WordPress is the world’s leading CMS platform, and Rank Math SEO is the most robust and feature-rich plugin to optimize your content. By combining these two, I was able to earn over $10,000 from Google AdSense ads only, and a few more from affiliate sales commissions.
They say that blogging is dead, and that the SEO and organic traffic days are gone – but I’ll argue they’re not. Like good old physical books that cannot be replaced by e-books, blog posts will remain in our lives for many years to come. AI tools have made it possible for writers to increase the speed and quickly help them correct any spelling or grammar mistakes.
New platforms are being created all the time, and with Medium and Substack, blogging not only lives, but it’s in a great shape, too.
If you’re anything like me, writing on third-party platforms is a great way to increase your audience, traffic, and earnings, but having your own self-hosted blog is crucial. For me, WordPress is my top choice when it comes to building a blog, and it comes with hundreds upon hundreds of great plugins that can help you monetize, promote, and make it profitable.
But today we’re not talking about all those plugins. Today, we’re focusing on just one: Rank Math SEO.
I have already talked about how powerful Rank Math SEO is, and how you can use it to quickly optimize your content and see your organic traffic explode. In case you’ve missed them, here are a few of them:
- How Rank Math SEO reshaped website optimization
- 10 Things I wish my clients knew about Rank Math SEO
- Yoast SEO vs. Rank Math SEO – Is it even a question anymore?
- You can now get a 100 SEO score using Rank Math’s Content AI
Before we get started, here’s a screenshot from my Google AdSense account, showcasing the amount of money that I’ve made the past few months:
Two of those blogs are faceless, and I’d like to keep them that way (as part of my current testing), so that’s why I blurred them. Four of them are also fairly new, and they’re the last ones.
Once I am done testing, I’ll upload a new screenshot with the end results.
It’s important to note that each writer/blogger can make money in tons of different ways. I’ve used Google AdSense and a few affiliate platforms to monetize my articles, but you don’t actually need a blog to do this. Rank Math SEO works just fine with any other type of website, including e-commerce websites where you can promote and sell physical or digital products.
Here are a few ideas:
- Start a blog with a selected niche that drives traffic (search for trending topics on Google Trends).
- Start an e-commerce website and sell physical or digital products (or both).
- Print on Demand
- Dropshipping
- Affiliate e-shop
- A website with online courses (you can combine Rank Math SEO with Tutor LMS for that).
- A website where you sell anything you created, from images to videos to audio.
There are many ways that you can earn a living from your website, and with a robust SEO tool, you can drive organic traffic faster and way more easily.
Unlike other SEO plugins that overwhelm you with settings, Rank Math’s setup wizard makes this process straightforward. I connected my Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools, set up my XML sitemap, and configured the basic SEO settings within minutes.
What made the difference was taking the time to set up proper schema markup for my content types, configure breadcrumbs for better user navigation, enable 404 monitoring to catch broken links, and implement proper redirections for old content.
Before writing any new post, I used Rank Math’s features as my keyword research tool. This allowed me to find keywords with decent search volume, identify keywords with lower competition, and discover related keywords to target in the same article.
For example, one of my most successful posts targeted a primary keyword with 2,900 monthly searches and several secondary keywords ranging from 500-1,200 searches. By optimizing for this cluster of keywords, that single post now brings in over 4,000 visitors monthly.
Instead of guessing what to include in my articles, I could get AI-powered suggestions based on what top-ranking pages already include. For each post, I would generate Content AI recommendations for my target keyword, include the suggested headings, questions, and related keywords, follow the recommended content length and readability guidelines, and aim for that perfect 100/100 score.
The AI analyzes the top-performing content for your target keywords and provides actionable recommendations that actually increase traffic. When I follow these suggestions, my content consistently ranks higher and faster.
The real difference came from Rank Math’s analytics features. I could see exactly which posts were performing well and which needed improvement. For underperforming content, I would re-optimize using Content AI recommendations, update with fresh information, improve internal linking structure, and enhance the content with better media and examples.
Being able to track performance directly within WordPress saves countless hours switching between tools and provides immediate insights into what’s working and what isn’t.
While Rank Math’s free version is incredibly powerful and much more feature-rich than most free SEO plugins, the Pro version offers several capabilities that have been crucial to my success.
The free version offers basic schema options, but the Pro version provides advanced schema types and customization that significantly impact click-through rates. I’ve used Review schema for product recommendations, FAQ schema for my guides, and How-to schema for tutorials – all automatically generated based on my content structure. This rich data in search results has dramatically improved my visibility and engagement.
As someone managing multiple sites, the Pro license allowing usage on unlimited personal websites has been incredibly cost-effective. Rather than paying separate subscription fees for each site, one Pro license covers all my projects.
While the free version offers a taste of Content AI functionality, the Pro version includes enough credits to optimize dozens of posts each month. This has been essential for maintaining a consistent publishing schedule while ensuring every piece is fully optimized.
When issues arise or I need guidance on implementation, the priority support has saved me countless hours of troubleshooting. The support team has helped me implement complex schema structures and resolve technical issues that would have otherwise derailed my progress.
Within six months of implementing this strategy across my sites, my organic traffic increased by 347%. More importantly, my revenue jumped from barely $100 per month to over $2,000 consistently.
Instead of creating random posts, developing content clusters around main topics has proven extremely effective. One of my blogs has a comprehensive cluster on “creating free AI images locally” with a main pillar post and 15 supporting articles covering everything from ComfyUI, Stable Diffusion, and Easy Diffusion to running multiple large language models such as DeepSeek.
Rank Math’s internal linking suggestions make it easy to connect these posts properly, creating a content ecosystem that signals topical authority to search engines.
While content is crucial, technical SEO matters tremendously. I use Rank Math’s site audit feature regularly to fix crawlability issues, improve page speed, ensure mobile-friendliness, and address duplicate content problems. The Pro version’s ability to schedule automatic site audits ensures I never miss critical technical issues that could hurt rankings.
Google is constantly changing its algorithm. With Rank Math’s analytics integration, I can quickly identify when a site is affected by an update and make necessary adjustments. This responsiveness has helped me recover quickly from several algorithm shifts that negatively impacted competitors who weren’t monitoring their metrics as closely.
I won’t mislead you – success with WordPress and Rank Math SEO doesn’t happen overnight.
It took me about three months before seeing significant results on my first site, and each new site has followed a similar pattern. The first month typically shows minimal movement, the second month brings gradual improvements, and the third month is when rankings and traffic begin to accelerate substantially.
The key is consistency and patience. Create high-quality content that actually helps readers, optimize it properly with Rank Math, and give Google time to recognize your site’s value. The Pro version’s toolset makes this process more efficient and effective at every stage.
Blogging isn’t dead – it’s evolving. With tools like WordPress and Rank Math SEO Pro, independent publishers still have enormous opportunities to build sustainable online businesses. Whether you’re just starting out or looking to optimize an existing site, implementing a strategic approach to SEO can dramatically change your results.
Remember, the most successful blogs aren’t just well-optimized – they provide genuine value to readers. Use Rank Math SEO to ensure your valuable content gets the visibility it deserves, and the earnings will follow.
The investment in the Pro version has paid for itself many times over through increased traffic and revenue, making it one of the smartest business decisions I’ve made for my blogging career.
P.S. I never use AI to write everything for me. Instead, I’ve been using it to help me get more ideas, see things I couldn’t, fix my grammar and spelling mistakes, and help me optimize my content even further. Use it wisely.
Uh, oh! Legal stuff! Yikes.. Yet important! Affiliate Links Disclaimer: Many of the links on my articles are affiliate links. That means if you click on one and make a purchase, I might earn a small commission, and I'll keep doing what I'm doing, reviewing everything with absolute honesty. Sounds good? Good.
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