Hi,
I’m fully aware of how SEO and SEO plugins work, especially a “score” is merely a guideline that has only marginal practical reference on the internet. In fact, I utterly ignored Yoast’s scores & suggestions because they were completely wrong half of the time and most folks freely acknowledge that. Referring me back to your FAQ guides as if I were an incompetent newbie is rather insulting after I gave noted a rather specific & detailed issue with your plugin’s algorithm. My writing style alone will rarely score a “perfect 100” – so I don’t even bother trying. But thank you for at least admitting that you’ve opted to focus on speed and count only “exact keywords” rather than similar keywords.
Google, instead, acknowledges that articles such as “the”, “a”, etc and symbols such as hyphens, ampersands, and colons are rather irrelevant for SEO until you get down to the extreme nit-picky differences when everything else is identical. “Scrooge & Marley” is essentially the same keyword as “Scrooge Marley” in their eyes; yet for you, they’re two utterly different keywords. Isn’t it Google’s and the other search engine algorithms what we are striving to compare to with an SEO plugin?
Rank Math appealed to me for other reasons compared to Yoast, which is why I switched. But a happy byproduct was that my post & review page scores got a significant boost just from the switch alone. Yet I have no problems utterly ignoring your scoring as well. There is no SEO plugin that will actually relate to actual higher rankings online.
But what I have an issue with, and why I have noted the algorithm issue with Rank Math is when I take two reviews from my site, both with a similar structure, similar composition, similar word counts, same number of recurrences of the focus keyword, et al – yet one scores in the 80-90 percentile; the other can barely score above a 70. The only difference: the lower scoring review includes the ampersand in the focus keyword. That clearly indicates that it’s an issue with your algorithm – one you don’t seem too keen on fixing.
Nor are my focus keywords picked willy-nilly – they’re literally film titles. (Which is usually what people search for when looking for film reviews, thus why my focus keyword IS the correct film title). But the ampersand is commonly used with other SEO titles and meta-descriptions to combine phrases when on a limited word or character count. I doubt that the issue is limited solely to my site.
Because they’re so similar, I know that both reviews will rank well – even though your algorithm scores the one with the ampersand significantly lower. I have no issue following your sage advice either: to ignore your own plugin’s score.
I was giving you the option to address what is clearly a flaw with your scoring system. Whether you do or don’t, it won’t stop me from utilising good SEO principles. But you have lost any faith I might’ve had in your plugin by your lack-luster public reply.
