Sign inJoin the waitlist

Rank Math SEO Analyzer: the five sections, the tests inside each, and the order to fix them

What the site wide audit checks, the thresholds it scores against, what the Competitor Analyzer can and cannot see, and how to work the list down without chasing points.

Published by AI Knows Us · Updated 13 October 2026

The Rank Math SEO Analyzer is a site wide audit built into the Rank Math WordPress plugin, reached from the SEO menu in the admin. It runs a set of automated tests against your live site, gives a score out of 100, and sorts the findings into passed tests, warnings and failed tests. The results are grouped into five sections, named in Rank Math's own documentation as Priority, Basic SEO, Advanced SEO, Performance and Security. A second tab, the Competitor Analyzer, runs a reduced version of the same audit against any URL you enter and is part of Rank Math PRO. Every detail on this page is from Rank Math's SEO Analysis documentation, checked 9 October 2026.

It is a configuration check rather than a crawl. It tells you whether the site is set up correctly, which is a different and much faster question than whether every page is good.

The five sections and what sits in each

SectionWhat it examinesNamed tests include
PriorityThe item Rank Math surfaces firstAutomatic plugin updates
Basic SEOTitles, descriptions, headings, links, images and site settingsSEO Title, SEO Description, H1 Heading, H2 Headings, Image ALT Attributes, Keywords in Title and Description, Common Keywords, Links Ratio, Permalink Structure, Site Tagline, Blog Public, Focus Keywords, Post Titles Missing Focus Keywords, Create a Responsive Site, Homepage is Reachable
Advanced SEOIndexing, canonicalisation, structured data and crawl filesCanonical Tag, Noindex Meta, WWW Canonicalization, OpenGraph Meta, Robots.txt, Schema Meta Data, Sitemaps, Search Console, Keep Your Content Fresh, plus a Mobile Snapshot notification
PerformanceWeight and speed of the page it fetchesPage Size, Page Objects, Response Time, Minify CSS, Minify JavaScript, Image Headers Expire
SecurityWhat the site reveals about itselfSecure Connection, Google Safe Browsing, Directory Listing, Visible Plugins, Theme Visibility

The thresholds it scores against

Several tests pass or fail against a stated number, which is worth knowing before you argue with a result. Rank Math's documentation gives these:

  • SEO Description: 50 to 160 characters.
  • Links Ratio: at least ten internal links, and at least twice as many internal links as external ones.
  • Page Objects: passes with fewer than 20 requests.
  • Page Size: passes with HTML under 50 KB.
  • Response Time: passes with a response under 0.2 seconds.

Read those as the tool's own definitions rather than as universal standards. A long guide that fails Page Size on HTML weight is often doing its job well. Rank Math itself notes that the Minify JavaScript warning can be ignored.

What the analyzer looks at, and what it leaves alone

This is the part most people get wrong, and the documentation is explicit about it:

  • Basic SEO and Advanced SEO tests run against the homepage when the analyzer runs from inside the plugin. A green Basic SEO section is a statement about one page, not about all of them.
  • Focus Keywords is a sitewide test when run from inside the plugin, and it covers only the post types where the Rank Math metabox is enabled.
  • The site has to be reachable. The analyzer works on live sites that Rank Math's server can reach, and a locally hosted site returns an error.
  • Very large sites may hit a notice on the Focus Keywords test. Rank Math documents this for sites with over 200K rows in the post meta table, and gives a filter to adjust the limit.
  • Printing the results is a PRO feature.

The Competitor Analyzer, and the gap in it

The second tab takes any URL and runs the audit against it, returning a score and the same checklist. Rank Math PRO is required. The important detail is the test count: the Competitor Analyzer includes 25 of the tests, because seven of them rely on data from a Rank Math installation on the site being examined, which it has no access to on somebody else's domain. Easy Mode evaluates 17 tests and Advanced Mode evaluates 25. Side by side comparison is also a PRO feature.

So a competitor score and your own score are not taken on the same instrument. Compare the individual test results, which are genuinely comparable, rather than the two numbers.

The order to fix the list in

Work from indexing outwards. Anything higher in this list makes the work below it pointless until it is settled.

  • Noindex Meta and Blog Public. A site set to discourage search engines, or a stray noindex, is the whole problem, and nothing else counts until it is gone.
  • Secure Connection and Homepage is Reachable. Served over HTTPS, resolving, returning a 200.
  • WWW Canonicalization and Canonical Tag. One address for the site, one canonical per page pointing at itself.
  • Robots.txt and Sitemaps. Crawling allowed, sitemap published and submitted in Search Console.
  • SEO Title and SEO Description. Written per page, within length, not duplicated by a template.
  • H1 Heading and H2 Headings. One H1 that agrees with the title, and H2s that read as the reader's questions.
  • Links Ratio and Image ALT Attributes. Internal links out of every page that matters, alt text on every content image.
  • Schema Meta Data and OpenGraph Meta. Structured data for what the page genuinely is, validated on the published URL in Google's Rich Results Test.
  • Performance and Security items. Real work, usually owned by whoever runs hosting and the theme, and best batched rather than done one warning at a time.

How often to run it

Rank Math advises running it occasionally, since changes to the site affect the result. A practical rhythm: once when you install the plugin to set a baseline, once after any theme change, plugin change or migration, and once a quarter as a standing check. Record the score and the failed test list each time, because the direction of travel is more useful than the number.

This page covers the SEO Analyzer and the Competitor Analyzer. For what else is in the plugin, how the schema builder works and how Rank Math compares with Yoast, see our Rank Math guide, which also covers the separate per post content score shown next to a draft.

What gets asked about Rank Math SEO Analyzer

Where is the SEO Analyzer in Rank Math?

In the WordPress admin, under the SEO menu. The dashboard has two tabs, SEO Analyzer and Competitor Analyzer, and the results sit behind View Issues with filters for all tests, passed tests, and warnings and failed tests.

What is a good Rank Math SEO score?

The score runs from 0 to 100 and higher is better. Treat the failed tests as the work and the score as the summary. A site with every indexing and canonical test passed is in good shape even with performance warnings still open.

Why does the analyzer only report on my homepage?

Because that is what it is documented to do for the Basic SEO and Advanced SEO sections when run from inside the plugin. For per page checks use the analysis in the editor on each post, and for whole site coverage use a crawler.

Does the Competitor Analyzer run every test?

No. It includes 25 tests, because seven of them need data from a Rank Math installation on that site. Easy Mode runs 17 and Advanced Mode runs 25. Compare the individual tests rather than the two scores.

Is the SEO Analyzer in the free version?

The analyzer itself is part of the plugin. The Competitor Analyzer, side by side comparison and printing the results are PRO features. Check Rank Math's own pricing page for the current tiers, since those change.

Why does it fail on a locally hosted site?

The analyzer works on live sites Rank Math's server can reach. Run it once the site is on a public URL, which is also the first point at which the result means anything.

A check the analyzer was not built to run

The Rank Math analyzer reads your site against a checklist of technical and on page tests, and it does that job well. Its list of tests stops at your own pages. It does not ask an assistant what it says about the site.

Add that as the last step of the audit. After the fixes, ask three assistants the question your homepage is built to answer and note which sources are cited. AI Knows Us does this and returns the pages behind each answer.

Read next

AI Visibility Audit Deliverables for a UK Agency: The Five Artefacts, and Why the Zero Column Is One of ThemWhat a British agency should hand a client at the end of an audit, including the findings that did not survive a second reading.A Workflow Standard for AI Search Optimisation: Six Stations, and Who Owns Each OneThe execution sequence an Indian agency can hold a team to, measured against what our own site serves eleven named crawlers.The Multi Engine AI Citation Audit Framework: One Column Per Engine, Never a Blended ScoreA reproducible audit design for an Indian agency, built from 1,260 readings on 16 October 2026 and the 597 that came eleven days before it.A Small UK Agency Against a Large Consultancy on AI Search Optimisation: What the Citation Data Says Each One Can OwnThree British agency domains took dozens of citations each in our readings, and none of them is a large firm. Here is what that result does and does not tell a ten person shop.Build or Buy an AI Visibility Stack: The Five Silent Wrong Answers an In House Build ProducesWhat it actually takes to run a multi engine tracker yourself, measured from the defects in our own build, with rupee prices for the alternative.AI Search Optimisation and SEO in India: What Each One Costs, and What Each Return Is Counted InMost of the production work is already inside your search invoice, two budget lines are genuinely new, and the two results are counted in units that cannot be divided by each other.

Or browse the whole archive.

See what AI says about you.

The first scan is free, it needs no account, and it asks the questions your buyers ask.

Free. No card. We ask 5 real buyer questions on 2 AI apps.

Already sure you want this? Join the waitlist. We open on 31 October 2026. It costs an email address. No card, and nothing is charged. Or talk to a person if you have a question first. Or read how we fix what it finds.