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Rank Math SEO Vs Yoast SEO: Which SEO Plugin Is Best For You?

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In this objective product and service review, our Guest Contributor and SEO Expert, Shivansh Singh helps you decide between Rank Math SEO vs Yoast SEO plugins to help you optimize your site and rank high on Google!

Rank-Math-SEO-vs-Yoast-SEO

You’ve created a self-hosted WordPress website, and although you have amazing content, your blog is an orphan. An island even! Nobody visits your website.

And although Google processes over 3.5 billion searches every day, your articles and posts do not rank anywhere near the front pages of Google.

So nobody clicks through to your site.

You’ve read somewhere that to rank your website on page #1 of Google you need to optimize your website. So you want to start by installing the best SEO plugin.

But which SEO plugin is best for you?

I guess, most of you are probably thinking it must be the Yoast SEO plugin and rightly so, as it is the award-winning plugin for WordPress SEO.

But, things constantly change with time, and change is the only constant in life. In fact, it was Herakleitos the Greek philosopher, who is credited with saying, “Everything changes and nothing stands still.”

Although relatively new to the SEO plugin scene, many WordPress users have switched to the Rank Math SEO plugin which is undoubtedly one of the best Yoast SEO Alternatives.

RankMath plugin has some vocal fans on Facebook and appears to be moving towards dominating the WordPress websites over Yoast SEO.

As an example, I used Yoast SEO almost for 1.5 years before I made the switch. I’m currently using the Rank Math SEO Plugin and used it for the last 12 months.

Having used both SEO plugins extensively, I’m in a great place to tell you the differences between Yoast SEO vs Rank Math SEO.

So, if you’re ready, let’s get started.

Everything To Know About Rank Math SEO Vs Yoast SEO

First a bit of history.

Let’s take a quick look at the origins of these amazing SEO plugins.

Yoast SEO Plugin

This plugin was launched in 2010 by Joost de Valk. He was an SEO Consultant before launching Yoast SEO.

Yoast SEO comes with almost all the essential features with its free version. There was a time when everyone (Blogger) wanted to install Yoast SEO plugin for their website.

But, currently, there are pretty no. of good SEO plugins available in the online market like RankMath, SEOPress and All In One SEO, etc.

It is one of the most popular plugins for WordPress SEO with over +5 million total active installations till now.

It works on the freemium model. It means, You can try its free version and for more outstanding features you can buy its premium version.

Rank Math SEO Plugin

It is a new WordPress SEO plugin founded in 2019. Rank Math plugin has active installations from 0 to 700,000 sites in less than 2 Years which is very impressive for a new WordPress plugin.

This plugin is built by the team of MyThemeShop which is a well-known brand for wordpress plugins and themes. 

In its initial days, It has only the free version which was enough for a beginner to start a website but recently in 2020, they have introduced their Pro Rank Math plugin which has unique features over Yoast SEO.

Now, Let’s take a deep look at Yoast SEO vs Rank Math SEO.

Rank Math SEO Vs Yoast SEO – An Unbiased Service Review.

1 – Features

Rank Math Plugin

I’m personally using the Rank Math SEO plugin for my website and, it works like a charm. Rank Math provides these fantastic features with its free plan:

  • Set SEO titles/meta descriptions – It is the metadata which is shown to Google. You can create your SEO titles/descriptions for individual pieces of content or build a template for the same.
  • Set social media descriptions – Control text and images for Facebook and Twitter.
  • Focus keyword analysis (supports multiple keywords) – Enter one or more focus keywords and analyze your content to determine how much it is optimized for that keyword (or those keywords).
  • XML sitemap – Build your XML sitemap instead of using the default WordPress sitemap. You can always customize your XML sitemap within the RankMath plugin.
  • Structured data/schema – It is an essential SEO signal and with this feature, you can set up sitewide schema markup and also set up the schema for a single post or page content.
  • Search Console – Connect your site to Google Search Console and then Rank Math will automatically submit sitemaps and notify Google and Bing about the new posts.  You can also view the Search Console data inside your WordPress admin.
  • Local SEO and Knowledge Graph – Optimize your site for local SEO. Note that this is free for only one location.
  • Image SEO – Improve image SEO and automatically set title and alt tags.
  • Breadcrumbs – Add breadcrumbs to the site with just a single code.
  • Link Counter – Count the number of internal and external links in your post or content.
  • Redirections – Create and manage 301 and 302 redirects.
  • 404 Monitor – Monitor your site for 404 errors. You can also redirect 404 errors to other posts/pages on your website.
  • Google Analytics – Add the tracking code within the Rank Math plugin and view Google Analytics details in the WordPress dashboard.
  • Basic WooCommerce SEO – Set up product/shop titles/descriptions.

Paid Version Features

  • Keyword rank tracking – You can track your site’s keyword rankings and performance for the last 12 months, which I think is very unique.
  • Google Trends integration
  • Google Video SEO sitemap
  • Google News SEO sitemap
  • Multiple locations for local SEO
  • More predefined schema types (20+)
  • Google AdSense earning history
  • Automatically watermark social media images

These are the paid features you will get with the RankMath pro version. One thing that I like about RankMath is these features are modular, which means you can enable or disable these features anytime. 

Same applies to Yoast SEO.

Yoast SEO also provides good features and which is why it is still on the top of the best SEO plugins list.

But it is not as feature rich in comparison to the Rank Math SEO plugin.

Yoast SEO Plugin

With over 288 million downloads, Yoast SEO is undoubtedly on top of the best SEO plugins list. However, it provides limited essential features in its free version.

These features are –

  • Set SEO titles/meta descriptions – Set up your SEO titles/descriptions for the individual pieces of content. Alternatively, you can create the SEO title/descriptions by default template. 
  • XML Sitemap – Build your XML sitemap instead of using the default WordPress sitemap. You can also customize your XML sitemap from the Yoast SEO plugin.
  • Focus keyword optimization (only one keyword) – You can optimize your content for one particular main keyword and see how optimized your content is.
  • Sitewide schema – Add sitewide schema markup.
  • Content schema type – Set up a custom schema type for post/page content or you can also set a site-wide default.
  • Search Console – Add your site to Google Search Console.
  • Set social media descriptions – Control text and images for Facebook and Twitter share.
  • Basic WooCommerce SEO – You can do the basic WooCommerce SEO, like setting up the titles/descriptions for products and shop pages.
  • Cornerstone content – Mark important pages as “Cornerstone” to optimize them more and get more internal links to those pages.
  • Breadcrumbs – Add breadcrumbs to your site by pasting the one-line simple code.
  • Link Counter – It will count the internal links in your content.

Paid Version Features

  • Redirect Manager – You can create and manage 301 and 302 redirects.
  • Internal link suggestions – Yoast SEO will auto-suggest the best internal links to the content that you are currently writing or editing.
  • Multiple focus keywords – See the Yoast Optimization tips for more than 1 keyword to make your content more SEO friendly . 
  • Related keyphrases – It will suggest the most relevant key phrases based on data from Semrush (formerly SEMrush).

You can also optimize your content for different types of SEO with paid add-ons. Let’s say, you want to rank on the Google videos or on the Google news, then you can use these paid add-ons to rank higher. 

These local features and add-ons are available in the premium version of the Yoast SEO plugin.

  • Local SEO – Rank your website content for the local SEO. You can add structured data for local businesses and enhance your contact page. It also supports multiple physical locations.
  • Video SEO – You can rank your videos in the Google Videos and add other video SEO enhancements.
  • News SEO – If you are working on a news website then you only need this addon to rank your news article in Google News. Plus, there are many more Google News enhancements.
  • WooCommerce SEO (Advanced) – Get full control over Advance WooCommerce SEO features.

2 – Setup Configuration

User Interface is one of the most important factors for a product’s success. It contributes to user experience. If you’ve got a lot of good features in your plugin but your user interface is very tough to scroll then the audience will ignore your product.

The good news is both Yoast SEO and Rank Math SEO plugins provide quite good and easy to use interface. Even beginners will find it easy to use these plugins efficiently.

Rank Math SEO Plugin

When you install and activate the RankMath Plugin, it automatically redirects you to the setup page. 

You can also optionally link your free Rank Math account to activate some more features. However, please note that a RankMath account is not necessary to use this plugin.

Now to the setup.

As you can see from the image below, the Rank Math setup wizard is quite simple and beginner-friendly.