The best WordPress SEO plugin and it's aYoast SEO alternative.
Hey it's Hoz here continuing with the WordPress speedoptimization series; make sure you check out all the videos in this playlistbecause each one is a tip to help you optimize your WordPress website.
Andwhen it comes to optimizing WordPress what better than a WordPress SEO plugin?Or so you'd think right? Well many years ago when I first started using WordPressI began using an SEO plugin called all in one SEO and it was great.
Then Idiscovered Yoast SEO back when that used to be a small plugin and I startedusing that.
Over time Yoast SEO became a rather large plugin; they just kept onadding functionality and features.
Unfortunately that meant a very largefootprint.
So I fell out with SEO plugins and I haven't used an SEO plugin formany years.
I do optimize my content and I did spend many years doing searchengine optimization for clients so I had the luxury of not having to rely on SEOplugins.
I understand of course it's not the same for everybody and some peopleneed a WordPress SEO plugin to help them optimize their content.
Now for methat all changed recently when I came across a WordPress SEO plugin thatreally caught my eye and I couldn't help it I had to download it and try it and Ihave to say I was blown away.
So once again I am using an SEO plugin; it doesmake things a little easier even if you know what you're doing but I do thinkit's rather nice.
Now the plu-in I'm referring to in my opinion is the bestWordPress SEO plugin: it's lightweight, it's extremely well coded and I justlove the features.
The plugin is called Rank Math.
This is what it looks like onthe WordPress dashboard.
You can see that it has many sections, its own dashboard, general settings, titles and meta, sitemap, settings, role manager, 404 monitors, redirections, search console, SEOanalysis, status and tools, import and export which is always a great featureif you're gonna be working with more than one site, and help and support.
Now onthe dashboard you can see their modules and you can see some of the ones that Ihave active: that includes the 404 monitor, AMP which stands for acceleratedmobile pages, link counter, redirections, Rich Snippets, search console, SEOanalysis and sitemap.
You'll notice that there is a WooCommerce module and thatis to help you optimize WooCommerce product pages and there's also a localSEO and Google knowledge graph and that's to help you dominate the localsearch results.
You have a setup wizard which is comprised of five steps whichinclude setting up your website, connecting your search console account, setting up your sitemaps and taking care of your optimization.
Under generalsettings you can see just how much control this plugin gives you over theoptimization of your WordPress website.
You have a ton of features to controllinks, including automatically no following external links which I used tohave to do manually so this alone is a great time-saving feature and there's aton of features just like this in this SEO plugin.
You have an images sectionwhich includes automatically adding missing alt text to images – another greattime-saving feature if you have a ton of images on your site and some of themdon't have that alt text.
Now these features by the way can be turned on andoff so if you don't want a particular feature you can just turn it off but ifyou're just installing this SEO plugin and you already have existing imageswith missing alt text, just toggling that feature on will take care of thatproblem and save you a ton of time.
You have breadcrumbs, webmaster tools, you canedit your robots.
txt file as well as your .
htaccess file; you have a 404monitor which is super handy and it means you don't have to use a separateplugin to take care of that and you also have a redirection section.
If you changethe permalink – the URL structure – of one of your pages, you can set up a redirect within the plugin, again without having to use adifferent redirection plugin.
The features go on as you can see down thesidebar and two things that I find really impressive is the fact that theplugin is rather lightweight compared to other huge SEO plugins and secondlyis the fact that the plugin has remained true to what it's supposed todo: it's an SEO plugin and it deals only with that.
When it comes to using theplugin you get to do that at the bottom of your posts and your pages and this iswhat it looks like.
You have a general tab where you can edit your snippet andyou can set a focus keyword to get an instant SEO score based on the pluginsalgorithm of course as it measures your content.
You have an Advanced tab whereyou can set up the indexability of your page and images and you have a richsnippet which takes care of structured data and this is another great thingthat I love about this SEO plugin because I used to have to use a separateplugin just to deal with structured data.
In fact this SEO plugin has enabled meto get rid of at least three or four plugins which of course results in alighter website but it gets better than this.
Wait till you hear what I have totell you at the end.
Okay so as I was saying this is the rich snippet; you'llsee that I've selected article for my rich snippet type and further down hereI've selected blog post as the article type.
And then you have a social tabwhere you can add individual images for Facebook and Twitter as well as anindividual title and description; you may sometimes want a different descriptionand title for your social posts than you do for your blog posts.
Finally you cansee if we toggle to Twitter you can actually set up the card type too.
So RankMath to my mind is the best WordPress SEO plugin today.
And here's the thingi've been dying to tell you throughout this video: this SEO plugin is free.
It'sabsolutely brilliant, it's reallynice to use, it looks great, it has an amazing set of features and it doesn'tcost a penny.
And if you're already using Yoast or another popular plugin thenyou'll be happy to hear that you can import your data into Rank Math.
Itreally doesn't get better than this, so check out this fantastic SEO plugin andthen let's continue to optimize your WordPress website.
You can do that byclicking the video that's now on your screen.
Click it and I'll see you there.
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