HOW TO USE RANK MATH CONTENT AI TO SEO YOUR BLOG POST

This post may contain affiliate links, meaning that if you make a purchase using my link, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you. 


If you're new to blogging, you may have heard of the term “SEO” but aren't quite sure what it means. SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization, and it's the process of making your blog post more visible to searchers on the internet. One way to optimize your blog post is to use Rank Math. 

Rank Math is an SEO WordPress plugin that has a lot of different tools, including their latest release – Rank Math Content AI (which we'll use in this post) – all designed to help you with your on-page SEO.

There are many SEO plugins, but I find Rank Math to be the best one because it is so user-friendly and intuitive. And fun to use.

Rank Math uses a traffic light system that lets you easily see how you're progressing with the optimization activities. They also have a scoring system ranging from 0-100 that challenges the competitor in me to get as close to 100 as I can (I never aim for a perfect 100/100, and neither should you – more on that later ?). 

But it's their newest feature, Rank Math Content AI, that takes the cake for me.

What is Rank Math content AI?

Rank Math Content AI is the newest feature in the Rank Math plugin, and it's like having an SEO assistant right there with you as you write your post, providing real-time suggestions on how to optimize your content. 

You tell Content AI what keyword you are targeting. It will analyze the top ranking pages for that keyword, and provide suggestions on what additional keywords to use, PAA questions you can target in your post, how many words, etc.  

Rank Math Content AI also suggests things like

  • the word count you should aim for
  • how many links to include (it even tells you how many should be internal vs. external)
  • how many headers and what headers you should have (i.e., how many should be H1, H2, and H3)
  • if it's recommended that you have media included in your post (and if so, how many images and if you should include a video).

Here's the launch video for the new feature:

Rank Maths launch video

I think you can start to see why I like it so much. But is there anything I don't like about the tool?

Yes, there is.

What you should know about Rank Math Content AI

While I recommend Rank Math and use it on all my websites, there are a few things you should know. 

First of all, it's important not to get too hung up on the score Rank Math gives you. The reason for this is that some of the suggestions the tool provides may not work for your content.

For example, to get a 100/100 score, you always need to include a number and use a power word in your Title Tag, which you might not want to do (at least I don't).

Secondly, and this is probably the only thing I don't like, which is their credit system for Content AI.

When you enter your focus keyword into the tool and initiate a search, you use a credit. What this means is that you still need to do your keyword research in a separate tool because if you don't, you're going to run out of credits very fast.

Their free version comes with 5 credits, and their PRO plan (which I use) comes with 15 credits. You can buy additional credits (for both the free and paid plan), but it does limit you. I always ensure that I'm super clear on which keyword I'm targeting before initiating the Content AI so that I don't waste any credits.

Do I still recommend the Rank Math plugin? Absolutely! And even if you don't want to use the Content AI feature, you can still take advantage of the on-page SEO functionality.

Let's optimize a blog post, shall we?

1. Install Rank Math and Activate Content AI

First things first: Let's install RankMath and turn on the content AI.

Go to Plugins on your WordPress site, and select Add New. Search Rank Math, and it should be the first one on the list. Click Install Now and then Activate.

Install RankMath Plugin
Install and activate the RankMath plugin on your WordPress site

Once RankMath is installed and activated, their setup wizard will walk you through the setup process. It's super quick and easy (and make sure you choose the Easy setup).

If you want to purchase the PRO version to get the full effect of the Rank Math plugin, go ahead and do that too before you continue to the next step. You will still need this free plugin (meaning you'll have two Rank Math plugins – the free and the PRO version).

When it's installed, you'll see the Rank Math menu item in your dashboard.

RankMath appears in menu
Once installed, RankMath will appear on your dashboard

To activate Rank Math Content AI, click the Rank Math menu item to open settings. On the settings page, scroll down to the “Content AI” card and toggle the setting to turn it on (the toggle bar should be blue).

Activate Rank Math Content AI
Toggle the Content AI setting to blue

Now everything is set up, and we can start optimizing a post. The post I'll be optimizing is the one that you're reading.

You will notice that you have a new menu item in your header, and this is the Rank Math scoring I mentioned earlier. At the moment, before doing any optimization, my score is 22/100. One of the reasons for this is that I haven't entered my target keyword yet.

New WordPress top row menu item
Rank Math's scoring is visible in your top row menu bar

2. Prepare your post

I always write my posts outside of WordPress, and I prepare them using the SEO Blog Post Outline Worksheet so that when I'm in WordPress, my post is more or less already written, and the focus is more on optimizing the post. I've shared my process on how to write SEO-friendly blog posts before and how I use an SEO Checklist so I don't forget anything.

If you want the SEO Checklist, you can download it for free by entering your email address below.

3. Enter Your Target Keyword

To access the Content AI and the rest of the Rank Math functions, click on the new menu item, and the tools will appear in the right sidebar.

Rank Math toolbar
Rank Math toolbar

Enter the keyword you are targeting with your post in the Focus Keyword section, and press enter. Just by adding the focus keyword, the score jumped to 74/100 for this post.

Focus keyword
Add focus keyword

4. Activate Content AI for the blog post

Next, you want to activate the Content AI for the blog post, and you do that by clicking on the Content AI button next to the Focus Keyword. This will now use one of your credits.

It takes a little while for the tool to do the analyses, and once done, you'll see a new set of data in your sidebar. Let's go through it.

Activate AI tool
Content AI analysis is done

5. Optimize word count, links, headings and media

The first box is the word count, and for this particular post, Rank Math Content AI is recommending that I keep this post within the 1498 and 2247 word count bracket. So far, so good.

The next box is the Link Count, and here Content AI is recommending that I'll add 8 internal links and 3 external ones.

The external links need to be a Dofollow link. I've already added the Rank Math affiliate link in this post (which is a Nofollow since it's an affiliate link), which does not count towards this link count.

Rankmath link count recommendation
The recommended link count

Moving on to the next set of boxes, we first have the headings count, and as you can see, Rank Maths Content AI recommends that I have between 10 to 15 headings in total and that I distribute them between H2 to H5.

Rankmath headings recommendation
The recommended headings

Then we have information about the recommended media count. For this post, it's enough with one video, and I already have way more images than what's recommended.

Rankmath media count recommendation
The recommended media count

These last two sections (heading count and media count) are perfect examples of what I mentioned earlier (about not focusing on getting a 100/100 score). I mostly use H2 tags in my posts (with an occasional H3). And because I want to add a lot of screenshots so you get an insight into the tool's functionality, I won't get a perfect score, which I'm okay with.

6. Optimize keywords

Scrolling down in the sidebar, you will discover more (extremely useful) information – keywords, questions, and links.

Keyword recommendations in the content

Let's start with keywords, and the content ai gives you keywords and related keywords recommendations for four areas – your content, headings, SEO title, and SEO descriptions. Here, you can also see other variants of how to use the keyword, along with related keywords.

Keywords content recommendation
Keyword recommendations for the content

Keyword Recommendations for the Headings

The next one is headings. To get a 100/100 score, you would need to include as many of these as possible in your headings, and for this post, it's actually only one keyword that the tool recommends. However, sometimes this list is a bit longer, and it doesn't always make sense to include everything, which is why I don't think it's a good idea to aim for the perfect score. Include what makes sense, and leave the rest.

Keywords headings recommendation
Keyword recommendations for the headings

Keyword recommendations for the Title Tags

Next, we have Title Tag. Rank Math calls it SEO Title, the heading that displays on SERP (Search Engine Result Page) and when you share your post on social media, for example. The tool gives you a few options you can use, and the recommendation is only to use one or two keywords from this list.

Keywords title tag recommendations
Keyword recommendations for SEO title

Keyword recommendations for the Title Tags

SEO Description is the Meta Description, so the excerpt that shows up under the Title Tag in SERP. And also here, the tool is providing recommendation on what keywords to include.

Keywords Meta Description recommendations
Keyword recommendation for SEO description

7. Optimize People Also Ask (Questions)

After optimizing the keywords, you can look at the Questions sections and see if there are any People Also Ask questions you want to include in the post.

PAA recommendations
People Also Ask questions

8. Optimize Links

The final part of Rank Maths Content AI is the External Links recommendations, where the tool provides (sometimes) a long list of recommended links you can include in your post.

External link recommendations
External links recommendations

That's it! It's quite easy to use, isn't it?

RankMath's content AI is a fantastic tool that can help you optimize your blog post for SEO, and I highly recommend that you give it a try.

Do you have any questions about using RankMath Content AI? Leave a comment below, and I'll do my best to answer them.

Petra

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