Rank Math
Rank Math Review. The most popular SEO plugin
Unlike in Korea, WordPress is the world’s largest website and blog platform (or CMS, to be precise), so a huge market has formed around related themes and plugins. WordPress is open source, and once open source takes off, it seems to become incredibly popular like this. That’s why there are so many types of plugins, and among them, there’s the most popular SEO (Search Engine Optimization) plugin called Yoast SEO, which, simply put, helps Google search your Website or blog well. However, there are many rivals, and representative examples include All in one SEO.
Also, besides plugins, there are many programs and web services like Google Chrome extensions. Among them, the SEO plugin I will review now is Rank Math. When I first started using this plugin, it was released for testing to Facebook Page members for a few months. When I first wrote this review, it was like the newcomer of WordPress SEO plugins, but now it’s undeniably one of the most popular SEO plugins, no, one of the most popular WordPress plugins overall, gaining popularity similar to the two plugins mentioned above.
Rank Math has a wide variety of features, even in the free version.
First, Rank Math can specify up to five keywords when you write. It is an excellent feature because we can check various related keywords, but it checks the score by the main keyword, so I don’t think it’s such an exceptional function too. But It is better than nothing.
And personally, I like the feature that analyzes the overall SEO score of my site at first, but as with all such services, it’s a bit of a bad point if you’re not someone who can overhaul your site to some extent, as it’s hard to take action. For example, my blog is currently at 70 points, and it tells me to modify it this way and that, but with my abilities, it’s a bit…
And I like its redirection function too. It is the most famous one of the redirection plugins, but it made my site quite slow. I don’t know about it now. I don’t think Rank Math makes my site slow. It’s often mentioned that the plugin size has been reduced periodically when it’s updated. And it has 404 monitor features. I don’t use it, but someone may use it very well.
There is also a function that sets the schema. Honestly, this part is a little difficult for me, so I’m not using it now. If I explain as I understand when I search for something on Google, photos or lists and so on sometimes appear on the first page, not just search results of website or webpage, and these are said to have been caused by modifying Scheme. It is important not to just change it, but to set it appropriately for the actual article, of course.
There is also the ability to mail the site’s SEO status by mail… but I have not yet received the e-mail. I have inquired; however, I do not know if it will be fixed well.
Rank Math is well-matched with the block editor
Rank Math has good basic functions as a WordPress SEO plugin. First of all, the interface goes well with the block editor. There is all the basic information on the right side of the screen, so it’s good to write. When I first drafted this article, there is no block editor, so there were plugin interfaces at the bottom of the screen, but now it’s better because it’s on the right side.
In addition, they are
The options are quite detailed.
For example, Rank Math has more detailed options compared to Yoast SEO, which I used before. For instance, I had a lot of trouble because the thumbnail images of my blog posts kept not showing up in Naver search. When I used Yoast SEO, they didn’t show up for months, then suddenly appeared one day, but with Rank Math, when I asked for help, they fixed it right away after a little tweaking.
You may think that the development team has done something special. However, the developers didn’t do anything with programming, they just modified the options a little. Yoast SEO doesn’t have as many things as you think. Of course, this part also means that the plugin takes care of most of them, so it doesn’t just mean anything bad. For example, most countries use Google, so the thumbnail problem mentioned above is not that big of a problem. However, it may be better to have these options in detail. If you need to touch other settings like Korea,
It has good support too.
As I briefly mentioned earlier, Rank Math’s support for problem-solving is good. This is a surprisingly important factor when using WordPress plugins. Because WordPress is open source, there are quite often cases where everyone else’s works, but mine doesn’t. In such situations, there are surprisingly many ‘friends’ whose service is too slow or whose answers are too blunt… So, personally, I prefer plugins with good support, and Rank Math is quite good in this aspect too.
Some plugins support only when using paid versions, and this Rank Math also solves problems to some extent in the free version too.
Rank Math adds several features when using the Pro version.
As explained earlier, Rank Math has many basic functions as an SEO plugin, but it has even more features when using the paid version, Rank Math Pro. For detailed information, you can refer to the link above. However, to briefly mention it now, features have been added such as the ability to check Google Analytics metrics, modify Scheme, and Content AI, which assesses the article’s status in more detail using AI, in addition to the existing blog score.
However, a slight bad point is that the features are still unstable; for example, Google metrics like keywords show up well, but AdSense metrics don’t… these things happened quite often. They show up well now, but who knows what will happen…
Rank Math recognizes Korean well, but there are many regrets too.
When I first wrote this Review, I wrote that it was very good because it recognized Korean well. When I used Yoast SEO before, it didn’t distinguish between ‘을/를’. So, for example, if I wrote ‘Rank Math는’, that ‘는’ was recognized as part of the keyword, significantly lowering my SEO score. I don’t know if it’s been fixed now, but it was quite an annoying problem.
It’s not too much for basic use, but…
Rank Math didn’t have the above phenomenon, so I praised it highly. However, it doesn’t recognize Korean in keyword analysis, etc. Honestly, there aren’t many platforms that consider Korean. Among the services I’ve actually used, Ubersuggest is probably one. However, it’s very disappointing that it doesn’t recognize Korean in keyword-related parts, even though South Korea is explicitly listed in the keyword analysis section… I hope this part will be improved, but I’m not sure if they will consider Koreans, who are extremely few WordPress users… For example, looking at this site, users who use Korean are less than 0.6%. I remember seeing somewhere before that Korean users are approximately 0.2%…
Rank Math has some drawbacks.
There is no perfect plugin, and Rank Math too. Typical drawbacks are the things related to Korean mentioned earlier, and it doesn’t sometimes reflect Google service well like a bug.
In addition to this, when using the Table of Contents plugin, it doesn’t sometimes reflect its plugin well too. Of course, if you refer to the plugin site, there is a
Another problem I felt while writing this article is that Rank Math can’t recognize the links created by the plugin called Thirstyaffiles which I use nowadays. It can’t recognize the blocks made in the site builder plugin called Oxygen too. But Oxygen has an unusual structure … maybe thirstyaffiliates too?
You don’t have to be too obsessed with SEO scores.
But in fact, you need to keep in mind that the score in this plug-in is not an absolute figure. Rank Math’s score is to understand how appropriately it is with the keywords in the article, and it is not Google itself, so Google will decide how it really reflects.
I think it’s appropriate to score seventy points. When you use the plugin, if you put the right keyword in the URL, put it in the middle of the article, the picture, and the header such as h1, h2, then you will get at least 75 scores.
This part is almost essential when writing blog posts, so if you just do the basic things, you’ll get over the mid-70s, and if you add appropriate length and some links, you’ll get over 80 points. For reference, the score of this article is currently 95 points. However, no matter how high the score, WordPress in Korea… I’ll need to translate this article and check it again later.
Besides this, in my case, the biggest barrier to an SEO score of 100 is properly inserting nofollow and dofollow links. I’ve read some related articles and I thought I did well… but when I inserted links, it kept saying that there were only nofollow links. I guess it’s a problem I need to study and test more. Although there’s no need to cling to the score, I still crave 100 points.
Rank Math is already famous, but I’m looking forward to it even more.
When I first wrote the article, I wrote that this Rank Math was an SEO plugin with a promising future. And that even though it hadn’t been out long, it already had many fans and very good ratings… That’s what I wrote. But as mentioned at the beginning of the article, it has already become a plugin used by over 1 million sites on WordPress. There aren’t that many plugins that have achieved 1 million+ active sites.
It’s a plug-in that has a lot of updates because it doesn’t lose its initials until now, and the updates are quite good. So, the more you use it, the more satisfied you are. Of course, Yoast SEO has still a lot more users, but it becomes a proud rival. It needs rivals to become advanced plugins… I hope Rank Math will be better and better plugins in the future.
As a side note, although I wrote a Review about this plugin, the most basic process when using WordPress is probably registering your WordPress site for search. And for reference, it would be even better if you read the article on SEO for absolute beginners.
Rank Math summary
Good point
- The overall function is good.
- There are many things you can do with a free version.
- The updates are frequent and the contents are good.
Bad point
- Sometimes it’s not compatible with some plugins.
- There are parts that are lacking in terms of Korean.
