Rank Math SEO plugin for WordPress: Review Free vs. Pro

WordPress has basic SEO features built in. For advanced SEO features like content optimization for focus keywords we use SEO plugins. Rank Math SEO plugin adds all necessary optimization features to your WordPress powered website.

Try Rank Math SEO pro Download FREE version

If you are new to WordPress and want to use the best SEO plugin then Rank Math SEO is for you. I will explain how it stands out from other SEO plugins and how it will help you rank higher in search results.

You will learn:

Benefits of using Rank Math SEO
Features of Rank Math SEO
Reasons to use Rank Math SEO pro over FREE

Table of Contents

Rank Math SEO review: Is it good at SEO?

With so many popular SEO plugins for WordPress what makes Rank Math SEO stand out?

First of all, users are the best indicator for Rank Math SEO plugin success. Check this screenshot (June 2022) from the WordPress plugin directory.

Rank Math SEO Plugin has 1 million + active users and 4.9 start rating from 4635 reviews. These are amazing results for a SEO plugin.

When compared to other popular SEO plugins, Rank Math SEO takes source code optimization seriously. With so many features that you will not find in any free SEO plugin, Rank Math SEO manages to keep code size small and server memory usage at minimum.

Modular structure of Rank Math SEO combines features of many popular plugins to cover all areas of on page SEO optimization.

Now let’s look at features of the Rank Math SEO plugin.

Rank Math SEO plugin Free Features

Rank Math has a set of features that will help you optimize the whole WordPress website and each post individually.

When talking about Search engine optimization plugin will add tools for optimization. It will not optimize your website by itself automatically. You have to apply best SEO practices for WordPress using features provided by the Rank Math SEO plugin.

For example when you write an article you have to write a focus keyword. Then Rank Math SEO will show the SEO score of that article related to the provided keyword. SEO score will be calculated using multiple criteria with red mark for failed criteria and green mark for passed criteria. Then you need to convert every red mark to green as possible to get a higher SEO score.

These keyword optimization scoring is regularly updated by Rank Math SEO to include latest search engine optimization trends.

Here are main features of FREE Rank Math SEO plugin:

Setup Wizard: Guided step by step plugin setup feature with building structured data for your website.
Migration: Migrate settings from existing SEO plugins like Yoast SEO, All in one SEO, Redirection, etc.
Modular structure: Turn on only those features that you use. For example you can switch off features that you do not want to use. If you do not want to use SEO features for buddypress, bbpress or woocommerce on your website then you can switch them off.
Page title and meta description: You can add custom page title and meta description to each post, page and other custom content type that you enable. Use it to increase organic CTR.
Noindex, nofollow for pages and content types: You can hide certain parts of your website from search engine index for example forum pages, category pages or individual pages with thin content.
Attachment redirection: Default image attachment pages have no value for users and search engines. Redirect them to parent articles for better SEO.
Image SEO: Adds missing alt tags automatically using post title and other data.
XML Sitemaps: Custom sitemap optimization to list only important parts of your website. Pages with noindex attributes, empty categories, and redirected attachment pages can be automatically excluded from sitemap. Ability to add images to sitemap for better indexing and increasing topical relevance.
Focus keyword: You can optimize your articles with up to 5 focus keywords. This is a unique feature that you will not find in any other free SEO plugin.
General keyword tracking: keep track of your top keywords. How many keywords your website has and how it changes over time. Count keywords that rank your website within top 100 positions.
Schema markup: Supports many schema markup formats. Add featured image automatically to the markup. Rich snippets also used for increasing organic CTR.
Redirect and 404 page monitoring: Improve SEO by fixing old URLs and not found pages.

How Rank Math will help you?

When using a tool we want to see its effect. Success of a SEO plugin is measured by appearance on the first page for related searches and traffic grows over time.

Rank Math SEO delivers all SEO optimization ability and performance tracking features in one super plugin. No need to use several external tools for tracking keyword and page positions of your website.

Plugin integrates with Google Analytics and Google Search Console. Rank Math SEO will show you important ranking and performance data for taking action instantly. In the free version you will not see data per individual page. You will see general data for all pages and keywords.

Apart from ranking data, Rank Math SEO also helps with website and content optimization. It has so many features that can be useful for a variety of websites built with WordPress CMS.

Here are top 5 benefits that Rank Math SEO provides.

Prioritize SEO optimization tasks
Guided content optimization for multiple focus keywords
See total number of keywords ranking your website
Guided SEO plugin setup to define structured data for your website
Noindex custom content types that lowers your website SEO

Benefit 1: Prioritize SEO optimization tasks

Rank Math SEO helps to prioritize SEO tasks by importance. For example, on the dashboard it will show how well your posts are optimized for focus keywords. If you have many posts without a focus keyword then those posts are not well optimized for search engines.

Remember that each post needs to focus on one topic. If a post is not focused then there is no need for that post. Rank Math SEO helps to find posts without focus keywords and find posts with low SEO scores. As a website owner your priority will be to fix those posts and increase on-page SEO score. These are easy tasks when you know exactly where to start optimization for search engines.

Actually this is the main reason why I switched from Yoast SEO plugin after using it for years to Rank Math SEO. Rank Math SEO helps to prioritize my SEO tasks that will show quick results.

Benefit 2: Guided content optimization for multiple focus keywords

Optimizing articles for multiple focus keywords describing a single topic is a killer feature for WordPress SEO plugin. Search engines rank pages by topic. Same topic can be described with multiple keywords variations. Free version of Rank Math SEO plugin allows you to optimize content for up to 5 focus keywords.

Having multiple keywords helps to keep articles more natural. This is another great feature provided by the SEO plugin for free.

Each article will be evaluated by multiple ranking criteria with suggestions displayed as a checklist. When more green check marks are gained by applying each suggestion you will get a higher SEO score. This scoring system will help you better optimize articles for search engines.

SEO scoring system is a suggestion based on google suggestions and recommendations by SEO experts. Rank Math SEO keeps track of latest SEO changes and updates these scoring criteria with regular plugin updates.

Benefit 3: See total number of keywords ranking your website

Rank Math SEO plugin shows total keywords ranking your website. More keywords you have, the more traffic from search engines you will get. Remember that a single topic can have multiple keywords. It is normal even to have 100 different keyword variations for a single topic.

For example a successful blog that makes full time income on average has 300 articles. When 100 keywords rank for each article, you should have 30k “Total Keywords”.

This is another important SEO criteria for targeting.

Benefit 4: Guided SEO plugin setup to define structured data for your website

Rank Math SEO plugin has a guided setup wizard to define structured data for your website. It appears when you activate the plugin from the WordPress dashboard. Alternatively you can always update the setup from “Rank Math” → “Dashboard” page clicking on tab “Setup Wizard”.

Structured data parameters defined in the “Your site” step of the wizard. There you can add structured data (schema markup) information for your website which will be used on all pages.

Rank Math SEO setup wizard allows you to define following:

Default website image for Google.
Default social share image to use when sharing pages without image.
Define website type. For example: Personal blog, News site, Company website etc.

Structured data will help google to understand your website and will increase your authority for better SEO.

You can link your related Social Profiles to WordPress website using RankMath as well. Learn how from this tutorial.

Benefit 5: Noindex custom content types that lowers your website SEO

WordPress websites can have forum, social media features, classified ads or other custom content types populated by users. We all know that user generated content can have some negative SEO impact if not properly moderated. Users can post non-optimized content with links to external web sites. Content with not much value and external links to websites with no relevance or authority can harm your overall website SEO.

Rank Math SEO plugin gives full control to prevent negative consequences of content with no value using noindex and nofollow robots meta tags.

How to prevent custom content types from indexing and passing link value?

To prevent custom content types from indexing and passing any link value, navigate to “Rank Math” → “Titles & Meta” page from WordPress dashboard.
Select post type for example “Replies”.
Enable “Robots meta” switch and custom robots meta check boxes will appear.
Select “No Follow” and “No Index” checkboxes.
Repeat process for all custom content types.
Click the “Save Changes” button under the form.

To remove content with no value and other duplicate pages it is recommended to redirect separate attachment pages to parent posts, disable date archive pages, disable author archive pages if you have a single author blog.

There are many more benefits of the Rank Math SEO plugin. I outlined the most important benefits of an SEO plugin for me.

Now let’s check how Rank Math SEO Pro can help you with SEO.

Rank Math SEO Pro Review: Is it worth the money?

Rank Math SEO pro extends already existing features by adding more automation, more analytics and keyword suggestions, more schema types, better woo commerce SEO features.

Check this video to see the difference between FREE vs. Pro version of the Rank Math SEO plugin.

https://youtu.be/33z48NawhlQ

How Rank Math SEO Pro will help you?

Rank Math SEO Pro adds more features that will help you to get to the top in google search results and stay there for longer. Getting to the top and staying there is possible with easy position tracking features. Let’s check how SEO performance tracking will help you.

Keyword tracking

On Rank Math SEO pro analytics you will see top winning and top losing keywords.

Top winning keywords – tells you that your recent SEO optimization is working. Whatever you did in the last couple weeks started showing positive results. You can do similar optimization for other important keywords on your website in order to get a similar increase in rankings.

Top losing keywords – tells you that your competitors have better content than yours. Check your competitor for each losing keyword and try to add missing parts to your content. It can be better images, better content, detailed video, adding additional content pages for increasing topical relevance, adding FAQ section etc. Try to win over your competitors’ content.

Apart from top winning and top losing keywords you can track individual keywords that are important for your website. For example keywords that are related to your core product or service. These can be keywords that you want to rank higher and want to stay on top of search results forever.

SEO performance tracking for posts

Similar to tracking keywords, Rank Math SEO pro will help you with tracking posts. You can see top winning and top losing posts. Posts are similar to keywords but instead of single keyword post articles will rank for multiple keywords. Usually successful articles will rank using 50-200 keywords. Your goal will be to rank your posts high and increase the number of keywords the article ranks for.

Top winning posts – tells you that you have recently optimized your posts well. Take note of what you did with your post and repeat the process for other posts that rank lower.

Top losing posts – tells you to optimize your post for gaining lost positions back. It can be updating your page or adding related articles and linking back to your page.

Content AI

Content AI helps you to optimize page by suggesting:

related keywords,
related questions that you can include to your content with single click
find citations from reputable websites to increase credibility to your content
optimize your page subheadings, images, links, content length to get on par with top performing pages

Rank Math SEO free has 5 content AI credits. One credit will be used when you calculate suggested data for any post.

There are 15 AI credits in PRO plan, 125 in Business plan, 600 in Agency plan. Additionally you can purchase extra AI credits independent of your plan.

Rank Math SEO Pro pricing

Simple price for multiple sites

Pricing of premium Rank Math SEO pro plugin is simple with no hidden or additional costs. You get unlimited domains with PRO license for just 59$ for bloggers. If you plan to use the plugin on client websites then choose Business or Agency plans which are 199$ and 499$.

Check this screenshot for Rank Math SEO pro prices. Pricing is paid yearly. Licenses can be extended at the same price every year.

Limiting factor for any plan is the number of tracked keywords and AI credits.

How does the price compare to other premium SEO plugins?

Best part of Rank Math SEO Pro is simple pricing. There are no hidden fees or extra add-on you have to pay for. Price stays the same for multiple domains.

Check this table to see how Rank Math SEO pro compares to other premium SEO plugins for WordPress. You can see that Rank Math SEO Pro price stays the same while with other SEO plugins like Yoast, AIO SEO, SEOPress you have to pay up to 300x more money.

As a blogger aiming for passive income with niche sites you will have at least 10 blogs. So it is much better to pay a single price for an SEO plugin while using it across multiple blogs.

How much do you save when using Rank Math SEO Pro instead of separate premium plugins?

Rank Math SEO combines features of multiple plugins to provide a complete SEO suite for your WordPress website. By using a single plugin you reduce time spent for optimization, remove the need to update separate plugins, increase security and reliability by using a single plugin developed by a team of professionals.

Here you can see how much value provides Rank Math SEO pro when calculated by separate premium plugins. You will save a lot of time and money by using a single well optimized plugin instead of multiple not integrated plugins.

Rank Math SEO plugins use a modular approach so you can switch off features that you do not use or prefer using other plugins for certain features.

FAQ

Is rank Math a free plugin?

Rank Math SEO plugin has a free version which is fully functional and has much more features than most premium plugins. You can download the free version from here.

Is Rank Math SEO better than Yoast?

Rank Math SEO beats Yoast with more features, better optimized code, better user interface, rank tracking features etc. Many premium features of Yoast SEO like using multiple focus keywords, internal link suggestion, and redirect manager can be found on Rank Math SEO free version.

Is rank Math Safe?

Rank Math SEO is a safe plugin and listed on WordPress plugin repository. All plugins in the repository periodically checked for vulnerability and kept up to date with the latest version of WordPress CMS.

Can you use Yoast and rank Math together?

Unfortunately they cannot be used together because they update the same parts of the web page. When used together they will conflict with each other and can break your website. When you activate Rank Math SEO it will tell you to deactivate Yoast for preventing any conflict.

Which is the best SEO plugin for WordPress?

Rank Math SEO is the best SEO plugin compared to other popular plugins in WordPress repository. I have used other SEO plugins for several years before switching to it.

What are the cons of Rank Math SEO?

While the pro version supports unlimited websites there is a limit in the number of tracked keywords. You can track 1000 keywords across all your websites.

If you have 10 websites then you can track 100 keywords on average.
When you have 100 websites then each website on average can track 10 keywords.
With 1000 websites you will be able to track 1 keyword for each website on average.

Number of tracked keywords becomes a limiting factor even though the number of websites is unlimited.

Final verdict on Rank Math SEO pro

Rank Math SEO is a great plugin that combines all necessary features to improve SEO for your website. With the pro version you will have a full picture of your current SEO status and make right decisions instantly. Timely decisions for creating and optimizing content will move your ranking to the top.