Rank Math SEO

Hi guys my name is Vikas, and in this article, I’m going to explain everything I know about an amazing plug-in called Rank Math SEO WordPress Plugin.

It’s better than Yoast SEO, and it’s all about optimizing your website for the Google results. Let me show you what we will cover in this article.

In this article, I’ll show you how to download and install the free plug-in Rank Math SEO WordPress Plugin. We will configure the plug-in. Get a Google search console account so we get more information on how good we are found on the internet, through which words and terms we are found on the Internet, what the behavior is of people on our website.

We will configure our monitor or 404 pages. And if you think what are 404 pages, do not worry my friends. I will explain in this tutorial what it is. I will walk you through all these steps.

We will optimize our search result, titles, URL and text below the titles — the area people will see when they search for something on Google, and we will even configure it in such a way that all the posts and pages and products on your website automatically will be optimized for Google.

But you can optimize all your post pages and products even more with Rank Math SEO WordPress Plugin. You get handy tips to optimize your website even further. So you will be found better, get more visitors to turn them into clients, make more money, and be a blessing to the people around you.

Rank Math SEO

Let’s get started. So the first thing we want to do is get RankMath. It’s totally free. You can get it over here how to Download the Rank Math SEO

how to Download or Install the Rank Math WordPress SEO Plugin

If you see the above image and click download the Rank Math SEO WordPress Plugin. So after it’s downloading over here, then I go to my website.

I go to the backend. If you’re not logged in, you can go to your WordPress website forward slash after the domain name /wp-admin, and then you can log in. Check the below image and login to your account.

Then I want to go to plugins and click on Add new Plugin. upload plug-in or drag this over in and click on Install Now. it will install with few seconds. You see below image for details.

or you can directly add new plugin and install. please see the below image.

After install click on activate the plugin. To activate plugin please see below image.

then we need to connect a free account. How can we do that? We can click over here and we can sign up with our Facebook account, Google account, or an email address. I will use an email address.

My name is Vikas , i use my email address and I click on register. That’s it. I click on OK and now I’m logged in.

and click on start wizard. Please check below image for more information.

If you YoastSEO already or other plugins, Rank Math can import all that data for you. If you want to know how to change a website from Yoast SEO to Rank Math, you can click over here. Right now, I will skip this.

SITE SETTING

So I click on skip – don’t import now and then we go to step 2, your website. So this is my website Blog and here we need to fill in some information. What kind of website is it? Is it the webshop or is it a personal blog, community blog, news site, small business site. Well, I think this one is a Shopping Website.

I’m sure it is. And what kind of business type is it? I make websites. So website. Then here the company name, so let me COMPARESPRICE, and this is what will appear in Google.

So if I go and search for Google search console, you see information over here in Google search console which is a website and then some text over here, and when you say over here, your company name is COMPARESPRICE, it will appear over here.

Then logo for Google. You can upload the logo — this is my logo. If you click over here you can search through your library or upload new files from your computer.

SEARCH CONSOLE SETTING AND CONFIGURATION

Well, mine is there already and then there’s default social share image. I want to upload one or get one from my library. So I scroll down — so 200×200 will be fine for me.

Use this file and it says over here the recommended image size is 1200×630 but I choose a square one. Then I click on save and continue, and then we go to the next step.

Please see the below image.

We need to use the search console and it will help you to get a lot of important information from your website that will help you to make your website even better and be found better in Google. So in order to get it, I click on get Authorization code and I need to log in to my Google account.

As you see, what do I need to do? I need to go to Google search console, start here, make sure it is my Gmail account and I want to add a new domain. I can do it in two ways. I want to use the So I use my Gmail account this one, for instance. If you don’t have a Google account, you can get a Gmail account and they have a Google account and you can link those.

Please copy Authorization code, switch to your application, and paste it here. So I copy this, I paste the code and I was authorized, and now I can go to search console and choose my profile, but it will probably not be there yet. domain way.

This can be a little tricky because we are going to use DNS verification. But I will show you step by step.

So what I need to do? I need to copy this code, then I need to go to my provider, which is Godaddy, you can go to your domain hosting, log in.

so I’m over here, I go to websites here at Godaddy. I go to site tools, then, I go to domain DNS zone editor, domain name server, and then I need to go to TXT, as you see over here. Please see the below image.

Copy the txt record below to the DNS configuration. So here I am. I paste the value and I click on create. So it’s now created, it is over here. Now I need to wait probably and I can click on verify. Ownership verified — that’s how it works. Click on done. See the image below

Now, if I click over here I can go to COMPARESPRICE– awesome. What I want to do now, I go back to the setup wizard and I refresh all the sites. Now, I search for COMPARESPRICE, there it is. see the image below for my property is added in google search console.

I click on save and continue and then we go to sitemaps.

RANK MATH SEO SITEMAPS SETTING

Sitemaps are really important. Sitemap is actually a file – an XML file -that you’ve sent to Google or to Bing or to a different search engine and it contains all the important information of your website.

So it becomes easier for Google and all those other search engines to crawl your website and get all the important information. So do I want to use sitemaps — yes. Click on ‘on’.

Do I want to include images — yes. And if you have posts, pages, products, or even more things, I will check them all because you want to be found on all those pages, and post and products pages. Public Taxonomies — I want to include them all.

So I click on select, so I can be found on any page on my website. If I turn off posts, I will not be found on my posts on my WordPress website and I want to be found on everything. I click on save and continue.

SEO tweaks

Then we want to optimize our website, SEO tweaks, Noindex Empty category, and tag archives. If you want to create a new category for your blog posts, for instance, affiliate marketing, because you want to create affiliate marketing related blog posts in the future, but you have no blog posts yet related to the category– affiliate marketing.

Then you decide over here, if you turn this on, when a category is empty, for instance, affiliate marketing category in your blog post, it contains no blog posts with that category, it will not be shown in the index. I turn it down because it is better for the Google search results. Nofollow on external links.

I turn this off because if I link to an external website, I want Google to follow it because when you link to other websites and other websites link to you, it can also be good for your search results. So I want to turn this off and open external links in a new tab.

RANK MATH SEO SCORE

So if I click over here on a link, it will open in a new tab instead of a new window. I prefer that, so I click on save and continue. Awesome. Our website score at this moment is 100 and I want to enable auto-update of this plugin.

So when there’s an update, it will automatically be updated. And then I scroll down and I want to go to the Advanced Options. So I click over here.

RANK MATH SEO Advanced Options

When you have more active users on your website, you will see an extra option over here, something like this — the role manager.

There you can say, all the administrators have access to those features within Rank Math. In that way, you can give administrators, editors, and authors certain roles when they are logged in into your website. I don’t have that because I have only one user on my website. So I go to the 404 + Redirection options.

404 + Redirection options

So what you can do over here at 404 and Redirection,you can turn them on. Here at 404 monitor, if I turn this on, it means that when somebody goes to a page that does not exist.

that means they go to a page that does not exist. And I want to know when people go to a page like that, because then there’s an error in my website and I can get rid of that error.

What else I can do, I can create a redirection. If I turn this on I can decide in these settings that when somebody goes to a page that does not exist, then I can redirect them immediately to the home page or to a 404 page, or to a specific page I have created for people that go to a page that does not exist.

I can say on the page, “Hey, I’m sorry you’re here. At the page that does not exist anymore. Click here to go to the home page.” So it’s up to you what you can do. I will turn them on and I click on save and continue.

Schema mark up

So at schema mark up, you can give more information to Google and other search engines, so they can make your search result look better.

If I go to Google, and I search for Game, I skip all the ads, and for instance, over here at Amazon website, you see the rating, you see reviews, you see the price and more information, and that is something you can do over here at schema mark up.

Not all those settings, but a lot of those settings. So let’s take a look at that. I want to turn this on. Schema type for posts — a post is an article but maybe, all your blog posts are about books.

Schema type for products, so I leave it as it is, and the more post types you have like posts, pages, houses — whatever, the more options you see over here, and you can give every post type or article type a certain category.

So that’s okay with me. I click on save and continue. Now, it says here, welcome to Rank Math SEO.

RANK MATH SEO OPTION TURN ON /OFF

So you see over here a few options and they can be turned on, active or inactive — turned off. I don’t use Advanced Custom Fields, so it’sturned off. I don’t use bbPress; I don’t use AMP.

I want to use Link Counter, and if I see something I want to use, the role manager, for instance, I can turn it on, and then I can adjust the settings over here. So let me go to that.

Here I can say the administrator should have access to everything, and editor — you know what — I want to give editors also access to this area of RankMath. And authors and contributors, all that stuff, I don’t want to give them any access.

When I’m happy I click on update or when I have the settings I have in mind. So I go back to the dashboard and I’m happy with this. Here we can take a look at import and export, settings.

So if I like those settings, I can export them to a different website, but before we do that, I prefer to go to all the other configurations.

Rank Math SEO General Setting

So here at the RankMath, I go to general settings, and then we talk about links. So here are some link settings. Let’s start with the upper one — strip category base.

If you turn it on, what it will do, it will make your domain like example.com/category/my-category, become example.com/my-category. So this area will be left out.

So if I go to my website. I go to the blog page, I go to this blog post and then I go to category – Self-Improvement. This area will be left out. When I go to a blog page, it looks like this– the domain and then the link and I decided to do that here at the dashboard.

Then the settings of WordPress. Permalinks, I use the post name over here, and I turn this off. I leave it as it is, because I like people to see the category. You can turn it on. If you turn it on, you can not turn it off anymore.

You can, but if you do so you can get 404 errors because then the links will not work anymore. Because then there’s a chance that Google links to an old page. So it’s up to you if you turn it on.

It means when you find an attachment through Google, through a search result, you will go to the post where they appear in. So I turn it on. Redirect orphan attachments — I redirect them to my website but with https. Remove stop words from permalinks.

No follow – we discussed this already when we were doing the wizard. So I leave this off; I leave this off, and I turn Nofollow Image File Links on. I save the changes and then we can go to the images, and here are two options. Missing alt attributes.

 It will save you a lot of time. I turn this on. What will happen? When you add a new image on your website, it will automatically fill in the alt attribute.

Normally, I have to do this manually, then I copy the file name and I need to remove the dashes, but here I can choose how it should be named without me doing anything about it.

Breadcrumbs

you can leave this as it is, otherwise, you need to paste this somewhere in the PHP code. It’s too complicated, you don’t need it. So leave it as it is. so let’s go to webmaster tools.

Webmaster tools

Google search console. If it’s not verified yet, click over here, copy this code, paste it, here and that’s it.

The same you can do with bing webmaster tools, Baidu webmaster tools, Alexa — I personally use Google search console and you can use Bing. Those are the two biggest ones. I never use those.

robots.txt

leave it as it is. You don’t have to do anything over here. Do not make any changes in robots.txt. Also do not make any changes in .htaccess.

WooCommerce

If you have a WooCommerce website, you can click on WooCommerce. Then we have to remove the base, and it’s doing the same as with links. It makes the link shorter, so products & accessories & action figures and then this one will be changed into this one.

So I like to keep it shorter. Keep in mind, you cannot undo it. Otherwise, you can get 404 errors, but I like it to be shorter.

Remove category base – so product-category/accessories becomes accessories. Well I never like this one, so I turn this one on. Remove parent slugs, so product-category/accessories/action-figure swill be changed to product-category/action-figures.

No. I like to have all the categories over here, so I turn it off. Remove the generator tag; I will give this on. Remove schema markup on shops — yes, and then the brand. I leave it as that is. Save the changes and let’s go to others.

404 Monitor

There are two modes – simple and advanced. If you have a new website use simple. Log limit — I will turn this to zero. It doesn’t matter if you have a big website or small website, you will never be limited with a log limit.

You can exclude path, so if you say, for instance, my category, self-improvement, we will change it to improvement or self-improvement, and without this [ – ] over here.

Well, in that case, if you do not want RankMathto log those errors, you can say everything that has to do with self-improvement and can not be found, it will not be logged by the monitor, because it’s on purpose that it has changed.

Then you can turn this on. I don’t need it. Save the changes. Then we move on to the next stage in Rank Math WordPress SEO Plugin setting. Let’s go again to search the console.

We need to select COMPARESPRICE or own domain,cache limit, how many days to keep data rows in a cache and ID is fine. I save it, and then I go to Redirections.

Redirections

Do I want to debug redirections; I leave this off and then here at fallback behavior, you can send people to a default 404 page which is created by the WordPress website, or redirect them to the home page.

But then the visitor can be a little bit confused like hey, I went to a certain URL and now I go to the homepage, what happened? Or you create a custom redirection page, and then at that page, you can create something creative, like hey, I think you have entered a page that does not exist anymore.

Here you can choose what you want to do. Go to the homepage or do something else, and you can make it really beautiful. You’re not limited by the default 404 page.

You can secrete something beautiful with Elementor or the page builder you prefer. So that’s it. Redirection type 301 is okay, and I turn this off. I’ll leave it off.

So those were the settings. Let’s take a look at titles and meta, and keep in mind that those settings are really important. They will save you a lot of time, not only for everything you’ve done on your website, but also if you add a new blog post or a new product on your website, then these settings will determine how the website will be optimized.

Even though you can change all the settings over here, you can always override the settings in individual blog post pages, WooCommerce pages, and other kinds of pages you have.

Titles and Meta

Let’s take a look at titles and meta, and keep in mind that those settings are really important. They will save you a lot of time, not only for everything you’ve done in your website, but also if you add a new blog post or a new product in your website, then these settings will determine how the website will be optimized.

Even though, you can change all the settings over here, you can always override the settings in individual blog post pages, WooCommerce pages and other kinds of pages you have. So this will just save you a lot of time, but you can always override.

I’ll show you how you can do that. So let’s start with global meta options. So what you can do? You can say, I want to have my website not indexed. No pages will be indexed.

Everything will be indexed right now. If you see this, just leave it as it is. Noindex, empty category and Tag Archives,we talked about this. Turn it on.. If you have no posts in a certain category,it will not be indexed which is better for your search results.

Separator character; I always like to use this one. So wherever in the website in all these settings, I say I place this tag, a separator will be shown. So keep that in mind. So post title and then you see the site title. If you change it, you see it changed over here.

local SEO

there’s a chance you do not see this. Why do you not see this? Because I said that I am a small local company in the wizard. So there’s a reason you do not see this when you do not see that. If you have it, you can say you are a person or an organization.

Let’s say I’m a person, no, I’m an organization COMPARESPRICE; my logo; my URL; I can leave my email address; my address. And I can show my address — format address, locality region, and postal code. I can change it all. I can add my country like that.

So I can change that. Business type – I have a website. My opening hours, how do I want to display that, with AM and PM and all that stuff. You can show your price range, or this AboutUs page… about.

Then here is the contact page, well the contact page, and this can be used in the Rich Snippets when you search on google for this website, or for COMPARESPRICE.

Google Maps API key — if you have GoogleMaps and you have an API key, you can paste it over here. If you want to get your coordinates, then you can go to maps.google.com.

 If I would say Andheri Mumbai, that’s where I have my office. You put your area information with address and phone number. You see code after clicking on google API over here, also over here.

Longitude and latitude, and then you will code. But you need to have your Google Maps API key, otherwise it will not be shown.

Social media

Let’s go to social media, and let’s fill in all these pages you have https://facebook.com/Dodigitalsindia. If you have a Facebook authorship, and that’s your personal page you can paste it here. Facebook admin a numeric id, if you want to find that just Google how to find your Facebook id.

That’s how you can find that and you can placeit over here. If you have an app, secret you can paste itover here.

Twitter – https://twitter.com/Dodigitalsindia; username- Dodigitals; Google Places — Yelp, LinkedIn, Instagram, https://instagram.com/fDodigitalsindia.

Homepage

The homepage — it is the home page; that’s all you have to do over here. If you want to change that, you can go to,let me see, settings > reading and there you can change your homepage.

Post formats – really important. Right now, how will it be shown? From archive titles, so if I go to the website, to the blog page, and the blog posts, and then I go to a self-improvement category, how should it be shown? Here’s a separator, here’s a side name, and here’s a term.

I like it that way, and here you can have a description and then you can say let there be an excerpt. I don’t have that for my categories. If you want that you can go to posts & categories and if I have a category fashion, I can have a description over here and it will be shown over here when I say show an excerpt.

Let me see, first here, then excerpt — yes. Format archives robot meta — it says custom, do I want to index them? Just leave it as it is. By the way, all those settings are optimized. So when you change nothing, they are good. But you can make them better if you want to.

But, over here, they’re all fine. I save it and then we go to the next one — authors.

Authors

If you have more authors you enable this,so Google knows they need to search for more authors, and if you have only one author then you disable it. If you enable it, how should it be called,author, I think that’s perfect.

So it will say Comparesprice.com/author and then Vikas. Then author robot meta, noindex, I don’t want this page to be found. A lot of times a page with not much information, so I prefer that people will find important pages on my website instead of the author page, and again this, when I see this I leave it as it is.

Author archive title — Vikas|Comparesprice page 2 of 4. If I have a lot of blog posts, for instance, it will be shown like this. Then description, again I can say excerpt.

If I want to show this then I need to go to edit my profile, scroll down, then I can have some information over here and that will be fetched over here when I say… or let me see. Here, that will be fetched over here. Add Seo meta box for users — yes. Save it.

Miscellaneous pages

Date archives — I personally really don’t like dates in my titles. So I disable this and then if somebody searches for something, for example, search page 2 of 4 from Comparesprice. So I can change it over here, the search query, then the which pages it is, the separator, and then the site name.

If the page is not found, the page is not found in Comparesprice. Noindex, noindex… let me see. Yes, I don’t want to index that. I don’t want to index the paginated pages. The subpage — I don’t want it to be indexed and prevent password-protected pages from getting indexed by Google – yes. I don’t want that. Save the changes.

Posts

So how do I want to display my posts and again these are the basic settings and then you can overwrite them by the individual settings you choose for each post, or page, or products. And actually I like this.

The title of the blog post with a separator and site name. The single post description excerpt — yes. Schema type — we talked about is already;article, headline and the SEO title description, seo description.

Article type — for the blog post, it is just blog post, and I leave this all as it is because I think, yeah, we discussed this already in the wizard. So I don’t have to change anything because it’s already perfect.

Final Words

This is all about Rank Math SEO setting and how to use. Rank Math SEO is free to use. It has all the important setting about SEO. Rank Math SEO is better than paid version of Yoast SEO.

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