At present, when you talk about the Best SEO plugin for WordPress you generally talk about 2 plugins: Yoast SEO plugin and Rank Math SEO Plugin. When I was a newbie, I started my career by writing blogs on a Gaming website, just like you I kept thinking about which plugin should we use. And after reading various posts and reviews, I settled with Yoast. The main reason why bloggers were preferring Yoast was Rank Math was a baby back then, they had just entered the SEO market.
Rank Math was launched on November 19, 2018. (source)
Whereas Yoast was launched in 2007 with the name “WordPress SEO”. Later in 2012, it was renamed as Yoast. (source).
Now you can understand why Yoast was a bigger name.
Then by getting influenced by the blogs and reviews, I went with Yoast.
But…
Now, After working with WordPress for more than 5 years, I was already attached and compatible with Yoast until one day a post that was gaining a good amount of traffic had to be deleted (because it contained some copyrighted material).
As soon as I deleted the post, there was an increase in the number of visitors facing 404 NOT FOUND. I began searching for the solution. Yoast had this feature of redirecting 404 pages to any page we want, but I need to purchase the premium plan of around 89$ (now 99$).
Since my website was new, I could not afford that much, so I began to search for free plugins. That is where I came to know about this Best SEO Plugin for WordPress.
Rank Math was pretty new and I was amazed by its on-paper features, but there’s a saying that goes … You will not know until you try
That was the first time I tried Rank Math. And shockingly, it was beyond my expectation.
Coming back to the present,
Now I am using Rank Math for the last 1.5 years, and here are my 11 reasons why I have switched all my websites to Rank Math and will never be going back to Yoast again.
Features of Rank Math over Yoast:
Why would you pay 99$ when you can get those features for free???
Yes, The premium features that Yoast provides in their premium plans are available for free in the Rank Math free version. Then why would you spend on Yoast?
Talking about few of the many premium features that Rank Math provides for free are:
Why would you pay 99$ when you can get those features for free???
One of the major advantages of Rank Math over Yoast is that it offers a detailed 404 Monitor in a free version. You can easily find when your visitors bump to a 404 error page and quickly fix them.
Below is what the 404 monitor in Rank Math looks like.
while in Yoast you get this in the premium version.
Already a deal breaker for me.
Next is the solution for 404 pages:
Yup, Yoast too provides redirection features, But for 99$.
While running a blog, you sometimes delete one or the other blog due to many reasons. And then the page goes bump to 404 not found. That really harms your website’s reputation.
Rank Math redirection features help me to redirect deleted pages/blogs to other matching blogs to simply redirect them to my Homepage. Thereby reducing the chances of my new visitors bumping on a 404 page.
Rank Math redirection is super UI friendly to use even for a newbie:
Use Rank Math Pro license on Multiple Sites
In Yoast, you have to purchase a license for each separate website you own, but in Rank Math, you can use 1 license on your multiple sites. Even no need for any DNS verification. Just log in with your connected Rank Math account and it activates the license.
You can view all the active sites using licenses in your Rank Math account dashboard:
Noticed, I haven’t renewed my Rank Math, because I feel, the free version is more than enough for me. Moreover, I hardly use pro features. But if you are someone who will use the Pro features, I recommend going blindly with Rank Math Pro.
Optimize content for up to 5 keywords
In Yoast free version, you can optimize your content for only 1 primary keyword, whereas Rank Math allows content optimization for upto 5 keywords
Let’s take this post example, Rank Math free version is helping me to optimize this post for 5 different keywords
While In the pro version, you can use unlimited focus keywords. Also, you can change your primary focus keyword just by dragging the keywords before the first keyword.
You get free Schemas in the free version. Whereas Yoast gives this in Pro Version.
Schema markup, often referred to as structured data, is a powerful SEO tool that aids search engines in understanding the content on your website more effectively. By using schema, you provide explicit clues about what your data means, making it easier for search engines to index and present your content accurately.
Moreover, it enhances your visibility in SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages) by enabling rich snippets, which provide additional, valuable information to users. Rich snippets can include reviews, ratings, product availability, and more, which can attract more clicks and improve your site’s CTR (Click Through Rate).
Check an example below of Schema Markup for a Software review:
Who wouldn’t like to click on the post that shows STAR RATINGs in SERP?
Now ask yourself, why would you pay 99$ for Yoast Premium when you get these features for free in Rank Math?
Get an inbuilt SEO analyzer that checks for 29 criteria.
I used to visit Sites like SEO-Analyzer to see if my website miss some SEO optimization tricks. But now with Rank Math, I don’t need to leave my website.
With around 29 different criteria, Rank Math provides an Advance SEO analyzer that will scan your website deeply and provide all the issues you need to fix (Rank Math also provides solutions to the issues)
Modern and Cleaner Interface than Yoast
Clutter-free Dashboard is what a newbie expects. We don’t want to run through all sub-options to find our desired setting. Rank Math provides a clean dashboard where you can directly enable the features that you need. It also provides a setting option for further setup of the enabled options.
From this, I got one more reason: Local SEO
You have to purchase a separate Local SEO plugin for Yoast @ 79$ a year. BUT WHY??????
This is one of the reasons why Rank Math is the best SEO plugin for WordPress. It literally provides Local SEO features in its free version. Whereas on the other hand, Yoast even after taking a whooping 99$ a month doesn’t provide this feature. In fact, you have to buy a new separate plugin from Yoast at 79$ known as the Yoast Local SEO plugin.
Again ask yourself, why would you waste around 180$ for a feature that is available for free in Rank Math?
Just enable the option of Local SEO from the above dashboard and set up your store settings.
No need to check GSC and Google Analytics or pay for other rank-tracking tools.
Rank Math has an inbuilt Analytics that gives you all the important analytics you need. The data are directly from Google Analytics. You just need to connect Rank Math with Google Analytics when you setup it the first time. If not, you can connect it from the dashboard.
Still, confuse between Yoast and Rank Math?
Let’s see some more Rank Math SEO plugin vs Yoast SEO plugin
More features with less burden on the server
With almost half of the size of Yoast, Rank Math manages to provide more features. This indeed reduces the load on your website helping to increase in loading speed of the website.
No need to find ways to get into your files and edit them manually
You already know what is robots.txt and why it is used.
Shortly, they are used to allow or disallow web crawlers to index your website or not. You need to add these commands in a text file within your website root folder.
Now if your host uses a cpanel, this is an easy job, but some host doesn’t use a cpanel. For them, you have to use software like FILEZILLA to access your files. This feature can be useful for such hosts.
You can directly edit robots.txt from the Rank Math setting.
Until now you might have made up your mind about which plugin is best for SEO in WordPress – RankMath or Yoast. Here’s a glance at RankMath vs Yoast:
- More Features in the Free Version: One of the major advantages of Rank Math over Yoast is that it offers more features in the free version. Features like 404 Monitor, Redirections, and Schema Markups, which are premium in Yoast, are available for free in Rank Math.
- Keyword Optimization: While the free version of Yoast allows optimizing for only one keyword, Rank Math allows optimizing for up to five keywords.
- Integrated Google Schema Markup (Rich Snippets): Rank Math supports the integration of Schema Markup to enable rich snippets in Google search results, which can improve click-through rates. Yoast offers this feature as well, but Rank Math provides more types and templates for the schema.
- Google Keyword Ranking: Rank Math allows you to see the Google keyword ranking of your posts right in your dashboard, which is not available in Yoast.
- Seamless Migration: Rank Math offers a one-click import tool that makes it easy to migrate all your SEO settings from Yoast to Rank Math.
- User Interface: Some users prefer Rank Math’s user interface, which they find to be more modern and cleaner compared to Yoast.
- Optimization Scores: Rank Math provides SEO scores for your content out of 100, which many users find to be more nuanced and helpful than the red, yellow, and green light systems used by Yoast.
- Advanced SEO Analysis Tool: Rank Math has an advanced SEO analysis tool that checks over 30 SEO key points and then gives you actionable advice.
- More Customization: Rank Math offers a higher level of customization and fine-tuning in its settings compared to Yoast.
- Local SEO: Rank Math has in-built Local SEO features, while you’d need to purchase the premium version of Yoast for that.
That’s a wrap for the post, we will keep updating the post with all the new features that RankMath launches.
Final Summary:
After using and testing both Yoast and Rank Math, I strongly believe that Rank Math is a better SEO plugin for WordPress. Here’s why I think so:
Rank Math offers many great features for free, unlike Yoast where you have to pay. These include a 404 monitor, redirection, and the option to optimize content for up to five keywords.
Rank Math is also easier to use, thanks to its clear and simple design. Plus, it puts less pressure on your website’s server, which can help make your site faster.
One of the big wins with Rank Math is its local SEO feature, which is free. With Yoast, you have to buy an extra plugin to get this.
Rank Math also gives you built-in SEO checking that looks at 30 different things on your site. It even tells you what to do to fix any problems it finds. With Yoast, you don’t get this.
Another big plus for Rank Math is that it lets you see how your posts rank on Google right from your website dashboard. Yoast doesn’t offer this.
Moving from Yoast to Rank Math is also easy because Rank Math can move all your SEO settings over with just one click.
In summary, Rank Math offers you more features for less money than Yoast. Plus, it’s easier to use and gives you more helpful information about how to improve your SEO. I hope this review has helped you see why I switched to Rank Math and why you might want to as well. And don’t worry – I’ll keep updating this post as Rank Math adds more features.