Hello,
We apologize for the issue you are facing with the setup of Rank Math. The "Invalid JSON response" error can occur due to several reasons, often related to server configuration or conflicts with other plugins.
Here are a few steps you can take to troubleshoot this issue:
-
Check Site URL: Ensure that your WordPress URL and Site URL are correctly set and match each other. You can check this by navigating to WordPress Dashboard → Settings → General.

-
Disable Caching: If you have any caching plugins active, try disabling them temporarily to see if that resolves the issue.
-
Check for Plugin Conflicts: Deactivate other plugins to see if there’s a conflict causing the issue. If Rank Math works after deactivating other plugins, reactivate them one by one to identify the conflicting plugin.
-
Enable Debugging: You can enable debugging in WordPress to see if any specific errors are logged. Add the following line to your wp-config.php
file:
define( 'WP_DEBUG', true );
This will help you identify any underlying issues.
-
Server Configuration: Sometimes, server settings can cause this issue. Ensure that your server is configured correctly to handle JSON responses.
If these steps do not resolve the issue, please reply to this ticket with your site URL so that we can assist you further. A human agent from our support team will take over and provide more specific guidance.
Thank you for raising this concern, and we look forward to helping you get Rank Math set up successfully!
Sources:
How to Fix Problems While Connecting Account Using Rank Math » Rank Math
How to Fix Problems While Connecting Account Using Rank Math » Rank Math
I have checked with Bluehost who said that may be the Rank Math issue.
Bluehost has disabled the other plugins except Rank Math, but it still could not resolve the problem.
Do anyone know how to resolve this problem? Or show me how to do the step 4 in detail.
Hello,
Thank you for contacting us. We apologise for the delay in our response and for any inconvenience that may have been caused.
Are you experiencing this when using the setup Wizard? If no, kindly let us know how we can replicate this.
Possibly, you can share this information with a screenshot using https://imgur.com/upload or share a video using https://www.loom.com/ with us so that we can investigate the issue further.
If yes, we might need to take a closer look at your website to investigate this further. Please edit the first post on this ticket and include your WordPress & FTP logins in the designated Sensitive Data section.
Please do take a complete backup of your website before sharing the information with us.

It is completely secure and only our support staff has access to that section. If you want, you can use the below plugin to generate a temporary login URL to your website and share that with us instead:
https://wordpress.org/plugins/temporary-login-without-password/
You can use the above plugin in conjunction with the WP Security Audit Log to monitor what changes our staff might make on your website (if any):
https://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-security-audit-log/
We really look forward to helping you.