This article will help you understand how to use Rank Math, one of the best WordPress SEO plugins, with Business Directory. If you need a little background on some of the things you should be doing to optimize your directory site for search engine results, we have a guide with some SEO basics on our blog.
Using Rank Math will help you improve the optimization of your site. We've outlined how the plugin works with Business Directory Plugin below. Let's get started!
Step 1: Use the setup wizard provided by Rank Math — it's the fastest way to get going with the plugin!
The setup wizard asks you some basic questions about your site, and you have the option to go with the Easy installation or taking more advanced steps if you're knowledgeable in SEO.
Step 2: Set up the basic SEO settings for your site by using the Snippet Preview.
Rank Math provides a preview of what your search engine result may look like and you can see this for both mobile and desktop versions. This is helpful because you can think like someone who is looking for information on your site and customize the information to enter in the text that you think would make the biggest impression upon customers who come across your site.
It's important to note that while the snippet is what you want to show up in search engine results pages (SERPs) Google will often ignore the contents of this tag and pull other text from your site. The search engine does this to find the text on your site that is most relevant to the terms the user has used for their search. However, many times Google will display the meta description as you've entered it. Either way, it's better to have this information entered here than to not have it at all.
While it has been debated whether the snippet affects SEO, it definitely affects how often someone who finds your listing in the SERPs will click on the link to your site. You want to make the snippet as enticing and relevant as possible to the searcher!
Rank Math makes it easy to preview what the SERPs will look like for individual listings, which you can then customize.
Step 3: Adjust the archive page titles and descriptions as desired, as well as edit your categories and directory tags pages.
From the Rank Math dashboard, you can set the Directory, Directory Categories, and Directory Tags titles and descriptions, as shown below:
But the real payoff with Rank Math comes with taking this a step further and getting into the nitty-gritty by really optimizing your directory categories and tags individually. To take advantage of this feature of Rank Math for SEO, first go to Rank Math → Titles & Meta and select Directory Categories and Directory Tags. From here, locate the Add SEO Controls option and enable this.
Once you have enabled these options you can now go to Directory → Directory Content → Directory Categories or Directory → Directory Content → Directory Tags and you will see that Rank Math gives you many of the same customization options you have with individual listings as well:
Being able to do this for both Categories and Tags is pretty awesome and will definitely contribute to your overall SEO!
Step 4: Optimize individual listings as desired
Rank Math is not unique in that most SEO plugins give you some feedback on your title and content. However, Rank Math takes this a step further and really gets into the weeds with you on what you can address on your page to make it more optimized. This works for any page on your site, but specifically for Business Directory Plugin, the listings can be optimized individually.
The checklists Rank Math provides for each listing and the links they provide for learning more about new concepts are super educational and you'll be a whiz at SEO for your directory site in no time!
Step 5: Take things a step further with Social Media sharing settings
We all agree that any good SEO plan will include an eye toward social media. Rank Math makes sharing your directory content on social media super easy!
In each individual listing, you have the ability to set some basics for individual listings if you prefer. Just click Social on the Rank Math SEO menu in the listing:
And then choose your settings for that individual listing (Note: you can choose any thumbnail for the listing by choosing it from your media library):
Here is an example of what your social share might look like once you have completed the settings.
Note also that Rank Math allows you to set a default social media setting image in case the listing you are using doesn't have an image. That's in the general settings under Rank Math → Titles & Meta → Global Meta:
Step 6: Evaluate
Evaluation is the hallmark of any successful SEO strategy. In fact, SEO can be thought of as continually optimizing your directory pages and listings, waiting some time, analyzing the results, then repeating the whole process over again.
Rank Math gives you a few tools to measure your success according to the SEO standards that can be manipulated with their plugin. Under Directory → Directory Listings you can see some basics of each of your listings at a glance:
And too, when you're inside each listing there will be a little SEO score for how well optimized the listing is:
In summary, Rank Math is a great tool to use to optimize your online business directory!