Last Updated on October 14, 2021 by scottkandh
This post is about how to improve your Google ranking with Rank Math so that your search results show up higher in SERP results.
I have just installed Rank Math Pro yesterday (September 21, 2021) so I’m keeping a journal of the things that need to get done to improve the ranking for your keyword positions. And it was only a few days prior (Sept 20, 21) to that to begin using Rank Math free version.
I’m greatly impressed with Rank Math. If you’re using another SEO program I highly suggest that you consider switching your SEO program over to Rank Math SEO. For more details, please check out my post that I wrote concerning making the switch from Yoast SEO over to Rank Math. Rank Math SEO What’s Better – Yoast or Rank Math SEO?
As you can see from the graphic below that shows the overall optimization for your posts, I’m still in the process of optimizing the other posts and pages.
Rank Math Dashboard
| Sept 20th, 2021 | Sept 22nd, 2021 | Change | |
| Good | 40 | 51 | 11 |
| Fair | 39 | 38 | 1 |
| Poor | 151 | 144 | 7 |
| N/A | 99 | 97 | 2 |
I thought that the progress made was much better than what’s displayed in Rank Math; however, it’s progress being made for the better. Sometimes, trying to optimize a post can result in no difference. I tend to keep the formatting of my posts natural, and I don’t recommend changing your URL because that can affect your website’s page speed. I once tried redirecting several posts and the page speed after making the redirects was miserable. The GTMetrix grade changed from an A down to a F.
Rank Math – Site Analytics
So let’s have you open the next tab, the Site Analytics : Rank Math > Dashboard > Analytics > Site Analytics. As you can tell the items haven’t been sorted, so you’ll need to sort your items, I recommend that you sort the items by your SEO score (as depicted in the 2nd image below).
Here’s what the top 10 SEO posts looked like for my website:
Top 5 Winning Posts
Note: The statistics that appear in the Rank Math Analytics module won’t match with the data from the Google Search Console as we only track posts and keywords that rank in the top 100 positions in the selected timeframe. We do this to help make decision-making easier and for faster data processing since this is the data you really need to prioritize your SEO efforts on.
This doesn’t tell you what position that your posts fell into so let’s open the next tab, the Site Analytics : Rank Math > Dashboard > Analytics > SEO Performance.
Rank Math SEO Performance
At the top of the page you’ll want to see an increase all of the factors below. I’m goal driven so I suggest that you determine which one factor that you’d like to concentrate on, so that you can show yourself improvement. For the purpose of this post, the one factor that obviously stands out is the avg. position (average position of all the ranking keywords below 100 position). That’s the factor I’m going to be concentrating on for improvement.
Smart Goal: I will improve my avg. position for my website by optimizing web posts and concentrating on the posts that are in fair, poor, or n/a standings so that they can be improved upon. These posts can be viewed and tracked in the Analytics of Rank Math. The intended goal is to have at least 81 posts or more in Good status by the end of October.
Please copy and paste the information above to replace with “your” SMART goal.
Optimizing the posts, making little tweaks here and there with the recommendations that Rank Math provides can be a tedious task. So take your time, have a little bit of patience, and heed the recommendations that it provides so that you can improve your SEO score.
Optimizing your posts is only one part of the equation to improve your website’s ranking so that you get better SERP results.
The “other” part of the equation is contained in the bottom half of the the Site Analytics : Rank Math > Dashboard > Analytics > SEO Performance area (see below):
What you’re going to do now is to look at these Top 5 Winning posts and promote them. Make sure that these posts are fully optimized to their fullest extent. And if possible, make some extra pins for these specific posts.
Rank Math Keywords
Here’s the last thing that you’re going to need to do to get better SERP results and to get your blog posts ranked within the Top 3 positions.
This area (depicted below) shows you where your site shows up for your keywords (only available in the Rank Math Pro version).
* Unfortunately, I just saw this for the first time and since I’m still learning how to use Rank Math I can’t even tell you which post I ranked for in the Top 3 positions. I’m venturing to guess that it was this post >> Examining Keyword Research to Optimize your website/examining-keyword-research-to-optimize-your-website/
In the “keywords” tab of the Rank Math Dashboard are four (4) field positions called:
Top 3, 4 – 10, 10 – 50, and 51 – 100.
My respective rankings for these four fields were: 0, 3, 29, and 57 (as of 9/22). The positions get updated once a week, so the next available update for where I stand in my positions will get updated on 9/26.
Here’s a summary of my standings from 8/25/21 to current (as of 9/19/21).
What you’re hoping for is an upward trend of your positions so that eventually your posts will be in the areas of Top 3 or 4 – 10. And you’ll have fewer positions in the last row as you begin to optimize your posts.
| Position # | 8/25 | 8/31 | 9/6 | 9/12 | 9/19 |
| Top 3 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1* | 0 |
| 4 – 10 | 5 | 4 | 4 | 4 | 3 |
| 10 – 50 | 38 | 43 | 50 | 30 | 29 |
| 51 – 100 | 82 | 88 | 73 | 64 | 57 |
I’ve just begun to use Rank Math so I’m learning how to use the Keywords and Rank Tracker tabs (to our advantage).
One of the items that you can use to your advantage in the Keywords tab in the section called Rest of the Keywords. Arrange your keywords in sequence by position with the smallest number being on top (those are the ones where you’re seeking to be in the Top 3 positions 1 – 3). In addition, you’ll be able to see the trends of your different posts and how they fared in the ranking of their positions.
You can pick the keywords that you want to add to your keyword tracker by clicking on the plus sign located to the far left. This saves you considerable time by seeing where your posts are at rather than randomly looking at the SERP results one by one. With this program you’ll be able to see where your posts are ranked respectively.
I had always wondered how people knew exactly which posts they were ranked for and the answer to that question is that they were utilizing Rank Math so that they knew exactly which post, posts, or page(s) were getting ranked and their relative position. I hope that you’ve enjoyed this post. And that you’ll continue to follow my website. Thank you for taking the time to read this post.
For more information about how to improve your Google ranking (if you didn’t find it within this blog post) please look at Neil Patel’s blog post called: How to Improve Your Google Rankings (Without Getting Penalized).
What I like about his post is that he covers some basic SEO procedures, processes to help ensure that you understand the SEO rules.
In addition, you’ll learn how to optimize your both for visitors and the algorithms that come to index your site. It’s all a part of ensuring that you’re able to master your on-page SEO as well as your off-page SEO.
The steps that he covers in the post mentioned above (that are all a part of having a Holistic SEO) are:
- Step #1: Get to know the Google ranking algorithm
- Step #2: Assess your current search ranking
- Step #3: Track and measure the right metrics
- Step #4: Ensure your website is mobile-friendly
- Step #5: Diagnose and fix your current penalties
- Step #6: Do keyword research
- Step #7: Perfect your on-page SEO
- Step #8: Use your keywords to create great content
- Step #9: Build links the right way
Had I been paying attention to this key data that shows your posts rating, it’s likely that I would have been able to keep the post in the number 1 position for a few days longer than being in that top position for at least three days (see below). I hope by the time that you’ve finished reading this post you’ll be able to see how switching your SEO program over to Rank Math is going to have some big dividends to improve your SEO.
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