Rank Math and Yoast: Wordpress SEO Plugins Comparison
For many years, Yoast SEO was the dominating tool for marketers doing SEO for their WordPress websites. While there is a wide choice of WordPress SEO plugins today, only a couple stand out as competition to Yoast. One of them is Rank Math.
Many website owners stay with the Yoast SEO plugin because of its popularity. Are they missing out on important features? WordPress SEO is complex. It’s different for each company. While one can settle for a limited number of options, others need complex functionality.
Let’s take a closer look at Yoast SEO and Rank Math plugins. Which one is right for your business in 2021?
Yoast SEO vs Rank Math: SEO Performance
When comparing Yoast SEO to Rank Math functionality, it’s hard to determine which one of these tools is better. Both of them do an excellent job providing a sufficient variety of SEO functions to improve the chances of your website reaching high spots on the SERPs.
If you decided to count the features, Rank Math can come out as a winner. However, your website is unlikely to need all of them. Meanwhile, both Yoast and Rank Math provide solid basic SEO functionality.
When you dig a little deeper into plugin performance, you may find that Rank Math is nicer to use. Since it was developed much later than Yoast, Rank Math creators studied all the mistakes they found in the former’s performance and tried to eliminate them.
Next to Rank Math, Yoast may seem a little heavy and outdated. The plugin itself is smaller and lighter. It works faster than Yoast, which in the grand scheme of things may not be that noticeable. However, when it comes to SEO every second can make a difference.
Rank Math vs Yoast SEO: User Interface
Many users believe the interface is among the most important part of a plugin’s functionality. Many WordPress plugin users don’t know much about SEO tools. They want clean and clear functionality.
Yoast SEO isn’t 100% straightforward. While it was created with newbies in mind, some features may be hard to take full advantage of without some experience. Even though the user experience is clearly important, Yoast focuses on functionality more than it does on a pretty user interface.
When you use Rank Math plugin, you can notice how much time and thought developers invested in creating a nice easy to use UI. Compared to Yoast, the dashboard is clean and mostly straightforward. Even if a user doesn’t have much experience, they can work with the majority of Rank Math’s functionality.
Some experienced users may also decide to migrate from Yoast SEO to take advantage of the clean interface that Rank Math offers. Overall, Rank Math is completely straightforward while Yoast SEO may need some additional exploring.
Rank Math SEO vs Yoast SEO: Content Optimization
When it comes to content optimization, both Yoast SEO and Rank Math offer similar suggestions. You can see recommendations on paragraph size, the number of headings, focus keyword use, meta description suggestions, etc.
Both plugins use high-quality tools to analyze content. However, it’s worth noting that content requirements for search engine optimization change all the time. Many users note that Yoast SEO tends to give recommendations based on somewhat outdated content requirements.
When it comes to the latest content optimization suggestions, Rank Math is better than Yoast SEO. The developer promises a dynamic change in recommendations based on the latest SEO trends and requirements.
However, it’s worth noting that Yoast SEO developers are also trying hard to implement the latest changes into the plugin. Perhaps, with time these two plugins will offer similar suggestions.
Yoast vs Rank Math: The Setup Process
When it comes to choosing the right SEO tool for WordPress, the setup process is especially important. You want everything to proceed smoothly and within minutes. Setting up both Yoast and Rank Math is fairly simple.
Both plugins give you detailed instructions for setting them up for the first time. The majority of the necessary SEO functions are automated without any interference on the user’s part.
Unlike Yoast, Rank Math went the extra mile to help you set up a variety of extra functions. The setup wizard helps you adjust webmasters, organizational schema markup, “nofollow” external links, and many other features. While these functions are generally important to experienced SEO professionals, newbies may want to set them up immediately and never have to worry about them again.
When using Yoast SEO, you may need to dig a little deeper to adjust all the necessary settings. An inexperienced website owner may not even know where to look to make the necessary changes. However, this makes the Yoast SEO setup quicker and allows users with all experience levels to get to work much faster. When users need to adjust advanced settings, they can always watch a comprehensive tutorial video.
The more sophisticated setup process is hardly the reason to switch to Rank Math. However, it can be an important factor when choosing which plugin to use when setting up a WordPress website.
Yoast vs Rank Math: Features
All WordPress SEO plugins, including Yoast SEO and Rank Math, offer a basic number of features for smooth search engine optimization. However, Rank Math provides a number of additional features, which Yoast SEO doesn’t have. Some of them may push users to switch to Rank Math.
- A special SEO analysis tool
- Redirects
- Error 404 monitoring feature
- Local SEO incorporation
- AMP support
- Missing alt attributes
It’s worth noting that for beginners, Yoast SEO features are sufficient. When it comes to more advanced SEO functionality, website owners may feel as if they need additional options. These users tend to search for other plugins, increasing the number of tools they use for SEO.
Overall, Rank Math’s additional features can help you get to minimize the number of SEO plugins you use for your WordPress website.
Rank Math vs Yoast SEO: Price
Cost is often the deciding factor for website owners who are choosing between the plugins. When comparing Yoast SEO to Rank Math, costs are important to consider.
Rank Math
Today, the basic version of Rank Math is completely free. However, it has limited functionality.
A while ago, a variety of features provided by Rank Math were free. As the plugin started to gain popularity, the difference between paid and free version became significant.
For $59 per year, you can get a highly functional pro version that includes such features as:
Advanced Google Analytics integration
- Keyword rank tracking
- Advanced Schema generator
- Multiple Schemas
- Redirection module
- XML sitemap generator
- Content suggestions
- And more
For $199 per year, Rank Math offers a business version with a wider functionality. It’s suitable for companies and agencies.
Yoast SEO offers a good collection of basic features for free. However, with time, you are likely to need advanced functionality, which comes with a price tag.
Yoast SEO Plugin
When comparing Yoast to Rank Math costs, it’s important to pay attention to Yoast’s free version. It offers such features as:
- Readability checks
- Control of benchmarks
- Duplicate content alerts
- Robots txt editing
- Generate sitemaps
- Google Algorithm updates
- And more
Yoast premium version comes at $89 per year. It has such robust functionality as:
- 24/7 support
- Focus keyword export
- Redirect manager
- Content insights
- Internal linking blocks
- And more
Just like with Rank Math, the free version offered by Yoast SEO is rather limited. Yoast premium version provides an impressive functionality. It’s priced “per website” regardless of its size.
Meanwhile, the pro version offered by the Rank Math plugin limits the keyword number that you can track to 500. With a business version, you can track 10,000 keywords.
Yoast SEO vs Rank Math SEO Plugin: Google Search Console Integration
Integrating the Google Search Console is easy in both plugins. However, Rank Math makes the process extremely smooth. The integration can be a part of the setup. All you need to do is verify the Google account, which will transfer the necessary Search Console information to your SEO WordPress dashboard.
When using Yoast SEO, the integration process is a little more complicated. The user interface doesn’t make it as obvious as in Rank Math.
Yoast SEO plugin vs Rank Math: Updates
When comparing Yoast SEO to RankMath, you can notice that update frequency is drastically different. Rank Math offers updates much more often than Yoast does. Such frequency can mean two things:
Rank Math is a fairly fresh plugin that requires frequent adjustments. In this case, such updates are useful but highly frustrating.
Rank Math is a fast-growing plugin that adds new functionality as often as possible. In this case, Rank Math is a clear update winner.
Either way, both tools provide regular updates that keep the software in top shape so you can optimize your website for search engines.
Yoast vs Rank Math: SEO Checklists
When optimizing your website for search engines, SEO checklists are highly convenient. They show you when and where you may have made mistakes and how to fix them. Whether you are using Rank Math, Yoast, or another plugin, these checklists speed up the SEO process.
While both programs provide highly comprehensive checklists, Yoast is sometimes too demanding with its requirements. For example, it asks to put the focus keyword in the first sentence. While this can be good for SEO, it may be tough not to make it look like keyword stuffing. Of course, you can ignore the recommendations. However, a red alert contributes to the frustration factor.
Both checklists come with certain pros and cons so there is no clear winner.
Yoast or Rank Math: The Takeaway
Both Yoast and Rank Math are high-quality plugins that provide exceptional SEO performance. Yoast is an older program that has millions of loyal followers while Rank Math is a new player on the field.
When you use Yoast, you get a wide free functionality and an impressive paid version. With Rank Math, free functionality is somewhat lacking. Meanwhile, the pro version is solid.
Rank Math has a more aesthetically appealing user interface while Yoast focuses more on functionally than appeal.
Both tools provide excellent content management suggestions and help with different aspects of SEO. To make up your mind, you may want to consider using the free version of each program.