I recently had a super interesting conversation with one of my clients about SEO plugins for WordPress.
They had installed the Rank Math plugin on their WordPress website and they were feeling unsure about the results it was giving them.
Rank Math gives you a score out of 100 for each page or post on your website based on how well-optimised they believe the page or post is for search engines.
There are lots of other SEO plugins out there that work in a similar way. For example, I use Yoast SEO on my website and instead of giving you a score out of 100, it uses a traffic light system to help you understand how optimised your content is.
My client was feeling unsure because they were only scoring about 50 to 70 out of 100 for their pages and wanted to know what they were doing wrong.
Because naturally, when we’re given a score and it’s not perfect, we want to know why and what we can do to reach that 100%.
There are the two things I told my client to reassure them about their scores.
1 | You’ll rarely, if ever, be able to achieve a perfect score
Harsh, but true.
You’ll rarely be able to achieve a perfect score, but it’s not because the content isn’t good enough! It’s because Rank Math will deduct points for things that don’t really make sense.
For example, they deduct points for not having a table of contents on a page. But it doesn’t make sense to have a table of contents on all pages of a website. Have you ever seen a Contact page with a table of contents, for example?
Or they deduct points for not using their built-in AI tools. But what if you don’t want to use their AI tools? That’s not a reason why your page won’t rank in search results!
(And I’m not saying you shouldn’t use Rank Math specifically; pretty much all SEO plugins work in the same way.)
If you follow all of the advice from these SEO plugins and try to pursue a perfect score for every piece of content on your website, you might end up creating a website that feels forced or that doesn’t feel natural. It may even look spammy, which in turn could be doing more damage than good.
Just because you have a 100% score from an SEO plugin doesn’t mean your content is guaranteed to rank highly in search engine results!
2 | The feedback is only helpful if you choose the right keywords in the first place
There’s a phrase that I hear a lot in regards to AI, but I think it works nicely for SEO plugins too:
“Garbage in, garbage out.”
The feedback and advice SEO plugins give you is based on the keywords or phrases you tell it you want a particular page or post to rank for. So if you don’t choose the right keywords, you won’t get the right advice. And then if you make changes to your content based on this advice, your page or post might not be as well optimised for search engines as you think.
So before you start using SEO plugins to optimise your website, take some time to conduct keyword research and choose your keywords wisely! Or else you might be completely wasting your time.
So, are SEO plugins bad?
Not at all! Plugins like Rank Math and Yoast SEO can absolutely help you improve your content’s SEO. However, you should take their feedback with a pinch of salt.
They’re tools, not SEO experts. And while they can highlight helpful things like missing meta descriptions or keyword usage, they shouldn’t be treated as gospel.
Instead of getting wrapped up in the numbers and scores your SEO plugin is giving you, focus on writing high-quality, well-structured, user-focused content, and choose thoughtful, relevant keywords.
That will take you much further than chasing a green light or a 100/100 score ever will.
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