In this WPDesigns article, we will discuss the RankMath SEO Plugin for Elementor and how this can work on developing and improving your WordPress SEO. Having good SEO is now critical for increasing website traffic and gaining new visitors and clients. It is possible to drive traffic from other areas but organic SEO is free and can be more reliable as long as the work rate is maintained and search page positions are not lost.
For a while, SEO plugins and Elementor have not been easily compatible and there have been issues while trying to optimise the SEO within Elementor itself. To do so involved lots of click back and forth and you never really got to see the information needed in a clean and simple interface.
Note: Before making any changes on your website, be sure to create a backup. You can discover how to do that the in How to Create a Backup with Updraftplus.
Rankmath Has Turned Elementor
Into a Powerful SEO Tool
Elementor is the most common WordPress page builder plugin with over 5 million active installs and nearly 5000 5-star scores. People all over the world are using Elementor and using the power it enables the user.
For a long time when using a page builder combined with an SEO plugin the usability of the SEO plugin severely decreased and became almost useless. The Yoast SEO plugin had for a long time been on top and had not seen any major innovation or changes even as the market around had changed. When viewing the page data through Elementor the plugin still wanted you to view all the insights it could give outside of the editor which made it long and difficult to keep a check on your SEO.
Unseen competition emerged in the form of RankMath who have successfully taken a portion of the SEO plugin market. They adjusted and changed the way their SEO plugin works and they have fully integrated the SEO plugin with Elementor. The new interface allows you to see the changes you make instantly and how it affects the SEO live from an extra tab built into the page builder interface. The upgrades that have come from RankMath is the reason we have put this RankMath SEO for Elementor article together.
Rank Math performs very well for SEO. It allows you to manage SEO from inside the Elementor framework. You don’t have to go back to WordPress’s default editing mode to review your SEO score before returning to the Elementor framework to implement the recommendations. You can complete all of these tasks using the Elementor framework. Rank Math is an all-in-one Elementor solution.
Installing RankMath & Elementor
Installing RankMath and Elementor can be installed in the same way as any other WordPress plugins you have come across. Use the simple instructions below to get them both installed.
- Login to your WordPress admin dashboard.
- On the left-hand menu go to Plugins > Add New.
- Install the Elementor page builder plugin if you haven’t already done so. You can do this by downloading the free version, or by installing Elementor Pro download the zip file and upload it. Alternatively, you can search for the free version of Elementor in the repository search bar.
- Install the RankMath plugin, you can also do this by downloading the zip file and uploading it or by searching in the WordPress repository.
- Once the plugins are installed you will need to navigate to Plugins > Installed Plugins and click on Activate if they are not already activated.
Accessing the SEO Tab Within Elementor
In order to access the RankMath plugin interface with Elementor, you will need to make sure you have opened the page you wish to edit in Edit mode. This can often be achieved by clicking Edit with Elementor by navigating directly to the page you need or by going from the dashboard to Pages > All Pages then clicking Edit with Elementor.
After opening the page in edit mode you can find the SEO integration by clicking on the widget selection icon on the right side of the left menu.
Using RankMath SEO Plugin for Elementor
Using the RankMath SEO Plugin for Elementor allows you to learn exactly what you need to help get your posts ranking higher. You can now select the SEO tab and open up the RankMath options. From this tab, you can see everything you need to know in order to give your post/ page the best chance of ranking.
RankMath gives you an SEO score out of 100 and by marking off certain items you increase the score. The checklist is incredibly useful and will allow you to work your way through each point to achieve everything necessary. Not all of the points will be possible with every post you make but it is good practice to try and get as close to 100 as you can.
The most important points are at the top and it works its way down in terms of importance. Hitting most of the checklist in the Basic tab will help your post a lot but the others further down are also worth trying to achieve.
Setting Your Focus Keyword(s)
Selecting your focus keyword has never been so easy, it generally involved researching and looking for a word that was highly searched and with not much competition. With the focus keyword feature in RankMath, the plugin will give you suggestions related to the phrase you are typing in.
Once you have added your focus keyword RankMath will give you live updates on how you are using it and how well you are doing. Using the RankMath SEO plugin for Elementor you can set up to 5 focus keywords in the Pro and 1 in the free. The other keywords can be seen as supporting the main keyword. They should be related to the main keyword and be variations.
Even though RankMath will make keyword suggestions it is worth checking out more the stats and competition for the keyword you have chosen by using an SEO tool such as Ubersuggest.
Pillar Content
If you mark the check box “Pillar Content” then this signals that it is some of your most important posts or pages. This content is generally one of your evergreen pages that will always be on your site and you will want to keep sending website traffic towards forever.
Marking your post as “Pillar Content” will suggest the content for internal linking with pages in the same category. This will help to keep the clicks in your website and moving towards your best content.
Fixing SEO Errors with RankMath
When editing your page the RankMath SEO Plugin for Elementor it is split up into sections, this helps to see the progress and work towards the SEO goal of 100/100 logically. The sections are made up of smart suggestions to give you an insight into what the search engines are looking for.
The smart suggestions will automatically detect and inform you of errors on your page while you are editing it with Elementor. The basics are the section you will want to make sure you get mostly green and the others are also important but have smaller targets.
As you work your way down the list there may be some items that you are not sure about. To learn more about each of the items you can click on the little question mark on the right of the text, this will give you greater detail about what they want you to achieve.
What are rich snippets?
Rich snippets (also known as “Rich Results”) are the part of your webpage that will appear in the search results. They are what you would typically see in the search results and are considered to be typical search results.
Rich Snippets
Another great thing about the RankMath SEO plugin for Elementor is being able to edit the rich snippets of your webpage. Editing these is a great way to make sure it is optimised for the search engines and that you can get it to look and read just as you’d like.
Social Snippets
RankMath not only allows you to edit the rich snippets but the social snippets too. If the social snippets are not individually set, the social share will use the default information, this will be taken from the text content and the featured image. Using the social snippets gives you an extra level of control over the content that will appear in social media, the contents and the image that is posted with it are all editable. RankMath does have a feature that allows a default social share image to be added, it will appear if the image is not the correct size, shape or above the minimum resolution. It is recommended to use an image of 850×433 or larger.
Other Features of RankMath
Redirection
Setting up HTTP redirects with Rank Math is incredibly easy.
You can set up a redirect in three different places: the redirections tab, the 404 Monitor screen, and the editor screen. Each of these will allow you do redirect changed or broken links to the correct place on your site.
Multiple Focus Keywords
The main target keyword is the one that you would most like to rank for. This can often need the support of other related words to help give it context and help the chances of it getting ranked due to it being relative.
Supporting keywords are known as Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI). You can use one keyword in the free version of RankMath and 5 in the Pro version.
Snippet Editor
In Rank Math, you can customize the appearance of each page and post to control their look on social media. You can edit the definition, add a dedicated image for social media, choose the card style for Twitter, and more in Snippet Editor.
Schema
You should be familiar with schema markup if you want to boost the SEO of your website. You can use schema to help you stand out in the SERPs. You can take care of your website’s schema with Rank Math. You can add rich data based on the schema form you choose from a long list of schema types (Article, video, Event, Recipe, Product, and more) type of data input has its own set of options. Schema is a collaboration product developed by Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, and Yandex, and it is now a common way to provide rich data in web elements.
Role Manager
You can choose who regulates your website SEO with the Rank Math SEO plugin.
You may disable features for particular positions, for example, You do not want your Contributor or Author to handle SEO issues. With Rank Math’s Role Manager function, you have the ability to monitor this.
Search Console On the Dashboard
Now when you wanted to check how your website is working with keywords or search terms, you used the site to log in to the Google Search Console and check it out manually. Rank Math now allows you to check this on the dashboard right away. Most importantly, you can scan the results of the search console with dates and see the overall CTR, Impressions, clicks, and Positions. Search analytics is also available to check each of the search terms individually. It’s definitely coming so handy. No additional plugin needed to track the search console report on the dashboard.
404 Manager
With the 404 monitor tool from Rank Math, You can see where users on your website are having trouble finding your content. Eliminating 404 errors improves the user experience and allows users to return to your site. Not only does the 404 manager detect errors, but it also allows you to redirect incorrect URLs to the correct connection.
Conclusion
While SEO is the most reliable and consistent source of traffic for a website, it is not without flaws. Optimising your posts on a regular basis will take up more time than actually writing the material. Being able to combine these 2 powerful plugins is now a fantastic step forwards in the world of WordPress search engine optimisation. If you’ve ever felt like you should do more on the SEO front for your website but don’t have the time, Rank Math is for you.
