You’ve made an excellent choice by installing Rank Math, one of the most powerful and feature-rich SEO plugins for WordPress. You activate it, full of excitement to start optimizing your site, and you’re immediately presented with a setup wizard, a dashboard full of modules, and a host of new settings. It’s a lot to take in.
Rank Math is packed with an incredible array of features, but this power can also feel intimidating to a new user. A proper initial setup is crucial to ensure you are getting the full benefit of the plugin from day one, without making any mistakes that could potentially harm your site’s SEO.
This is the only guide you’ll need. We are going to provide a clear, step-by-step walkthrough on how to set up Rank Math correctly. We will guide you through every screen of its famous setup wizard, explaining what each option means in simple terms. Then, we’ll show you the most important settings to check afterward.
Let’s configure your website for SEO success.
Table of Contents
Part 1: The Initial Setup – Installation and the Wizard
The first part of the process involves installing the plugin and completing the guided setup wizard.
Step 1: Install the Rank Math Plugin
If you haven’t already, the first step is to install the free plugin from the official WordPress repository.
- From your WordPress dashboard, navigate to Plugins > Add New.
- In the search bar, type “Rank Math SEO”.
- The plugin should be the first result. Click Install Now, and then click Activate.
Step 2: Connect Your Free Rank Math Account
Once you activate the plugin, you’ll be prompted to connect a free Rank Math account. This is a required step that unlocks many of the plugin’s best features, including the setup wizard and Google integrations. Click the “Connect Your Account” button and follow the simple on-screen prompts to register and authorize your website.
Step 3: The Setup Wizard – Choose Your Mode
After connecting your account, the setup wizard will begin. The first screen asks you to choose a mode. You’ll see three options: Easy, Advanced, and Custom.
Our Recommendation: For most users, including beginners, we strongly recommend choosing the Advanced mode.
Don’t let the name scare you! It doesn’t make things more complicated. It simply ensures you can see and configure all the important settings. The “Easy” mode hides some crucial options. We will walk you through every step of the Advanced wizard.
Step 4: The Wizard – Your Site
This step is about telling Google what your website is.
- Your Website is a…: Use the dropdown to select what best describes your site (e.g., Personal Blog, Small Business Site, Online Store). This helps Rank Math apply the correct type of default Schema Markup (a type of code that helps Google understand your content).
- Logo for Google: Upload your website’s official logo here. This image will be used in Google’s Knowledge Graph.
- Default Social Share Image: This is very useful. Upload a generic, branded image here. If you ever share a post on social media that doesn’t have its own “Featured Image,” this default image will be used instead, ensuring you never have a blank-looking post.
Click “Save and Continue.”
Step 5: The Wizard – Analytics
This step is optional but highly recommended. It allows you to connect Rank Math to your Google Search Console and Google Analytics accounts.
- Why connect this? It allows Rank Math to pull valuable data from Google and display it directly inside your WordPress dashboard. You can track your keyword rankings, see search traffic, and monitor your performance without ever leaving your site.
- Follow the on-screen prompts to sign in to your Google account and grant the necessary permissions. If you haven’t set up these Google services yet, you can safely Skip this Step for now and connect them later.
Step 6: The Wizard – Sitemap
An XML Sitemap is a roadmap of your website that helps search engines find and index all of your important content.
- Sitemaps: Keep this option turned ON.
- Include Images: Keep this ON. You want Google to index your images.
- Public Post Types: This lets you choose which types of content to include in your sitemap. You should always include Posts and Pages.
- Public Taxonomies: These are your content categories and tags. We recommend including Categories. You can usually leave Tags unchecked unless you have a specific strategy for them.
Click “Save and Continue.”
Step 7: The Wizard – SEO Tweaks
This final step helps you configure a few small but important SEO settings.
- Noindex Empty Category and Tag Archives: We recommend turning this ON. An archive page with no posts on it has no value for a user or for Google and can be seen as “thin content.” This setting automatically hides them from search results.
- Nofollow External Links: We recommend keeping this OFF. Linking out to high-quality, authoritative websites is a good practice and shows you’ve done your research. You don’t need to “nofollow” all of them.
- Open External Links in New Tab/Window: We recommend turning this ON. It’s a great user experience, as it keeps visitors on your site while allowing them to view the external resource in a new tab.
Click “Save and Continue.” Your initial setup is now complete!
Part 2: A Tour of the Rank Math Dashboard & Modules
After the wizard, you’ll be taken to the Rank Math dashboard. You can access this at any time by going to Rank Math SEO > Dashboard.
Here, you’ll see a list of different “Modules.” Think of these as individual features you can turn on or off. This is brilliant because it allows you to keep the plugin lightweight by only enabling the tools you actually need.
Here are the essential modules we recommend enabling:
- 404 Monitor: This is a must-have. It logs whenever a visitor hits a “Page Not Found” error on your site, allowing you to find and fix broken links.
- Image SEO: This handy module can automatically add missing ALT attributes to your images, which is great for both accessibility and SEO.
- Schema (Structured Data): This is one of Rank Math’s most powerful features and should be on by default. It allows you to add advanced code to your content to help you get Rich Snippets in Google.
- Sitemap: This should already be enabled from the setup wizard.
Part 3: Using Rank Math on Your Posts and Pages
Now that the global settings are configured, let’s look at how you’ll use Rank Math on a daily basis as you create content.
When you go to edit a post or page, you’ll now see a new Rank Math icon and score in the top admin bar. You can click this, or click the icon in the block editor’s right-hand sidebar, to open the analysis panel.
The Focus Keyword and SEO Score
At the top of the panel is the Focus Keyword box. This is where you will enter the main keyword or phrase you want this specific article to rank for. In the free version of Rank Math, you can add up to five keywords!
As you type your content, Rank Math will analyze it against this keyword and give you a score out of 100. Important: This score is a guide, not a final exam. Don’t obsess over getting a perfect 100. A score over 80 is generally very good. Always prioritize writing for your human readers first.
The On-Page Analysis Checklist
Below the score, Rank Math provides a checklist broken into four sections. It will give you green checkmarks for things you’ve done well and red X’s for things you can improve.
- Basic SEO: Checks for things like the focus keyword in your title, meta description, and URL.
- Additional: Checks for keyword density, links, and other factors.
- Title Readability: Analyzes your title for things like sentiment and the use of power words or numbers.
- Content Readability: Analyzes your text for things like paragraph length and the use of a table of contents.
Editing Your Snippet
At the top of the Rank Math panel, you’ll see a button called “Edit Snippet.” Clicking this opens a preview of how your page will look in Google search results. From here, you can manually edit your Title, Permalink (URL), and Meta Description to make them as compelling and click-worthy as possible.
Conclusion: Your SEO Command Center is Ready
You have now successfully completed the entire Rank Math setup process. You’ve not only configured the crucial global settings using the setup wizard, but you now understand how to use its powerful on-page analysis tools for every single piece of content you write.
Rank Math is an incredibly powerful ally on your SEO journey. Use its recommendations as a helpful guide, but always remember to prioritize writing the best, most valuable content for your human readers first. With this powerful plugin now properly configured, you are perfectly set up to optimize your content, grow your organic traffic, and achieve your website’s goals.