Rank Math SEO Review: As Honest as It Gets

When I started using SEO Plugin, I fell into Yoast SEO’s arms and after some time I migrated my SEO data to Rank Math

Rank Math was pretty much giving for free everything Yoast was charging for.

Then I had some issues with Rank Math, it crashed my site after an update so I decided to use SEOPress, Slim SEO, or Smart Crawl instead.

I decided to give Rank Math another try and this is what I think about Rank Math and my reasons to use it and stay away from it.

Rank Math Modules I Use

One thing that I like about Rank Math SEO is that you can activate the modules that you need and deactivate all the stuff that you are not going to use.

These are the modules that I would consider using:

• 404 Monitor: I like using the “404 monitor” to find patterns in bot attacks and improve my Custom Cloudflare Firewall but I can live without it.

• ACF: I understand that some people need support for Advanced Custom but I have never had a use for them.

• AMP: WordPress users rarely recommend using AMP and I am not an exception to that

• Analytics: If I wanted to check analytics and other important data, I would stop by my Google Search Console or my Google Analytics Dashboard.

• BBPress: This is not something I need.

• BuddyPress: This is not something I need

• Content AI: This is not something I need inside my WordPress dashboard.

• Image SEO: I don’t want Google to index my images since most of the time, these are free stock photos.

• Local SEO: I don’t have to rank anything locally

• News Sitemap: This is something I have never needed.

• Podcast: I listen to them but I have no plans to start one.

• Redirections: I don’t usually create redirections but if I need to create one. I’ll probably use Cloudflare.

• Role Manager: I don’t have any use for it

• SEO Analysis: I think they are overrated.

• Google Web Stories: I don’t even know how to create one of them and nobody is talking about them.

• Video Sitemap: I don’t add videos to my content and YouTube videos don’t count for this one, I suppose.

• WooCommerce: I am not selling anything

Rank Math Modules I Use

These are the modules I am using and I think I can live without them

• Instant Indexing: I can go to Google Search Console and submit new posts and updated posts.

• Link Counter: It counts the total number of internal, and external links, to and from links inside your posts.

These are the modules I am using and I think I can’t live without them

• Schema (Structured Data): You get the basic schema for your posts using the free version of Rank Math.

• Sitemaps: You can easily customize your sitemaps to help Google Bot crawl only the content you want to rank.

These are some features included in the plugin and I can’t live without them

1. Strip category base
2. Redirect Attachments
3. Open External Links in New Tab/Window
4. Add No Follow to External Links
5. Breadcrumbs
6. Meta descriptions
7. Open Graph

Leaving Rank Math

As you can see, I don’t use most of the stuff that Rank Math brings to the table.

These are some of the things that I would have to figure out if I wanted to get rid of the plugin.

• Strip category base: You don’t need a plugin to do that, You can do that via the functions.php file.

Final Thoughts

I have no doubt in my mind that Rank Math is a powerful SEO Plugin.

If you are considering other SEO Plugins, this is the list of the top ten plugins.

• Since I created this post, the SEO Plugin that made me adjust the table was SLIM SEO. It went from 10,000+ to 20,000+

More about SEO Plugins

You might want to read some of these posts before you leave

1. Yoast SEO Plugin: As Honest as It Gets
2. Slim SEO: Love it or Leave it
3. Smart Crawl: As Honest as It Gets
4. SEOPress: Love or Leave it