OK SEO tips, but Content AI is useless

I’ve been using the paid version Rank Math Pro for a while now and usually find its general suggestions about SEO in my content helpful, if a bit superficial. (The readability score simply counts words in paragraphs and if any paragraph has more than 120 words it fails the readability test – pretty crude compared to Yoast.)

But Rank Math’s Content AI has rarely helped and now I’m in a support ticket loop regarding an obvious AI fail which leaves me sceptical of anything Content AI has to say.

I tried running Content AI on a draft of my latest blog post, which cost one AI credit. For an article of 3,000+ words, it recommends 0 links and 1-2 media. That makes no sense and hasn’t been a problem before – usually it recommends reasonable sounding, varying numbers of links and media. It doesn’t specify distribution or anything more fine tuned than that. Only twice in the past has it recommended a question or additional key phrase that I’ve taken on board. But in this case it recommended additional nonsensical SEO phrases like “lime cheesecake recipe” and “x d in photography” and “in photography w” – for a post where I’ve already added 6 photography related key phrases in the Rank Math main panel.

I raised a support ticket. Support says that in this post the Content AI can’t find SERP data for my relatively short main SEO key phrase (a photographer’s name), so it just throws up its hands. Two different support reps have answered me with variations on this:

“The Content AI feature searches the SERPs for the top results for the keyword you are researching and for the country selected. [even though I didn’t select a country and that’s not an option in the Content AI panel] … when you use a broad keyword such as the name of a photographer or a simple word like [photographer’s name] the results will be much more spread, and look for related keywords coming from those top result.”

Which doesn’t answer the question why Content AI is suggesting lime cheesecake recipe for a photography post or a nonsense search phrase like “x d in photography” (how is lime cheesecake related to a person’s name or photography, and how can searching for “x d” in photography be a thing?).

Out of the box you get 15 Content AI free credits, but after that you have to buy credits. If the Content AI is so basic and occasionally so stupid, why buy?

The support I’ve received on this ticket is not only not helpful but also kind of insulting. The support reps refuse to acknowledge the two obvious problems with link and media counts, instead suggesting the product is performing as designed when it’s obviously not performing well in this instance. Instead of acknowledging the problem and saying they’ll bring it to the attention of the developers, they say “performing as designed” and “Don’t hesitate to get in touch if you have any other questions.” At the very least, the developers should look at why link and media counts fall down when the AI can’t find a key phrase in SERP. Those are completely unrelated metrics, and only relate to the length and complexity of a post, not its SEO key phrases. The support ticket I’ve raised on evident bugs and the non-responsive responses I’ve received lead me to question the validity of any of the Content AI metrics. From now on I won’t bother with it.

So one star deducted for Content AI uselessness, one star deducted for useless support.

Update:

I see that the review appearing just above mine dated 28 June 2023 saying how wonderful support is, appeared just after I posted my review talking about their useless support. Coincidence? Oh, by the way, Rank Math is based in New Delhi.

• This topic was modified 1 year, 5 months ago by ch3252.
• This topic was modified 1 year, 5 months ago by ch3252.
• This topic was modified 1 year, 5 months ago by ch3252.