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Hopefully this will be my last newbie question. 🙂
In the post list in the WP admin area, most posts say “Update your post” after activating RankMath.
Is there any way to mass-update this so we can see which posts need SEO attention without having to open every single one of them and re-save them manually?
That’s fine if there are only a few dozen posts, but not for larger sites with hundreds (or thousands in this case).
I was using Yoast before, and had tested SEO Framework before RankMath, and both showed the SEO status in the post list for all posts automatically. This is the only plugin where I haven’t seen that happen so far.
Any way around this problem?
Thanks!
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Hello,
Thank you for getting in touch.
We are sorry about the trouble you are facing. Please follow this tutorial on how to mass update your posts: https://wordpress.stackexchange.com/questions/294575/how-to-force-update-all-posts-after-import
With that said, it is always a good idea to manually edit your key posts and see what the recommendations are that the plugin gives you and work on that. It is no good just seeing the score unless you know where your posts are lacking.
Hope that helps and please do not hesitate to let us know if you need our assistance with anything else.
Thanks. We’re well-experienced with on-page SEO. The issue is when RM is installed on large existing sites rather than new ones. We choose SEO plugins that list scores so we can do both thorough and spot audits. Without that feature, RM loses a lot of its value as a tool for improvement. There are lighter “set it and forget it” plugins if we didn’t want/need that kind of data.
Every other SEO plugin tested does this. I’m already working with another developer who’s a sql specialist on options on that front, and we’re looking into WP functions to force this as well. We already came across the option you shared, and as you’ll note there that solution has an issue where it erases post content. If we find a solution that actually works we’ll let you know, but please be careful about pointing others who might be newer to WP and don’t have dev experience or another dev available to them to solutions like that one.
I mentioned this in another thread, but this seems tied to the problem of existing authors not being pulled into your author sitemap after installation. You’re relying on creation and update actions to happen, just like here for scoring even when the meta data. The script you’re using for scoring isn’t being called on installation even though the meta data is already on the posts. Triggering a one-time run to search for these things on installation would solve both of the problems.
I know RM is new. And I love most of what I see so far. But it’s also being promoted as an alternative to existing plugins like Yoast without a warning that they’re going to lose a key SEO auditing tool because it appears to be included in RM with no warning of how it’s going to affect existing content vs new content. I was really hoping this could be a Yoast replacement across all my sites, but not scoring all the imported meta data is too big of an issue to risk moving to RM on other sites at this time. I hope it’s something you’re able to resolve in the near future. At that point, RM is something I wholeheartedly look forward to being able to recommend to my readers — many of whom are WP users themselves. It’s getting to that point. Just not quite there yet.
Despite the warning that the function you linked to deleted post content, I backed it all up and tested it anyway. It definitely does not work.
Hi Jenn,
These tests rely on PHP as well as JS (mostly). If it were just PHP, we could do it in the background and apart from slowing down a website that has lots of posts – there wouldn’t be much you would notice.
But, some of the tests actually require that the JS be loaded so that’s why the posts need to be updated/opened. Updating the date of the post without actually updating anything in the content is not an ideal solution either. That might trigger Google’s bots to ignore the posts. Google appreciates a post being updated with some content/fixes and not just merely changing the last updated date.
Even Yoast doesn’t do it automatically for the posts which were added before installing that plugin.
We are running some of the tests that are entirely different than what Yoast or any other plugin has. So, porting over the score is not possible as well.
Also, please do not obsess over the scores. These are just for guidelines. These are not a set of rules one have to adhere to. With that said, I can understand that having it update automatically for your entire post archive would be helpful but it is impossible (nearly) to do the way we are handling tests.
But it’s also being promoted as an alternative to existing plugins like Yoast without a warning that they’re going to lose a key SEO auditing tool because it appears to be included in RM with no warning of how it’s going to affect existing content vs new content.
Please stay advised that there is no direct relation between the scores and the traffic. As I mentioned, these are just the guidelines and should be taken as such. You can read more about them here
https://rankmath.com/kb/score-100-in-tests/Hope that helps. If you have any further question(s), please let us know. Thank you.
No, it does not help.
I’m not obsessing over the scores. I’m not only a web developer, but an editor. The scores are one of the primary reasons we went with Rank Math because they make SEO audits when you have a lot of posts or a lot of authors infinitely easier.
I understand what the scores are. I understand what they do and don’t mean. I’ve been doing SEO work for a very long time and have used many tools to do so. I’ve already read that article and other documentation before installing Rank Math. And it’s disappointing that while you have a promising plugin here, you’ve now repeatedly insulted the intelligence of your users as if we don’t understand these basic things for reporting to you that you failed to think through key use cases before release.
This is a major issue for users with existing sites because it significantly limits the plugin’s value for SEO audits and prioritizing improvements. It’s not about exact individual scores. It’s about scores in a relational capacity allowing for better SEO and editorial decisions by allowing users to prioritize which content gets attention first. If we were talking about situations like Yoast not assigning scores until you’ve added a focus keyword, that would be one thing. But we’re not. Your plugin imported years worth of meta data and focus keywords and stripped a key editorial feature by not using and processing that imported data after installation.
Until this is resolved, there really needs to be a visible warning for all users of existing sites not to switch to Rank Math if they value that feature they’re led to believe they’ll have access to, especially until there are easy ways to migrate back AWAY from Rank Math if they have to seek those features elsewhere. It at least needs to be made known that they won’t see any of these features/data unless they manually update every post and page.
I was hoping to be able to implement RM elsewhere and recommend it, but it just isn’t there yet. I’ve already spent days that should have been spent on other projects trying to fix problems the switch to RM caused. And if we can’t quickly come up with a work-around for this issue on our end, it looks like I’ll lose more time hunting for another option and trying to get everything migrated yet again.
I genuinely hope that even if you don’t fix this quickly, that you do re-evaluate this issue in future plugin releases and resolve this. The plugin has great “bones” behind it. I really want to love this plugin. But instead of saving us time in our SEO improvements, in this state it requires us to spend more time to fully process the data we’ve spent years building and already imported into the plugin. In an editorial sense, that just doesn’t make sense. Programmatic solutions are inherently supposed to save users time, not add to it.
I hope you can understand why that’s a problem, and I hope it’s something you’re able to fix down the road. You had the best feature set advertised I found in any SEO plugin, free or premium. I’d happily pay for a premium version if it actually delivered on all of those advertised features working properly with imported data. But for now, we’re going to take one last stab at coming up with a one-off workaround, and if that doesn’t work, I guess we’ll be stuck moving it all back to Yoast.
Hi,
We are really sorry if we have given any offense. That really wasn’t our intention.
We brainstormed over this a lot before releasing the plugin and had to decide against auto-updating a website’s articles.
The issue with not providing an option or to auto-update the older posts is how Google expects the updated articles to show.
When an article is updated, Google would expect some changes in the content. Otherwise, it might limit the number of posts crawled or maybe penalize a site assuming it’s trying to manipulate the search engines by showing updating the last updated date. We definitely do not want to take that decision for anyone and doing so would do more harm than good. It is very risky.
As I mentioned earlier, we run different tests than the other plugins. That’s why we are not able to import the tests and their scores from other plugins.
To determine which articles require the most attention, we are brainstorming on how to use the Google Analytics & Search Console data together so we can present that to the users.
It is going to be a new reporting system that makes it easier for anyone to concentrate on the posts that require more attention than others.
But if you still want to take that risk of updating all the older articles to start showing the scores, please let us know and we will provide a code. We wouldn’t recommend that at all though. There is a reason why we took over 3.5 years to release the plugin to everyone. We consulted/tested/wasted/built many online properties during that period to analyze what should be the safest and best way of moving forward.
This definitely wasn’t something we came up off the top of our heads.
But we are happy to help here. Let us know. Thank you.
I’m so far beyond seeking or trusting support here at this point…
Yet again, you’re assuming your customers don’t understand basic SEO when some of us have been at it for a very long time. And you’re using generic SEO advice to dismiss valid user concerns because you didn’t effectively think through key use cases and do the proper market research before development. The issue is not about wanting to force all posts to update. That was a workaround to a problem the plugin created. It never should have had to have been done. .
And your proposed solution of using Search Console and Analytics data is demonstrating that yet again you haven’t been listening to users. You were already already alerted to the fact that when your plugin is allowed to connect to this data, it blows up the site’s database size to an unacceptable level. The solution is to lose that feature and disconnect them for anyone with a site of any significant size. Those would be the very same users who have a large collection of posts you’re not running score evaluations against.
The fundamental problem is how you chose to trigger the calculations. I’ve had two independent developers now look at the code and confirm the issue. And either they’ll find a one-time work-around for my site (because the plugin after the installation and setup problems seems to be fine), or we’ll be moving the site off Rank Math again next week.
For a plugin with so much promise, the headaches in getting features working properly thus far has been unacceptable. I truly wish you’d have just done the research up front to actually learn how users intend to use these kinds of plugins, even if it ultimately meant releasing it as a premium option. That would have been infinitely better than failing to alert new users of the problems and limitations, when it’s a plugin with no easy direct way to migrate off of, and then repeatedly behaving in a condescending manner towards users as if they can’t possibly understand the business they’ve been in for years because you find that easier than actually listening.
Good luck with the plugin. I hope you sort the issues out some day. But in its current format, there are still too many problems for RM to be trusted on any well-established sites.
Hi,
I apologize for the issue and we really weren’t trying to be condescending.
We were just trying to see a clear picture of the limitations there are when handling something like this.
There is absolutely no way (for now) to update the scores without updating the post. And this is why we don’t update the post:
https://www.searchenginejournal.com/seo-changing-article-dates/225789/Quoting this bit from Google’s Gary Illyes
From our perspective, from Core Ranking perspective, I’d like to believe that in some way that will hurt you. At least from, let’s say, we will not believe your dates anymore.
Typically when you search something, especially if it is newsy content, or your query is newsy, then I found that those date bylines in the search results can be very helpful in determining if it is relevant to your query – the result – or not.
Imagine if you were a news publisher and suddenly your byline dates would be gone overnight because we believe you were abusing them, you probably don’t want that. So I would advise against that.
If there were a way to update the score without updating the post, the decade-old Yoast would be doing that too. They aren’t.
I can understand if you want to stop using Rank Math. We understand one plugin cannot appeal to everyone and please feel free to share any feedback your independent developers might have for us. We are always open to criticism and feedback. It helps us improve.
Thank you.
Hi JM,
I’m now following up on this and thank god I’m seeing this before doing the
transfer! Thank you for explain this, I would’ve be in the same state as you.Did you found a work around (1yr and 3months later?) or you are still using Yoast or something else?
We do need an audit per post based of tens of thousands old posts and if there is still no way on having this available, as it is a key feature than I would rather stick with my setup for now.
Let me know and to the RM staffs, please think of users that have years and years of old data!
Thanks!
Hello,
Thank you for contacting Rank Math today.
I hope you have read through the answers given above and have understood all the risk involved in updating a huge number of posts at once. I have alerted the dev team on this and if there is a possible workaround, we will let you know.
Looking forward to helping you. Thank you.
Hi CF,
I am so sorry but there is no way to automate this.
We would not suggest automating that anyway.
Some of the tests only run when you load up a post. The score gets saved when you hit the update button. But, don’t just hit the update button without changing any content on your website. If you do this, Google will think you are trying to manipulate the date Google sometimes shows beside your search result ( https://i.rankmath.com/BiZDrV )
So, we recommend that you start with your most important posts, open then, make changes as per recommendations made by Google and then hit the update button.
I hope that helps and please do not hesitate to let us know if you need our assistance with anything else.
P.S: Not to make any comparison but if you import to Yoast – the same thing happens.
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