>
Open External Links In New Window – A really nice addition that applies this on a global basis, making it easy for visitors to view an external link without being taken off your site altogether and then easily return to your site which will still be open on another tab.

Step 6. Wizard Complete

I recommend you enable the automatic updates option to ensure that any bug fixes and new features remain available to you.

Showing the SEO score on the frontend is a relatively new feature and it’s up to you whether you want to enable this or not.

That’s all there is to it. The settings are perfect to proceed with. Nevertheless, I would suggest you go through the more advanced setup options to satisfy yourself that the plugin is setup exactly the way you want it to be.

Step 7. Advanced Options – User Roles

The role manager appears with advanced settings only if enabled from the dashboard.

Another great feature that the Rank Math SEO plugin includes for you. This is really handy for sites with multiple users.

Some websites say that you can replace your Role Manager plugin on the basis that Rank Math will take care of this for you. This role manager is more focused at SEO permissions rather than WordPress Permissions. You cannot replace your plugin because they don’t target the same settings.

The settings you see are default settings. Adjust according to your own preference.

8. Step 8. Advanced Options – 404 Monitor

I find this really useful for sites that may have a number of broken links due to changed URLs, categories etc. The 404 monitor allows you to see if visitors and/or search engines come across any 404 Not Found pages.

The redirection manager works with the 404 monitor to automatically redirect to similar URLs or you can add your own custom redirects.

9. Step 9. Advanced Options – Schema Markup

Schema Type – For me, this is the #1 reason to use Rank Math SEO. This will add Google Schema structured data to your posts, pages, media, products and much more. It also enables you to get rid of your existing rich snippets plugin. Brilliant!
Schema Type for Posts and Pages – Select Article for Pages, Blog Post for posts and News Article for content that relates to a specific topic that is time sensitive.

Once you complete the wizard you will be returned to the Rank Math Dashboard.

Setting Up Rank Math SEO More Comprehensively Using Individual Screens / Tabs.

1. General Settings

On the left side of the dashboard, under the Rank Math Heading, select General Settings.

NOTE: Some screens seen from here onward must be enabled via the dashboard, e.g. Images (Image SEO).

1.1 Links

Strip Category Base – Personally, I don’t like categories showing in URLs. It makes them long and hard to remember. Also, if you have an uncategorized post, the word “uncategorized” will appear in the URL. Don’t know about you but I think it looks ugly (e.g. www.yourdomain.com/uncategorized/post-url/). I’ve also found that categories in URLs are problematic if you ever decide to change category. The post will be indexed using the original category and you will need to apply a 301 redirect to a new URL. Having too many redirects also slows down page loading times. If you strip the category base, your URL doesn’t have to change if you change the category.
Redirect Attachments – Redirects all attachment page URLs to the posts they appear in. Attachments relate to media such as images, video, sound clips, music etc. In your media gallery you will notice that attachments have URL’s that normally reference an uploads folder. This simply redirects those URLs to the actual posts those attachments appear in, which is better for SEO.
Redirect Orphan Media – Media attachments without a parent post will be redirected to the URL you insert here. The homepage is recommended.
**Remove Stopwords From Permalinks – This removes prepositions from URLs, e.g. a, the etc. This is not retrospective so only affects newly generated URLs. Choose what makes you happy. Personally I prefer to control this myself in the post edit screen. Some URLs may need stopwords so that the intended meaning is retained.
Nofollow External Links – Not good SEO practice. Google may see you as gaming the algorithm and down-rank your site. There’s really no need to be paranoid about nofollowing external links. If you really need to apply an occasional nofollow, add this to your code using the text editor, e.g. <a href=”https://www.example.com/post-about-links/” rel=”nofollow” target=”_blank”></a>.
Nofollow Image File Links – This is important for affiliate sites where you may link out from images to an external site. This setting allows you to apply a nofollow meta tag to the link. That said, I use Thirsty Affiliates Pro to manage my affiliate links. It’s the best software to manage and cloak all affiliate links from a central hub. If, for example, an affiliate link changes, you only need to make one change. Without this, you would have to find and change links in every post containing the broken link. It also has a brilliant feature that searches for keywords and adds affiliate links to relevant places for you. Whatever you do, don’t use Pretty Links – it broke my site. You can set a global nofollow from within Thirsty Affiliates Pro. You could then set this to off. Choose the option that best fits with your business / site.
**Nofollow Domains – This is like a domain blacklist. All domains listed here will be nofollowed. Everything else will be followed. Use this setting together with Nofollow External Links.
**Nofollow Exclude Domains – If you nofollow all external links, you can add exceptions over here. All exceptions will be allocated a rel=”dofollow” tag.
Open External Links In New Tab – All external links should be opened in a new tab. It makes for good user experience as users won’t be taken off your site. They can return to your site easily as it will still be open in its original tab. This is handy in case you forget to set a link to open in a new window with the target=”_blank” tag.

** Removed By Developer

1.2 Breadcrumbs

Enable Breadcrumbs – Very handy if your theme doesn’t automatically include breadcrumb navigation which I highly recommend for SEO. Once you enable breadcrumbs, you will need to insert the code snippet into your theme template files. DO NOT insert this into functions.php. In the past I have always inserted this into my header.php file. The code is normally placed at the end of the header code but before the closing ?> tag. Nevertheless, I have often had to place the snippet elsewhere in header.php file. You may need to play around a bit to find the right place to insert the snippet. In some themes you may need to add this to page.php or single.php. I use the Genesis Framework (Studiopress) exclusively for all my sites – won’t use any other theme. Besides the Genesis Framework being the most lightweight and SEO optimized themes, breadcrumbs are included in the themes by default and you can choose (globally) whether to include them in posts, pages, homepage etc. Rank Math SEO also provides a shortcode that you can use to manually insert breadcrumbs into individual posts or pages. You cannot insert the shortcode into a template file. The code snippet and shortcode appear at the top of the image above.
Separator Character – Choose whatever separator you fancy but the >> or | choice would be the best choice from the options available.
Show Homepage Link – I would show this. It’s makes it easy for visitors to access your homepage.
Homepage Label – You can change this to whatever you like but Home is the most apt.
Homepage Link – Insert your homepage link here. Some folks may use a different homepage but for 99.9% of people it’s your domain name with or without the www prefix.
Prefix Breadcrumb – You can prefix the breadcrumb path with say your site name, e.g. WPMediaMastery/Home/Blog/Post-Name/.
Archive Format – Set the label format for your different archives pages, e.g. category archive.
Search Results Format – Format the label for search results pages when the search function is used on your site.
404 Label – Set the label for 404 Not Found pages.
Hide Post Title – The whole point of breadcrumbs for SEO is to display the place a user is at on your site, i.e the path. Why on earth would anyone want to hide the post title?
Show Category – If you normally display categories, go ahead and enable this. Even if you don’t normally display categories in your URL, you can still display them in breadcrumbs. Quite a nice option to have.
Hide Taxonomy Name – You can elect to show taxonomies if you have any. This would apply in instances where you may have a taxonomy tree, e.g. >> USA >> New York >> Manhattan.

1.3 Images

Add Missing Alt Attributes – I wouldn’t use this regularly. According to the developer, it hinders the accessibility of a website when a screen reader is used. It should only be used when the post contains a single image. If there is more than one image, the ALT text that is automatically added wouldn’t make sense to the reader. The developer may hide this option in future updates.
Add Missing Title Attribute – I’m not quite sure why this option is here. Maybe the developers know something that I don’t. WordPress automatically assigns the file name to the title attribute so I’m not sure how this field could ever be blank. Nevertheless, the ability to dynamically add a title attribute when a post is viewed, is included.

1.4 Webmaster Tools

Verifying your site with Google, Bing Baidu, Yandex, Alexa, Pinterest and Norton Safe Web can be done from within the Rank Math SEO plugin. Enter the verification codes and Rank Math SEO takes care of the rest. This saves time in that you don’t have to upload each verification file via cPanel.

1.5 Edit Robots.txt

Robots.txt provides a way to control access to your site (or different parts of your site) by search bots.

You can add allow or disallow directives. An example of a disallow directive is Disallow: /go/. This disallows access to all URLs with a “go” directory / folder in the string.

Editing robots.txt through the plugin is certainly convenient, however, it will only work if you don’t already have a robots file in your root directory. If you already have a robots file, as I do, you will have to edit it directly from cPanel or a text editor and then FTP the file to your site’s root directory. If you don’t yet have a robots file, Rank Math will automatically generate the robots file as follows:
User-Agent: * Disallow: /wp-admin/ Allow: /wp-admin/admin-ajax.php Sitemap: https://rankmath.com/sitemap_index.xml

1.6 Others

Show SEO Score – Toggle on to show a badge with the calculated SEO score on the frontend for selected posts. This can be disabled for specific posts.
RSS Before and After Content – Choose what to display before and after each post in RSS feeds. According to the developer, the %FEATUREDIMAGE% variable helps when someone uses an auto social media posting plugin to fetch the featured image.

1.7 Edit .htaccess

An .htacess file can be used to control and provide functionality for a variety of different things.

It’s used by WordPress to perform tasks such as rewriting of permalinks and can also be used to perform redirections (e.g. http to https or 301’s).

It is also commonly used (individually and by caching plugins) to set expires headers for browser caching purposes, set compression properties (gzip) and cross origin properties, amongst other things.

Rank Math SEO provides an easy way to edit the file but be warned that a single glitch in the file can prevent access to your site.

1.8 404 Monitor

A 404 error indicates that a page cannot be found by either a visitor or search bot. It commonly happens when a post’s URL is changed and the webmaster forgets to redirect the old URL to the new one but these aren’t the only causes. Basically a “404 Page not Found” error represents a broken link.

Mode – The simple mode logs the URL and time of access whilst the advanced mode creates more detailed logs including, for example, the referrer URL.
Log Limit – Sets a maximum row limit in a log. You can disable this by entering a value of 0.
Exclude Paths – Sets URLs or keywords that you want to prevent from getting logged.
Ignore Query Parameters – A query string is the part of a URL that contains a ?, e.g. www.example.com/this-post/?ver21_232429740229ecf036cd. Turn on to ignore query strings.

1.9 Search Console

I’ll probably go as far as to say that most bloggers don’t take full advantage of their Google search console. I imagine that having the data easily at hand may change that.

Rank Math SEO allows you to see your Google search console (GSC) information directly in your WordPress dashboard.

I’ve already done this but click the Authorize button to get going. Once complete, you’ll have a list of all your properties in GSC. Choose the correct site and your’e done.

The cache limit sets the time period that GSC data will be stored. You can also clear the cache and update manually if you need to.

1.10 Redirections

Debug Redirections – This setting is for admins. It displays the debug console instead of actually being redirected.
Fallback Behavior – If no similar page is found, you can set the fallback behavior to take the user to the default 404 Not Found page or redirect them to the homepage. Custom redirection is handy if you have an archive listing page that shows all your posts and pages or a custom 404 page or search page, thereby allowing the user to search for something similar.
Redirection Type – Set permanent (301) or temporary (302, 307) redirects according to your preference.
Auto Post Redirect – This is handled by WordPress. A really handy feature to create more advanced redirects that do not use the 301 (permanent) redirect type.

2. SEO Titles And Meta

2.1 Global Meta

Global Meta relates to all pages on your site. Please choose your options carefully.

Robots Meta – All the options are unchecked by default. Although you can still change these on a per page or post level, I would leave these alone, especially the No Index and No Follow options. Checking these will prevent search engines from following pages and posts and indexing your site properly. A mistake here can be disastrous!
Advanced Robots Meta – Here you can change snippet length, media time and maximum image size.
Noindex Empty Category and Tag Archives – I recommend you set this option to noindex. What I don’t particularly like is that the setting will switch automatically to index when a post appears on a category or tag archive. For this reason, it’s best to apply a global noindex meta tag on the Titles and Meta >> Category / Tags screens.
Separator Character – This sets your global separator. Your choice here.
Capitalize Titles – Self explanatory. You can always control this on a per post or page basis in the WordPress editor.
OpenGraph Thumbnail – In short, when sharing posts from your site, information is passed to social sites via Open Graph meta tags which are included in your HTML page. If your page doesn’t have a featured image, it’s best to add a thumbnail that will appear on all posts sent to social media sites. If you don’t add a thumbnail, you will probably find an irrelevant image from your post being displayed.
Twitter Card Type – Select the card type when creating a new Twitter post. This also applies to posts without a card type.

2.2 Local SEO

In order to see all the settings on this tab, Local SEO must be enabled in your WordPress dashboard.

This is where you set details relating to contact information and opening and closing hours for your local business.

Person Or Company – choose whether your site is represented by a person or company.
Name – Your name or company name.
Logo – Upload a logo for your website.
URL – The URL of your website.
**Email – Displayed by search engines.
**Phone – Your phone number may be displayed in a prominent place for mobile users.
**Address – Enter your local business address.
**About Page – Specify a URL for your About page.
**Contact Page – Enter a URL for your Contact page.

** Removed by developer

2.3 Social Meta

I’m not going to state the obvious for each entry. Enter the applicable URL, ID’s etc for Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, Google Places, Yelp, FourSquare, Flickr, Reddit, Instagram, YouTube, Pinterest, Soundcloud, Tumblr and Myspace.

Facebook Page URL – The URL will be displayed with the contact shortcode. It will also be added as metadata to your pages for OpenGraph and KnowledgeGraph.
Facebook Authorship – Facebook supports an authorship tag which credits authors when a post is shared on Facebook.
Facebook Admin – Go to https://findmyfbid.com/, enter your profile name and click Find Numeric ID. Enter this ID into the field.
Facebook APP – A Facebook App is normally created when setting up logins with Facebook, e.g. comment apps that support social login. If you haven’t created an app yet, use the Facebook Admin ID above instead.
Facebook Secret – Used with Facebook App. If you have a Facebook App already set up, you’ll know where to find the Facebook secret.
Twitter Username – Enter username of author to add creator tag to posts.

You certainly don’t have to link all social sites. Use these settings for the social accounts that you use regularly.

2.4 Homepage

This is where you select options for your homepage title and meta description as well as homepage descriptions and thumbnails for Facebook. The options are all self explanatory.

You can also select custom robots meta for you homepage. If you don’t, the default global meta options will apply.

2.5 Authors

This one’s a biggie!

It’s really important to choose whether your site is a single or multi author site.

Basically, if your site has only one author, your author page and blog archives page will both show the same (duplicate) content. Not good for Google!

The last thing you want is a Google penalty for duplicate content.

Disable this option if you are a single author site.

The plugin will make optimizations based on the selection.

2.6 Miscellaneous Pages

Date Archives – Disable date archives to avoid duplicate content. If you want a date archive, you could enable this setting and redirect to your homepage. This would be OK if your homepage displays posts. Otherwise disable the setting.
404 Title – Choose the variables to format the 404 page title.
Search Results Title – Choose the variable to format the search results title.
Noindex Date Archives – Set to On in order to avoid indexing by search engines and duplicate content.
Noindex Search Results – I have to admit I’ve never seen something like this before but set this to noindex in order to avoid any possible indexing of thin content when users search your site with an included search form. A novel feature.
Noindex Paginated Pages – I wouldn’t if I were you. Over time, it’s likely that search engines, especially Google, will start to deindex your content if you noindex paginated pages.
Noindex Archive Subpages – Same as above. Don’t do it.
Noindex Password Protected Pages – Google can still index pages that have login forms on them. Best to noindex as content is generally thin.

2.7 Posts

Single Post Title – Some titles are formatted with %title% %separator% %sitename% and look like this: 41 Ways To Destroy Your Title – WPMediamastery. Personally, I want the full title width to be available for my post titles, hence only %title%. Choose whatever format pushes your envelope. Post titles can be changed on a per post basis. Single Post Titles and SEO Titles are different things unless you make them the same, which I don’t suggest. A single post title is the title that users will see when they are already on your site. The SEO title is what will be displayed in SERPS. If you want to set your own SEO title, you can do so in the snippet preview section when you enter your custom meta description.
Single Post Description – For SEO, each post or page should have its own meta description that you set on a per post basis. Entering meta text here is basically a fallback / default description in case you forget to enter your own custom meta description, which you should never forget to do. I would rather let Google insert an excerpt from the post than enter a custom fallback description because it will be more relevant to the actual post. If you leave this blank, you will be warned to enter a meta description within your on-page SEO (green ticks and red crosses) notification area.
Schema Type – For me, rich snippets is the #1 reason to choose Rank Math SEO. It avoids having to use a separate plugin for schema markup and it’s great to have this as part of the Rank Math SEO plugin. There are 14 rich snippet types to choose from. See the features table.
Headline – This the SEO title I spoke about for snippets. Write your own headline / SEO title on a per post basis. Choose the variable to format the fallback SEO headline.
Description – %excerpt% is the fallback variable to format the rich snippet description (SEO description). Leave as is and enter this on a per post basis yourself. Other SEO plugins use the meta description that you enter.
Article Type – Choose Article for content that relates to a specific topic, Blog Post for evergreen posts and News Article for time sensitive posts.
Post Robots Meta – This is where you select custom robots meta for single posts, e.g. noindex, nofollow etc. If you leave this set to Default, the global meta will apply.
Link Suggestions – A real handy free feature only offered by Yoast Premium. Basically the Rank Math SEO plugin will make suggestions for linking to other internal posts on your site. Great for large sites with many posts.
Link Suggestion Titles – Choose to use either focus keywords or titles as default text for links.
Primary Taxonomy – This option will display either categories or tags in breadcrumbs, when single posts are viewed.
Add SEO Meta Box – Must be enabled. This adds a meta box to the WordPress editor for each post.
Bulk Editing – There are some handy things you can achieve in the bulk editing screen of WordPress. The options are to enable, disable or make bulk editing read only.

2.8 Pages

Refer to Posts above. The settings are the same for pages with the exception of Article Type. Set to Article for Pages..

2.9 Attachments (Media)

Single Media Title – Choose the format for displaying media titles.
Single Media Description – This is a default / fallback description that can be changed on a per post basis.
Schema Type – Choose rich snippet type applicable to your media type.
Media Robots Meta – Please ensure you apply a noindex meta tag as the content on attachment pages is thin. If you choose default, the default global meta will apply.
Media Robots Advanced Meta – Set snippet length, video times and image size.
Bulk Editing – Enable bulk editing for extended editing options.

2.10 Templates

Single Template Description – This is a default / fallback description that can be changed on a per template basis.
Schema Type – Choose rich snippet type applicable to your template type.
Template Robots Meta – Please ensure you apply a noindex meta tag as the content on template pages is thin. If you choose default, the default global meta will apply.
Template Robots Advanced Meta – Set snippet length, video times and image size.
Link Suggestions – Enables a meta box for this post type.
Primary Taxonomy – Choose what displays in breadcrumbs.
Add SEO Meta Box – Adds a meta box in the editor screen to customize SEO options for templates.
Bulk Editing – Enable bulk editing for extended editing options.

2.11 Categories

Category Archive Titles – I leave as default values but these can be changed and/or typed over.
Category Archive Descriptions – Same as for Titles above.
Category Archives Robots Meta – Make your own selections. Personally I prefer to No Index categories and tags to avoid duplicate content.
Add SEO Meta Box – If you decide to index categories, this adds a description meta box to the term editor screen.
Remove snippet Data – Remove schema data from categories.

2.12 Tags

Exactly the same settings as for categories.

3. Sitemap Settings

3.1 General

Links Per Sitemap – My installation defaulted to 200 but the developer seems to think that 1000 is a good maximum number of links on a sitemap page. Once the maximum limit is reached the plugin will make another sitemap page automatically.
Images In Sitemaps – This relates to images found in each individual post. Set this to On as it helps search engines to index important images. In the past, search engines couldn’t read images but the developer informs me that with new technology, they can!! This is another compelling reason to ensure you use good image ALT descriptions (tags).
Include Featured Images – Your choice. I don’t include featured images in sitemaps.
Exclude Posts – This is handy if you have any posts, pages and custom post types that you want to exclude from the sitemap.
Exclude terms – Used to exclude categories, tags etc. from the sitemap.
Ping Search Engines – Notifies Google and Bing automatically when a sitemap is updated, e.g. when a new post or page is added to a site.

3.2 Posts And Pages (Combined)

Posts and pages have the same settings so this applies to both.

Include In Sitemap – Include or exclude posts / pages from the sitemap.
Image Custom Fields – If you have included any custom fields in your posts / pages that contain image URLs, you can include the custom field name in order to include the images in the sitemap. One per line (not comma separated please).

3.3 Attachments (Media)

If you wish to generate an attachment sitemap, set this to On and then disable the attachment redirection to parent post. (General Settings >> Links)

Personally I would leave this off and stick with the media redirection.

3.4 Templates

Include In Sitemap – I wouldn’t!

3.5 Categories And Tags (Combined)

Only one setting here. Include or exclude categories / tags from the sitemap.

Personally, I exclude these taxonomies to avoid duplicate content issues.

4. Role Manager

Please refer to this image. (Sorry but this post is really image heavy so i don’t want to duplicate unnecessarily).

If you have multiple users that work on your site, you can manage user type SEO permissions from this easy to understand interface built into Rank Math Seo.

There are 5 user types in WordPress and each one generally has a different set of permissions.

Subscribers and contributors are generally allocated zero permissions while authors can normally perform a number of on page functions such as page analysis, social settings, general settings and rich snippet settings.

Editors can perform the same as authors with the addition of site-wide analysis.

Administrators can perform all functions.

You can always add or subtract SEO permissions as you see fit.

5. 404 Monitor

We already configured the 404 monitor under the general settings screen. When 404 pages are found by Rank Math SEO, this is what you will see in your dashboard under the 404 monitor tab.

It shows number of hits and the time of access.

You can choose to redirect the 404 page or delete it.

6. Redirections

Redirects are shown in your dashboard, as above. The screen shows the redirect “From”, redirect “To”, the “Type” (e.g. 301), “Hits” and “Last Accessed” date.

You can edit, deactivate or delete the redirect if you wish to.

7. Search Console

All of your Google search console data now appears in your dashboard.

I’m not going to go into detail as to how to interpret the information presented because that is the subject of another article.

The first screen is an overview.

Followed by Search Analytics which shows keywords that you rank for, number of clicks, number of impressions, click through rate and position in SERP.

Then on to the sitemaps that have been submitted to Google and includes both warnings and errors.

The keyword tracker is still under development.

8. SEO Analysis

Rank Math SEO includes an SEO analysis tool that you run at any time you wish. This is a great way to do an on-page SEO audit.

The initial view gives you a graphical overview depicting your SEO score, how many tests have been passed, how many warnings you have to address and number of failed tests.

More detailed information follows after the graphics.

8.1 Basic SEO

These settings are the most basic and essential SEO settings that should be in place.

If you’re not seeing a score of close to 100% here, your SEO is failing and you need to take serious action.

Common Keywords – Lists the most common keywords that were found on your pages and posts.
SEO Description – Shows your home page meta description. If you don’t see a green tick here, go back to SEO Titles and Meta >> Homepage and enter a meta description. This analysis also relates to other posts and pages and you should get a warning for missing descriptions.
H1 Heading – For your home page, this is your site title as set in your theme customization settings. For individual posts and pages it is your single post title. I use the Genesis Framework which automatically allocates an H1 tag to all post titles but not all themes do this.
H2 Headings – These are headings on your pages and posts. If you don’t have any you have a problem with your on-page SEO.
Image ALT Attributes – You should know by now that all images should have ALT attributes. These are crucial for search engines and for users who cannot see images due to a slow connection or who may use screen readers or text to speech for the visually impaired.
Keywords In Title And Description – Rank Math analyses titles and meta descriptions of your pages and posts and checks that your keywords are included in both. You will get warnings for missing items.
Links Ratio – This is the ratio of internal to external links. Naturally you should have many more internal links.
SEO Title – This analyses your SEO titles which should not be too short nor too long. These are your snippet titles or headlines.
Site Tagline – Checks to see that you have entered a tagline in your theme customization.
Blog Public – Ensures that your posts are accessible to search engines for indexing in SERP. You will receive warnings if any issues are detected.
Permalink Structure – Checks your WordPress Settings (dashboard) to see how your permalinks are structured. The standard setting in WordPress generates URLs that are pretty meaningless, e.g. www.example.com/?p=5873. It’s best to set Permalinks to “Post name” (/%postname%/). This will produce a user friendly and meaningful URL, e.g. www.example.com/great-post-name/.
Focus Keyword – Rank Math SEO performs a check to see that focus keywords are set for all posts and pages. This is important because your content should be optimized around those keywords. Remember that most SEO plugins overplay the importance of keyword density. You need to be mindful of keyword stuffing too. This means that not all checks will produce green ticks. That’s perfectly OK.
Post Titles Missing Focus keywords – It’s good on-page SEO practice to include your focus keyword(s) in your post titles. This analyses all your posts and pages and reports on any that lack keywords.

8.2 Advanced SEO

Search Preview – Gives you an idea of how your site may look in search results.
Mobile Search Preview – Shows you how your site may appear in SERP on a mobile device.
Mobile Snapshot – Produces a snapshot of how your site appears on a mobile device. It is important to optimize for mobile devices properly because Google actually uses a mobile first index for site indexing and ranking.
Canonical Tag – Checks to see if your site uses canonical links and warns you if and when it doesn’t. Canonical links are important to avoid duplicate content. For example, let’s assume your post is categorized, as follows: www.example.com/category/post-url/. This is actually a duplicate of www.example.com/post-url/. As long as www.example.com/post-url/ appears as a canonical link for the page that shows a category name, Google will understand that the content is duplicated but will not negatively affect your SEO.
Noindex Meta – If a post or page has a noindex meta tag, it will not appear in Google’s index or in SERP. Rank Math SEO checks that your pages are indexable and warns you if it picks up any problems.
WWW Canonicalization – Your site likely accessible on www and non www. This redirects both versions to the same site. You should also have specified all versions of your site in Google search console and chosen your preferred version. This way Google also recognizes different versions of the same site.
OpenGraph Meta – OpenGraph is a standard that is used to communicate your content to social media and these tags assist Facebook in understanding shared content. Rank Math checks that these tags are properly in place.
Robots.txt – Provides details of disallowed directives (which block parts of your website from search engines) in your robots.txt file, thereby forewarning you to check that they are indeed as you intended them to be.
Schema Meta Data – Schema assists search engines in understanding your content. This is a very strong feature of Rank Math SEO and my #1 reason for using it. The plugin makes it easy to add rich snippets to your site with one or two mouse clicks. There are 14 rich snippet types to choose from.
Search Console – shows you whether search console has been linked to your site. If not, you will be warned and Rank Math SEO provides instructions to fix this.
Sitemaps – Very important. Sitemaps tell search engines exactly what content exists on your site so that they can index all of it. Without a sitemap there is always a risk of deep content not being indexed.

8.3 Performance

Image Headers Expire – Expires headers are very important for WordPress speed optimization. Expires headers instruct the user’s browser to cache various types of assets for a specified period of time. When users return to your site, certain page information is retrieved from the browser cache instead of from the server. This has a very positive effect on page loading times and also reduces load on your server. Rank Math SEO performs a check to see that image expires are found in your .htaccess file.
Minify CSS – Minification removes any white space from style sheets thus reducing file size and increasing site speed. This doesn’t affect functionality of the CSS styles.
Minify JavaScript – Same as for css. White space removed and file size reduced thereby increasing site speed.
Page Objects – Rank Math SEO analyses the objects on your page. More objects lead to more requests which can slow down your site. That said, expires headers, minification, combining scripts and CSS files and reducing DOM can all be achieved with a good caching plugin and fast hosting. Swift Performance Pro is undoubtedly the most aggressive caching plugin and the one that I use, in combination with Siteground, to achieve contentful paint times of under 200ms.
Page Size – Rank Math reports on page size with a view to increased performance optimization.
Response Time – Checks for slow server response time, the major cause of slow websites. Time To First Byte (TTFB) is a direct indication of server response time. With Cloudways hosting, the WP Rocket caching plugin and Cloudflare, I achieve TTFB of under 60ms. Google recommends a maximum of under 200ms.

8.4 Security

Visible Plugins – Shows plugins that are publicly visible. Vulnerabilities can sometimes be exploited through plugins, especially those that aren’t updated properly.
Theme Visibility – Informs you if your theme can be detected by sites like builtwith.com and wptd.com.
Directory Listing – Access to your directory listings can provide hackers with enough information to “break in”. Rank Math SEO checks this at server level and reports on any issues found.
Google Safe Browsing – Google will flag your site if it finds any malicious activity on it as it makes for poor user experience. Rank Math SEO warns you about any unsafe issues.
Secure Connection – It’s been a number of years since Google started up-ranking secure sites and down-ranking insecure ones. Rank Math SEO confirms whether your site runs on HTTPS which it should do in order to provide the safest experience for users.

8.5 Social SEO

The Social SEO Analysis tool shows connections to the following social services and provides warnings / alerts for those that are not connected.

Facebook
Instagram
Linkedin
Twitter
YouTube

Blog Post SEO Optimization Guide

This guide will show you how to use Rank Math to perform all of your on page SEO optimization with a view to achieving not only a 100% SEO score but also sticking with proven on page SEO best practices.

Please remember that Rank Math, like all other SEO plugins, provides guidelines relating to various aspects of on page SEO optimization. The suggestions don’t mean that a 100% SEO score in Rank Math is absolutely imperative or 100% correct in terms of on page SEO technique.

What I’m trying to say is that you don’t always have to aim for 100% green ticks in Rank Math. It’s fine to have orange and red ticks too and as long as you are aware of why they exist, you’ll still be good to go.

I will guide you with further explanation as we go along.

We will work our way through the guide as if we are writing a post.

Keyword Research And Setting Your Focus Keyword/s

If you’re reading this guide, it’s my guess that you need to learn about blog post SEO.

Most beginners either can’t afford premium keyword tools or don’t really want to.

Rank Math SEO solves this in that Google auto suggest has been baked into the plugin. And it’s one of the best ways to find long tail keywords because these LTK’s are the exact phrases that users enter into Google search. What’s really cool is that you don’t have to leave your dashboard to find these LTK’s.

I’ll show you in a moment how to access Google auto complete with Rank Math, but for the time being I’m going to use Google to illustrate how to do some basic keyword research. Once you understand this, you can do everything via Rank Math.

First thing you’ll want to do is fire up Google search. Now Google will try to tailor search results for you based on your browser history, location and a number of other factors.

I suggest you either use a browser other than Chrome or open an incognito window for your keyword research.

As you know Google has an auto-suggest feature that shows you common search queries entered by users. This is the perfect place to start.

Let’s assume you’re about to write a post about healthy, low carbohydrate recipes.

The first step in finding LTK’s is to search using a broad keyword term. Google will then show you a number of long tail keywords that you can use to hone in on your topic.

A search for recipe yields “recipe for disaster”, “recipes with mince”, recipe for pancakes”. None of these are suitable.

You need to find much more specific search phrases. These are known as long tail keywords.

So I went on to search for “healthy recipes without carbs”. A good long tail keyword would be “healthy breakfast recipes without carbs” or “healthy vegetarian recipes without carbs” as shown by Google.

Long tail keywords are very specific. That’s what you want. Yes, search volumes are much lower but that’s what you want. They more focused towards the actual topic and with the right optimization, you’ll have a much better chance of ranking for these less competitive keywords.

At the bottom of the search page you’ll find Google’s related searches.

Unfortunately, this is the one thing that Rank Math doesn’t show you but we must understand that Rank Math was not developed to be a keyword research tool. The fact that Google auto suggest is built into the plugin is nevertheless a touch of genius by the developers. It sets Rank Math SEO apart from its competitors who, over all the years in operation, never thought to make our lives easier.

Now enter some of these related search terms into the Google address bar or search box and you’ll be presented with even more long tail keywords. Make a note of them because those that relate to your post can be sprinkled into your content for better SEO optimization.

In the Rank Math meta area, simply type a broad keyword into the field where you enter your focus keyword and Rank Math extracts Google auto suggestions automatically.

Exactly the same keywords you get from google … right there in your dashboard!

If you look carefully you’ll see that the list of LTK’s provided by Rank Math is more comprehensive than that shown by Google.

Now that you have an idea of some keywords, hit up Ubersuggest.

I entered “healthy vegetarian recipes without carbs” and then clicked on keyword ideas. (marked 1 in the graphic).

The keyword shown in the list is slightly different, “healthy vegetarian recipes low carb”. The characteristics of good keywords are as follows:

Reasonable search volume (keyword searched for 140 over the last month). In this case 140 (marked 2).
Low search difficulty, in this case 7 (marked 4). This means you will have a 93% chance of ranking in the top 20 search results.
A high cost per click. In this case it is $2.78 (marked 3). This relates to paid advertising. Advertisers won’t pay for poor keywords because they’ll get no clicks / traffic. If advertisers are prepared for pay for a keyword, it means it is good.

You will enter your focus keyword into the Rank Math meta box when you start your new post. This meta box appears below the WordPress editor in the dashboard.

It’s also a good idea to sprinkle some LSI (latent semantic indexing) keywords into your content. These are similes that you can use in your content to better your SEO efforts.

The LSI Keywords tool provides extensive data.

Ok, let’s move on.

Use Focus Keyword For One Post Only

Recently (2018), a well known blogger had his site downgraded by Google for keyword cannibalization.

It happens when you optimize multiple posts for the same keyword.

You can certainly use the word/s in other posts. Just make sure you don’t optimize your post for the same keyword as a previous one. It’s not good SEO practice.

Rank Math notifies you if it finds your keyword used more than once.

Post Title And SEO Title: Are They Really Different? YES!

Most of us accustomed to banging out a post title and leaving it at that.

After all, your SEO plugin informs you that your title is either too short or over the 60 character viewable limit so that’s all we need to be concerned with, right?

But what they don’t specifically tell you is that you can choose to have a different title for SERPS (SEO title) and for your readers (post title).

If you leave the variable setting of %title%, Rank Math will set your SEO title to the post title.

But you can also change your SEO title for SERP. Click the Edit Snippet button on the Rank Math SEO General tab and enter a custom title.

The SEO title replaces the %title% variable. Notice also how the title length indicator has changed to green (56 characters used out of a total of 60) indicating a good title length.

Entering a custom SEO title allows you have a much longer post title. And because this is intended for readers that are already on your site, it’s a perfect way to let them know exactly what your post covers.

IMPORTANT NOTE: I would suggest limiting your longer post titles to a maximum of 110 characters. I recently had an email from Google informing me that my site was affected by unparsable structured data. In short, Google was unable to properly “process” some data on my blog archive. The Google Structured Data Testing Tool (SDTT) highlighted 2 problems with each blog post on the blog page:

Post titles should be in the range of [0, 110]. Mine exceeded the 110 character limit.
Image: false – false is not a valid URL.

Reducing my single post titles to 110 characters or less fixed the title problem.

It is pertinent to mention that the actual single posts were not a problem for Google in terms of title length being longer than 110 characters but it seems that Google cannot properly interpret titles longer than that on the blog archive page/s.

On the Rich Snippet tab in Rank Math SEO, you can also enter a custom title for Google structured data but it must also not exceed 110 characters.

Effectively, this allows you to have 3 titles, viz. a post title of any length you wish, an SEO title for SERP and a rich snippet title for Google rich snippets. The drawback here is that doing this bloats the plugin a little.

The image problem occurred because I don’t use featured images for my posts. Adding a featured image to each post sorted this problem out. Luckily, the Genesis Framework requires a code snippet to be added to functions.php to actually show featured images on single posts. (Certain Genesis themes may have a setting that can be toggled on and off). It is my preference not to show featured images but adding one to each post fixes the structured data image problem.

Now we haven’t yet entered a focus keyword to be used for this post. We’ll get to that shortly. But I’ll mention now that old school SEO plugins will suggest that your focus keyword should appear at the beginning of the title.

This is not always a good idea for three reasons:

Your title should be focused on achieving maximum clicks.
It’s more important that your title reads well for users. Placing the focus keyword at the beginning of the title can destroy UX (user experience) because you may not be able to convey the meaning that’s really intended.
If Google picks up that you’re deliberately manipulating your title for search engines, they will downgrade your site in SERP.

Rank Math doesn’t make such a suggestion, which is line with my own views. The plugin simply tells you to place your keyword somewhere in the title.

On mobile devices, the full 60 character title length may get cut off, so be mindful that you should still attempt to place your focus keyword such that it won’t get cut off on smaller devices.

One last thing, your focus keyword / phrase must appear in the title. As soon as you enter the focus keyword into the meta box you will see that Rank Math highlights it in the title.

And you’ll also get alerts relating to the title.

Adding A Dynamic Date To SEO Titles and Snippet Headlines

I’m sure you’ve numerous blog posts that include a date in the title. But what’s the benefit?

Well, people tend to give preference to reading the most current information first and if that post answers what they’re looking for, there’s no read any further.

So a dynamic date is a great way to increase click through rate (CTR) and improve SEO in the process. More visitors = higher serp rankings.

Rank Math makes it easy to add dynamic dates to SEO titles and snippet headlines. (If you want to add a dynamic date to your post title, you will have to include some code and a filter in your functions.php file. You’ll be able to then add a dynamic date using a shortcode. I’ll give you that code shortly.

NOTE: A shortcode in your post title will not be readable by Rank Math for the SEO title and snippet headline. You will have to add these manually as follows:

Rank uses their own variables viz. %curentmonth% for the month and %currentyear% for the year.

You follow the same procedure to add dynamic dates to the snippets headline.

Adding A Dynamic Date To Post Titles In WordPress

Day, Month And Year

Add this to functions.php. Use the shortcode [date_month_year] in your post title.

You can place the shortcode within parenthesis if you want your date to look like (July, 2019).

// Add the current date, month and year to post title
// shortcode: [date_month_year]
add_shortcode( ‘date_month_year’ , ‘dynamic_date_month_year’ );
function dynamic_date_month_year() {
$year = date(“Y”);
$month = date(“M”); // “M” produces a 3 letter month. Use “F” for full month
$date = date(“D”);
return “$date, $month, $year”;
}
add_filter( ‘the_title’, ‘do_shortcode’ );

Month And Year

Add this to functions.php. Use the shortcode March 2021 in your post title.

You can place the shortcode within parenthesis if you want your date to look like (July, 2019).

// Add the current month and year to post title
// shortcode: March 2021
add_shortcode( ‘month_year’ , ‘dynamic_month_year’ );
function dynamic_month_year() {
$year = date(“Y”);
$month = date(“M”); // “M” produces a 3 letter month. Use “F” for full month
return “$month, $year”;
}
add_filter( ‘the_title’, ‘do_shortcode’ );

Year

Add this to functions.php. Use the shortcode 2021 in your post title.

You can place the shortcode within parenthesis if you want your date to look like (July, 2019).

// Add the current year to post title
// shortcode: 2021
add_shortcode( ‘year’ , ‘dynamic_year’ );
function dynamic_year() {
$year = date(“Y”);
return “$year”;
}

URL

After entering a post title, WordPress will automatically generate a URL to match the post title.

The matching accomplishes a mostly human-centric goal, i.e. to imbue an excellent sense of what the web user will find on the page through the URL and then to deliver on that expectation with the headline/title.
Rand Fishkin, Founder Of Moz

Because your post title contained the focus keyword, your URL will also. Your URL must contain your keyword.

Depending on the post title, it may be best to shorten the URL. My post titles are generally much longer than my SEO titles, which are way too long for URLs.

Much consensus exists to suggest that shorter URLs are better for SEO.

After analyzing over 1 million Google search results, Brian Dean of Backlinko reckons that shorter URLs are easier for Google to understand. Matt Cutts, (ex Google) stated in an interview that after 5 words, Google algorithms give much less weighting to those words.

Furthermore, shorter URLs are easier to remember, process, copy and paste and share, thereby enhancing user experience and overall usability.

Rank Math SEO is unique in that it doesn’t suggest the removal of stopwords from URLs. Instead it provides an option in settings to automatically remove stopwords (prepositions) on a global basis.

Google doesn’t really take cognizance of stopwords. Be mindful, however that removing them can sometimes be detrimental to user experience in the event that it changes the overall meaning you wish to impart.

Judge each URL on its own merits.

While we’re on the subject of URLs, let’s take a quick look at …

Permalink Structure

For user experience, the default WordPress permalink structure is both ugly and meaningless.

Let’s face it, www.example.com/?p=4628 is pretty meaningless for users.

After installing WordPress, this is the first settings you should change. From your dashboard, selects Settings > Permalinks and choose Post Name.

Your URLs will now look like the ones illustrated above. Much more descriptive and meaningful for users.

You can learn about all of the best WordPress settings in this post.

Meta Description

The meta description is the text that appears below the SEO title in SERP.

Enter a meta description in the field provided on the General tab.

Once entered Rank Math SEO highlights the focus keyword which must appear in the meta description. The length indicator goes green when length is sufficient (maximum 160 characters).

The meta description is the second most important factor in search results.

First and foremost it should aim to fulfill user intent. In other words, if someone is searching for tips to write powerful post titles, your meta description should aim to fulfill that exact need. If the meta description doesn’t provide an exact match for the search query, Google will show a suitable description that matches the query, using alternative text from within your post.

Secondly the description should invoke curiosity, encouraging users to click your link.

You will also get a green tick showing that the meta description is compliant with on page SEO best practice.

Content

Have you ever come across content that you’ve felt is on the weak side yet it ranks on the first page of Google search?

And you know in your heart that one of your posts exceeds it by leaps and bounds, yet it’s nowhere to be found in SERP?

Don’t feel alone.

If you want to stand any chance of getting your posts ranked in Google SERP, your goals must be closely aligned with Google’s.

Google’s entire business is focused around providing the best experience for all their users so your content has to be brilliant.

But there’s more to ranking than killer content.

Besides a number of other ranking factors, over 200 of them to be precise, Google also needs to satisfy themselves that if they put one of your posts up there on page #1, that you’ll be committed to providing the same level of quality content, on a regular basis, in the future.

That’s why you need to publish posts on a consistent basis, be it weekly, fortnightly or monthly.

In short, you’ll need to prove that Google can trust you.

I’ve diverted a bit to provide just a smidgeon of background understanding into the area of Google rankings. The topic is vast and more than what I’ve said falls outside of the scope of this post.

I could ramble on for ages and still, my knowledge is just a slither of what the best SEO’s out there know!

OK. Back to Rank Math on page SEO optimization.

Keyword Placement In Body

Within 20 to 30 seconds of landing on your post, users want to know that your content is going to adequately address their problems, their needs.

You see, users search the internet for information. In short, they need solutions to their problems. If you can’t provide them with solutions, they’ll go to another site that can.

They landed on your site because your focus keyword was aligned with their search query.

Therefore, it’s imperative that your focus keyword appears in the first paragraph of your content. I like to get it into the first sentence.

That way, both users and Google will immediately understand what the article is all about.

Furthermore, Google will place a greater weighting on the first few paragraphs so it makes sense to include your keyword more in the first couple of paragraphs. It helps to impart relevancy.

One caveat though. If the inclusion of your keyword makes your content sound unnatural, rather leave it out. Google’s algorithms are clever. They’ll still find ways to understand your content.

You see, if the use of your keyword sounds unnatural, Google will see it as keyword stuffing – a way of gaming the algorithm. And they’ll downgrade your post for that.

One last suggestion. Use your keyword (naturally) in your conclusion. Preferably somewhere within the last few sentences. It adds to the post’s relevancy.

Keyword Density

Most SEO plugins give you guidelines around what is considered an acceptable keyword density.

I don’t want to plant ideas in your head so I’ll not mention percentages from other plugins, save to say that Rank Math SEO maintains that there is no ideal keyword density percentage.

That’s the wisest suggestion I’ve come across in an SEO plugin. Because it’s true.

Take keyword density with a pinch of salt.

I’ve read articles written by the acclaimed “SEO guru”, Brian Dean and have been unable to find his focus keyword mentioned more than once in some of his work.

If the use of the keyword fits into the content without having to think about writing your copy around it, then by all means use it as much as is necessary. But if you have to think about manipulating your content to fit your keyword, stay the hell away!

You’ll be better served by focusing your energies on complete content and a well designed post that will appeal to users in multiple ways.

Keyword In Subheadings

Like all SEO plugins, Rank Math suggests you have your keyword in top level subheadings such as h2, h3 and h4.

I can’t emphasize enough that stuffing your keyword into subheadings because you think you should for SEO, is poor on page SEO practice. It can make your subheadings look spammy.

By all means, go ahead and use your keyword in subheadings if it appears natural.

Otherwise, take this suggestion with a pinch of salt.

Keyword In Image ALT Attributes

It’s advisable to have your keyword in at least one image alt tag.

It helps to enhance relevancy.

But the same applies here as for subheadings and content. Be wary of keyword stuffing. Make certain that the alt tag reads naturally.

While the majority of users may never see ALT tags, visually impaired users who use screen readers see them all the time.

And remember, Google judges your site based on the kind of experience you create for users!

Links To External And Internal Resources

We all make statements in our posts. But how do users validate them? How do we back up what we’re saying?

I guess the answer lies in the last question.

It’s good SEO practice to support our statements. Not all of them, but the most important ones.

More importantly, Google needs to see that those statements are supported with facts from reliable resources.

Asking your cousin to mention something on his new website and linking to it ain’t going to cut it!

Google wants to see links to authoritative sources.

Whilst not really used by Google, domain authority is a Moz metric. Install the Moz Bar extension from the Chrome Web Store and use it to find the domain authority for any site.

It also shows in search results making it easy to find links to authoritative sites.

According to Moz, the most authoritative sites usually have a high number of top quality external links.

External links to reliable resources provides Google with evidence that your claims are well supported.

It’s difficult to say what DA number represents an authoritative site but to give you an indication as a starting point, Google has a DA of 99.

Links to other resources on your own website are equally important. It shows Google that your site is like an ice cream stand, offering a variety of other related content that will interest your users.

Content Length

There’s no doubt that long form content outranks short form content.

Not purely because of length but because longer content is generally more comprehensive.

In the same post I mentioned previously where Backlinko analyzed 1 million Google search results, research also showed that the optimal post length for ranking in Google’s first page was 1890 words.

Nevertheless, I have also seen some really short content rank on page 1 of SERP.

Focus on quality content, not quantity. Write for your users, not for Google. Your post should be as long as it takes to convey your message in the most complete way. If it takes 500 words to achieve that, so be it.

Wrapping Up …

Okay. So it’s over to you. I hope you’ve found this post useful. If there’s anything you feel I’ve left out, let me know in the comments.

Now that you see what Rank Math SEO can do for you, are you going to make the switch?