Marco Diversi WordPress Rank Math VS Yoast SEO Which One Is Better

Rank Math VS Yoast SEO Which One Is Better

Rank Math VS Yoast SEO Which One Is Better post thumbnail image

Rank Math is a new SEO plugin for WordPress and it’s probably the best solution and alternative to Yoast SEO.

SEO is one of the most important aspects when trying to have an online business and a website.

If you have a website made on WordPress you might know already that the first plugin you should install is Yoast SEO.

I have absolutely nothing against Yoast SEO.

I am not even sure that Rank Math SEO is actually better but I have decided to make the switch on a lot of my sites from Yoast SEO to Rank Math.

 

This month for me was full of big changes! Click To Tweet

 

I have completely stopped to use Google Chrome and now I am using the Brave browser. You can use it as well if you want too and read this review about brave.

 

DOWNLOAD BRAVE IT’S AWESOME

 

While I am sure that the Brave browser is way better than Google Chrome, I am not 100% sure that Rank Math SEO is better than Yoast SEO.

On this article, I am going to tell you why I have decided to take the leap and install Rank Math!

You will know all the top Rank Math VS Yoast SEO Pros and Cons.

 

 

Rank Math VS Yoast SEO

 

Rank Math is a new WordPress SEO plugin developed by MyThemeShop a company based in India.

Meanwhile, Yoast SEO is the most famous WordPress SEO plugin made in the Netherlands.

In my experience, I have signed up a while ago to some newsletters from MyThemeShop and it all looked pretty spammy.

Also, the fact that these guys are based in India for me it’s a warning sign.

I am not saying that Indians are bad people, but I know how they work and most of the time they are just trying to copy, steal, and spam with less effort.

This was the main reason why I was skeptical to install Rank Math on my sites.

Also, I was very confused and worried about losing all the SEO configurations I have made with Yoast and other plugins.

Card

 

Then, one day, and more precisely the 5th of April 2019 after reading a lot of buzz on Reddit, Facebook, and Product Hunt I decided to install it on one of my sites.

 

It didn't take me very long before I have decided to install it also on other 5 sites of mine. Click To Tweet

 

All my Indian prejudices and bad stuff I have read about this plugin almost vanishes.

I like a lot their interface and the huge amount of additional features you can get for free compared to Yoast.

I have also seen bad comments saying that Rank Math is selling your traffic data to advertisers. This might be true but it can be true also for other plugins.

 

Also, I haven't seen any traffic drop or raise yet, but it all looks a little better now. Click To Tweet

 

How To Install Rank Math

If you have a nice website or a blog on WordPress chances are that you have Yoast SEO installed.

You can easily install Rank Math SEO with one simple click searching for Rank Math in your plugin area or you can download it and upload it from the button below.

 

DOWNLOAD RANKMATH

 

Then you will be prompted to the installation wizard.

The Rank Math setup is very simple, you can toggle off and on all the stuff that you want or not.

Something you need to understand is that once you click the ‘start wizard’ button you will let Rank Math configure your site.

It will pull out all your configs, keywords, etc… from Yoast and also from other plugins like Redirection and All In One Schema Rich Snippets plugin and many others.

Yoast and all the unnecessary plugins will be automatically deactivated, you don’t have to worry about them.

Installing Rank Math automatically deactivated 4 plugins for me:

  • Redirection.
  • Schema All In One Schema Rich Snippets.
  • Glue for Yoast SEO & AMP.
  • Yoast SEO.

Having fewer plugins installed on your website is proven to be a good thing.

Plugins are slowing down your site and loading your server, the fewer you have the better it is.

 

Rank Math Features Versus Yoast SEO

The Rank Math dashboard is pretty cool, as you can see you will have a lot more features and they can be reached from the homepage.

 

rank math dashboard

 

The Yoast SEO dashboard is more simple and you will need to go to the left side menu to find all the additional features.

 

yoast seo dashboard

 

On Yoast SEO you can see from the top right the premium features:

  • related keyphrases.
  • a real-time suggestion of internal links.
  • 404 monitoring.

meanwhile, with Rank Math, you will get all of this free.

Something that I don’t know yet if it’s bad or not but I don’t think so, is that Rank Math has access to a lot more data compared to Yoast.

As you can see from the screenshot below, these are the permission requests to your Google account respectively from Rank Math SEO and Yoast SEO.

 

rank math google access

yoast seo google access

 

The main reason why Rank Math needs access to more stuff is that you will have a feature that connects to the Google Console.

You will be able to see data from your Google Analytics and console directly from WordPress.

Also, I assume that they will sell your stats and data anonymously to advertisers so that they can maintain the plugin free.

There are a lot of rumors about this, no one wants their data sold!

But according to the Rank Math developers and my experience, there is almost no one that doesn’t sell your data once you have an account.

 

List Of All The Best Features Of Rank Math Compared To Yoast SEO

 

rank math vs yoast comparison

 

General Settings

Under general settings with Rank Math, you can find a lot of features such as:

  • links features. (open external links in a new window, and a lot more).
  • images. (add ALT text to pictures that are missing it).
  • Breadcrumbs.
  • Webmaster Tools. (to verify your site with search engines).
  • robots.txt editor.
  • .htaccess editor.
  • 404 monitoring settings.
  • redirections settings.
  • search console access.
  • extra settings.

 

rank math general settings

 

In this section, you will be able to toggle off and on and customize a lot of general settings.

This is a little more advanced, and if you are a newbie with SEO you might get scared.

My advice is to Google each of the stuff listed on the settings here and then adjusting the settings according to your needs.

On Yoast instead, you will be able to control how your website will be shown to search engines, and play with the options for:

  • general.
  • content types.
  • media.
  • taxonomies.
  • archives.
  • breadcrumbs.
  • RSS.

 

yoast general settings

 

This is definitely easier to use and less overwhelming but with fewer features for sure.

Here you can adjust settings like ‘I don’t want my tags to show up on the search results‘ and stuff like that.

 

Titles And Metas

This section of Rank Math is similar to the search appearance section of Yoast but with way more features.

You can use the left menu and adjust a lot of settings. Some of them are basic settings some others are advanced.

  • Global Meta: will allow you to adjust the default settings. These can be changed for each individual post or page individually from the post editor.
  • Local SEO: you can switch from person to organization.
  • Social Meta: will allow you to connect your social networks and even your Facebook apps if you have some.
  • Homepage: is a very important tab and you should read all the settings.
  • Author Tab: this is very useful, sometimes we don’t need the authors to show up on the SERP. Check out the settings there.
  • Misc Pages: this tab is one of the best tabs of the plugin. I have adjusted the settings of this accordingly to my sites needs. Personally, I am noindexing all the stuff at the bottom of these settings such as ‘Noindex Date Archives‘, ‘Noindex Search Results’, etc… I don’t want to add stuff on the SERP that is not needed.
  • Post, Pages, Media: here you can adjust all the SEO settings for your posts, pages, and media. Make sure you understand each line and that you put good stuff in it.
  • Category, Tags: these two sections are very important as well! I personally noindex both, and you can do that by checking the checkbox. Make sure that you take them off your site map as well. I will talk about this later. If you feel that your tags and categories are adding value to your site leave them on.

 

titles and metas

 

On Yoast, all of this is in the previous section. Still, Yoast is way easier to use for a newbie but with fewer features and settings.

 

Sitemap Settings

Both RankMath and Yoast will generate a sitemap for your site. If you don’t know what is a sitemap you can read this.

You will have a lot of options and a pretty tidy interface with Rank Math.

You can pick a lot of settings and creating an awesome sitemap for free.

 

sitemap settings

 

If you want to exclude categories and tags or whatever else stuff you want to exclude you can do it like shown in the picture below.

 

disable categories sitemap

 

This is how it looks like a sitemap with RankMath!

 

rank math sitemap

 

And this is how it looks like a sitemap on Yoast SEO.

 

yoast seo sitemap

 

Role Manager

If you have a lot of subscribers, editors, authors working on your site you can assign specific access to each of them.

This requires an additional plugin in order to achieve that, but with Rank Math, it will be included in it.

You can remove subscribers or authors to have access to a specific section of your site if you want too.

 

role manager

 

This feature is not available on Yoast not even with the premium plan.

 

404 Monitor And Redirections

404 pages are not the best thing for SEO!

When crawlers see them they don’t get extremely happy.

It is not a big deal but this feature is only available with Yoast SEO premium, meanwhile, on Rank Math, it’s free.

From this section of the plugin, you will be able to monitor all the 404 errors on your sites.

You can then redirect the errors to the appropriate page or remove the page from your site if it’s an irrelevant page.

 

404 monitor

 

Creating powerful redirects and monitoring all of your sites 404 errors is very easy with this feature and you would need to pay to have it with Yoast.

 

Search Console

Rank Math is asking for more access to your Google AdSense, Google Analytics and console but it also generates detailed reports you can see from your site.

From the overview tab, you can see an overview of all the keywords ranking on the SERP.

If you click on search analytics a lot of precious data available only from the search console will show up there.

 

search console

 

Yoast has a similar feature but mainly it’s used to connect your Google accounts to it and to check if all works properly on mobile and desktop.

If you want to have more features you will need to pay and I’m not sure that you will have so much stuff like on RankMath.

 

search console yoast

 

If you are worried about the data you give for free to Rank Math you should not worry too much.

All the plugins you install are selling data to advertisers in order to be able to pay the expenses that they have.

Yoast is a great plugin but you can not trust them as well since the last bug mentioned in this article for instance.

They have some sort of access at your console as well even though it’s a lot less compared to Rank Math.

 

SEO Analysis

This is a feature that can come in handy.

Although it is not super accurate and not very good, it still gives nice tips on how and where to fix some on page SEO problems on your site.

You don’t have this on Yoast but it’s not a big deal according to me.

If you are looking for an awesome site audit software, as always you can try for free SEMrush now.

 

MAKE A FREE ACCOUNT WITH SEMRUSH NOW

 

SEMrush is very similar to a god to me and it’s one of the only tools you need to have in order to make money online.

You can use it for free with limited access, so make a free account now.

 

seo site analyzer

 

Import & Export And Support

Both Yoast and RankMath are offering import and export settings features but Rank Math is way more powerful.

You can even create backups of your settings and import settings directly from other plugins with one click.

Rank Math offers 24/7 support for free meanwhile Yoast does offer a 24/7 support as well but only for paying members.

After all of this you might ask stuff like:

Why the hell Rank Math is so powerful and free then?

The answer to that is still partially unknown to me! But what I can tell you is this:

Rank Math is based in India, they have smaller development costs and a team of experts since many years in the themes niche.

They can probably afford to make all of this for free and pay the expensive thanks to the themes business that they have already and selling data to advertisers.

Meanwhile, Yoast is in the Netherlands, they are only producing one single plugin and they might have higher costs to maintain all their empire.

Yoast SEO has an open GitHub community where you can look at all the code of the plugin.

Meanwhile, the GitHub from Rank Math is hidden still and not available to everyone.

 

Rank Math Post Editor

Writing posts is one of the most important section of WordPress.

You will need to write content on your sites to get it ranked and then being able to monetize your traffic.

If you are wondering how the post editor looks like with Rank Math, here I have some pictures and some remarks.

 

Something I like more on Yoast is that it’s harder to turn the checkmarks green.

 

Rank Math is lacking with readability scores and I don’t really like that as soon as you satisfy the conditions listed, the checkmarks turn immediately green.

If you put 10 words in your articles scrambled the right way you will be able to score 100 out of 100 which is unreal.

I really think that you need to have used Yoast SEO before and then once you get used to it you will reach the same results here on Rank Math.

I have contacted the developers about that and they told me that the checkmarks here are just a list to follow so that you can be sure that you have followed the main rules of SEO.

But this is not going to give a precise score of how good you are doing it.

 

rankmath post editor

 

Something absolutely bomb on Rank Math is that you can add up to 5 focus keywords in it.

This is a premium feature you will get with Yoast premium that is free on Rank Math.

On top of that, once you type in a keyword you will get free instant results from the Google keyword planner as shown in the picture below.

This is absolutely radical tho!

 

google keywords real time suggestions

 

Something bomb as well on Rank Math is that they have a beautiful looking and perfectly working rich snippets feature.

Markup code and rich snippets are going to tell exactly search engines what is all about your content.

If you make a review or talk about software or a movie you need to tell engines that. You can do it with this feature.

I was using an additional plugin to do this before, now with Rank Math, I got rid of that plugin and I have it for free with even more rich snippets types available on it.

 

rich snippet by default

 

The advanced section will allow you to manage redirects and other advanced stuff.

The social tab instead will allow you to create awesome og: tags for your social networks.

This comes very in handy since social network traffic nowadays is very important.

 

social customize

 

Rank Math Pricing VS Yoast SEO Pricing

Rank Math doesn’t even have an upgrade plan button. It comes free and it will be always free.

I have heard that they might add some premium stuff in the near future. But this stuff can be stuff like courses or not plugin related stuff.

I am pretty confident that they can make this free forever.

 

If you like me like free stuff you should install it just for that. #free Click To Tweet

 

You are not going to sacrifice anything but you will just get more features.

If you are interested to upgrade your Yoast SEO subscription here are the Yoast SEO premium pricing.

 

yoast seo pricing

 

$89 a year per site it’s not very cheap, I think.

Yoast has been o the SEO WordPress market for more than a decade, there is probably not a lot to complain about them, and their plugin is awesome.

If you are not a newbie and you know how SEO works a bit, Rank Math it definitely gives a better service for free.

Rank Math Pros And Cons

rank math 1

Pros

Pros
  • easy setup
  • completely free
  • yoast seo premium features for free
  • better user interface
  • schema rich snippets
  • internal linking suggestion
  • auto add additional metadata
  • google keyword suggestions
  • 5 focus keywords can be added
  • advanced redirections
  • 404 monitoring
  • local seo settings
  • social seo settings
  • lightweight plugin
  • awesome settings and features to discover

rank math 2

Cons

Cons
  • it asks a lot of permission to your google account
  • readability score is less powerful
  • the post editor is less powerful
  • certain .htaccess redirects are still buggy
  • the communities are too good to be true
  • reviews and articles about it might be pumped
  • they have access at too much data from your site

Yoast SEO Pros And Cons

rank math 1

Pros

Pros
  • a lot of experience behind their team
  • the plugin does the job perfectly
  • good readability score
  • awesome seo score
  • very easy to use
  • not a lot of features but powerful
  • a lot of integrations
  • powerful features with a pro version
  • millions of users using it
  • not a lot of data are handled from them

rank math 2

Cons

Cons
  • a lot fewer features compared to rank math
  • it costs money to get the premium version
  • support only available for premium members
  • not a lot of features
  • certain things are buggy as well
  • hard to do advanced stuff with it

 

semrush analytics

 

 

Conclusions

I hope that by now you know what is Rank Math!

If you didn’t have time to read the whole article, Rank Math is a super powerful and new SEO plugin that is going to give a hard time to Yoast SEO.

On this Rank Math SEO plugin review, I have tried to compare all the Pros and Cons of this plugin to Yoast SEO.

 

DOWNLOAD IT FOR FREE

 

Both plugins are awesome!

But for some reasons and because of my 6th sense, something is telling me that Rank Math is a bit better and also free.

The Rank Math setup is super easy and you will be able to play with advanced SEO features completely for free.

They have great support and definitely more stuff compared to Yoast.

I am not in the measure to say if this will boost your rankings, but I am sure that it looks better and at least for what I can see there are more interesting features compared to Yoast SEO and completely for free.

If you own more than one website you should install it in your less import site! Then figure out if you like it and if you feel like is a good replacement to Yoast install it also on your big sites.

There is absolutely no need to replace Yoast, but new stuff comes all the time in the world and it looks like that Rank Math SEO plugin has it all.

What’s better between Rank Math and Yoast?

I think that Rank Math is better because there are more features and a cutting edge interface and it’s 100% free.

Hopefully, I am not going to lose all my traffic soon, if this will happen I will remove this article for sure.

 

START USING SEMRUSH FOR FREE AND BE THE KING

 

For now, I am pretty happy and I have switched almost all of my sites to Rank Math.

 

If you liked this article please give me a tweet now, I hope that this will boost your rankings, traffic, and money in your wallet. Click To Tweet

 

marco diversi eagle

What You Will Learn On This Blog! 

Stay tuned and subscribe to my blog so you will get notifications on new posts. I will slowly break down these topics:

  1. SEO(Search Engine Optimization).
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  3. Free and Paid traffic hacks.
  4. Coding and WordPress
  5. Make money with a computer and an internet connection even while you sleep.

Follow me on social media, you’ve got all the links on the right bottom side of this blog, also comment and contact me if you need help.

Here are my top resources I always use to become a great affiliate, take a look here!

Do you want to be a free man or woman? Jump in the crew then!

Much Love and Peace Out,

Marco Diversi.

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8 thoughts on “Rank Math VS Yoast SEO Which One Is Better”

  1. Okay, at least I know this post still exist. That means Rank Math is doing a great job for your site.

    I give you another cons for Rank Math. The Flesh Readability only support english. Doesn’t support other language including all major asian languages.

    I have several site which is not using english. The Readability score is horrible, even minus lol.
    I hope they update it for next time.

     
  2. Marco,
    Did I understand this correctly?
    With Yoast you get a free cup of tea, but you have to pay for the cup and the hot water.
    The RankMath model is one in which you get everything for free, but you give up the one thing that is king, your data.
    Neither one is as bad as MonsterInsights which is a combination of both, you pay nothing, they give nothing, but they get access to your analytics.
    I got the sense that your an affiliate mercenary, long before I read your bio. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t begrudge how you make your living, only that I can’t seem to find a single post about anything that isn’t tainted with affiliate manure.
    Thanks for the insight.

     
    1. Hello, I am not 100% sure but I think that Rank Math is a little bit more powerful, they have also recently added the google API feature which is great.

      They are not collecting data on their servers but they said they will soon but, you can just disable that option from your dashboard and allow them to see absolutely nothing.

      You will not get insights then etc…

      There are no affiliate links on this post for instance so I am less of an affiliate mercenary now maybe!

       
  3. Thanks for this information. I have been using yoast for a long time now, can I change it and use rank math without it affecting my search engine rankings?

     
  4. Thanks for the review. I’m considering of switching to Rank Math. Do you still like the plugin and could you maybe share some data of the SEO results you’ve made?

     
    1. Hello, since I am using it nothing changed in terms of traffic and SEO in general, but there are more features on Rank Math and the Google index API feature is great.

      Also, it looks a bit better than Yoast and it’s free, that’s it!

       

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