Rank Math vs. Yoast SEO 2023: Why I Switched And You Should Too (And How)

Rank math vs yoast

Deciding between Rank Math vs. Yoast?

I switched from Yoast to Rank Math because it has more features with less bloat. Since then, I’ve upgraded to Rank Math Pro which blows Yoast Premium out of the water. The schema alone is worth it (review, FAQ, video, and HowTo schema for the win). But I’ll get into that later. What you need to know is Rank Math free is better than Yoast free, and Rank Math Pro is also better than Yoast Premium. It was rated the #1 WordPress SEO plugin in most Facebook polls.

Rank Math’s setup wizard made it super easy to migrate all Yoast’s SEO data (including redirects) to Rank Math, without having to worry about a drop in rankings. Once complete, I was able to delete multiple plugins since Rank Math includes redirects, image SEO, and schema.

Rank Math doesn’t have an affiliate program at the moment, so there is nothing to gain by saying one is better than the other. But when it comes to Rank Math vs. Yoast, Rank Math is better because it has more features with less bloat. Go here if you’re ready to make the switch.

Rank Math may have compatibility issues with Oxygen Builder, so if you’re using that, I recommend checking out SEOPress.

 

1. Why I Switched To Rank Math

I switched from Yoast SEO Premium to Rank Math in early 2020 because:

  • Yoast is bloated – it was one of the slowest loading plugins on my website (you can check your slowest plugins using the Query Monitor plugin or New Relic).
  • Yoast has too many ads – you had to install the Hide SEO Bloat plugin to remove the incredible amount of advertisements Yoast adds inside your WP dashboard.
  • Yoast didn’t have a great way to add schema – beyond HowTo and FAQ schema, I don’t believe Yoast let you add other schema types (reviews, recipes, etc). I personally found schema in Yoast confusing, so I used another schema plugin.
  • Yoast didn’t add alt text to images – you had to install an image SEO plugin or add alt attributes manually every single time you added an image to a page/post.
  • Yoast made you pay for a redirect manager – considering how many free redirect plugins there are, it’s amazing something so simple wasn’t included.
  • Yoast Premium wasn’t worth $89/year – the premium features don’t even improve SEO. Instead, it gives you things like content insights and internal link suggestions which any knowledgable SEO person wouldn’t have to use anyway. The support from Yoast was rumored to do little in terms of personalized help.

 

2. Rank Math vs Yoast – Features

Rank Math has more features than Yoast and Yoast SEO Premium.

Most key features are highlighted in my Yoast vs. Rank Math comparison, but here’s the full table if you want an in-depth look at how each one’s features stack up. Rank Math has incorporated a few extra features not even included with Yoast SEO Premium like automatic image alt attributes, more advanced schema markup, better analytics, and of course, less bloat.

Rank-math-vs-yoast-features

Just like Yoast, Rank Math is module-based where you can enable/disable individual features.

Rank-math-modules

 

3. Rank Math vs Yoast – Speed

Yoast has become bloated.

When I ran New Relic and Query Monitor to find slow plugins, Yoast was one of the slowest.

At the time of writing this, Yoast has 87.2k lines of codes while Rank Math has 51.3k, and Rank Math’s plugin zip size is about 3 times smaller. Since I blog about WordPress speed, having lightweight plugins is super important to me and one of the main reasons I decided to switch.

Rank-math-vs-yoast-speed

Yoast’s ads are also pretty intrusive.

You have to install a separate Hide SEO Bloat plugin to remove Yoast ads which is a little ridiculous. Otherwise, Yoast SEO bombards you with advertisements across the dashboard.

Slow wordpress plugins

 

4. Rank Math vs Yoast – Schema

Schema is a big reason to use Rank Math.

They have 18 different schema types including review, FAQ, video, recipe, and course schema. They automatically add schema when you use a video, reducing work when optimizing content.

To add schema using Rank Math, edit a page and scroll down to the Rank Math section. You will see a schema section which includes automatically added schema (e.g. article, video, etc) as well as an option to create your own schema markup. Select your schema data, fill out the required data, and wait for Google to show the schema in search results. No extra schema plugin needed.

Rank-math-schema

 

5. Rank Math vs Yoast – Image SEO

Rank Math automatically adds alt attributes to images.

This is a huge time saver because WordPress core stopped adding alt text automatically and you were forced to use a separate image SEO plugin (or add all image alt attributes manually).

With Rank Math, you can use filenames for image alt attributes. So as long as you’re labeling images before uploading them to WordPress, the filename will also be used as the alt attribute.

This means less work adding alt text manually and one less plugin on your site.

Rank-math-image-seo

 

6. Rank Math vs Yoast – Analytics

Rank Math’s Pro version includes analytics pulled from Google Search Console.

These include red and green arrows to show whether a post’s metrics have increased (or decreased) over time. Google Search Console doesn’t come with these nifty arrows, nor does it have a position chart for showing a glimpse of your content’s ranking history. Rank Math makes it very easy to see whether your content has been doing better (or worse) over a period of time.

On the down side, Rank Math’s analytics add more code to your site.

Rank-math-search-analytics-keywords

 

7. Rank Math vs Yoast – Redirect Manager

You have to buy Yoast SEO Premium to get a redirect manager, but it’s free with Rank Math.

In fact, when you import Yoast data to Rank Math (when switching plugins), Rank Math gives you the option to import your redirects into their plugin. Again, less plugins on your site. And just like Yoast Premium, Rank Math can automatically create a redirect when you change URLs.

Rank-math-auto-post-redirect

 

8. Rank Math vs Yoast – Social Media Optimization

Both Rank Math and Yoast let you optimize content for social media, but many people don’t do this and I want to make sure you do.

In a nutshell, when your content is shared on social media, this makes it so the image formats properly (although you can also customize the title/description for specific social networks).

To do this, edit a post and scroll down to the Yoast or Rank Math section, then click the “social” tab. This lets you upload a custom graphic for Facebook (1200 x 630px) and Twitter (1024 x 1014) pixels. Now, when someone shares that post on Facebook or Twitter, it will look nicer.

Rank-math-social-media-optimization

 

9. Rank Math vs Yoast – Google Autocomplete Suggestions

When entering a focus keyword in Rank Math, it gives you keyword suggestions directly from Google Autocomplete.

It’s a small feature, but it saves time from having to do this manually. More importantly, it probably saves noobs from blindly selecting keywords. It also enforces that Google Autocomplete is still one of the best places to find keywords (and is also what I use to this day).

Rank-math-google-autocomplete-keyword-suggestions

 

10. Rank Math vs Yoast – Content Analysis

Rank Math and Yoast have a similar content analysis.

But there’s one key difference: Rank Math recommends using a table of contents. I still can’t believe how many bloggers write these 3,000+ word articles and don’t use a table of contents.

Get on it!

I had my designer create a few background colors in CSS and provide me with the HTML I add on every post (which you can find on GitHub). On top of improved user navigation, this lets people link to specific sections in the post which can also help you get jump-to links in Google.

Be careful with table of contents plugins since many don’t let you use named anchors.

Rank-math-content-analysis

 

11. Rank Math vs Yoast – Multiple Focus Keywords

Like Yoast Premium, Rank Math lets you set multiple focus keywords.

But, here’s a big disclaimer: it’s not always good (nor possible) to optimize for multiple keywords. You may find yourself injecting keywords and making content look spammy. Instead, try to sprinkle bits (key, individual words) of each phrase into the most important places in your content. Make sure each keyword is directly relevant (often a synonym) of your main keyword.

This is exactly why I don’t use this feature. Most of my secondary keywords include dates (e.g. Yoast vs. Rank Math 2020) where I simply include the current year in my SEO title + post title.

Multiple-keywords

 

12. Rank Math vs. Yoast – Facebook Polls

I collected a poll/conversation on Rank Math vs. Yoast and the winner isn’t surprising.

The Rank Math SEO Plugin Facebook Group is super helpful.

Their community managers are very responsive and you can ask them anything. I would go as far to say that Facebook Group is much more helpful than the support you get with Yoast Premium, which I’ve heard they give you canned answers and refer you to blogs on Yoast’s site.

Rank Math is usually the #1 SEO plugin in Facebook polls (click thumbnails to enlarge). The only exception is SEOPress since Rank Math can have compatibility issues with Oxygen Builder.

Yoast-seo-vs-rank-math-poll

 

13. Rank Math vs Yoast SEO Premium

Yoast (and Yoast Premium) have too many unnecessary features.

I personally think the readability analysis, internal linking suggestions, or even their support isn’t worth it even including in the plugin. The readability analysis and internal link suggestions are for people who probably don’t know SEO in the first place. Most of us don’t need a plugin to tell us to use internal links, let alone grade us on how well we write. A plugin just can’t do this.

 

14. Green Lights Don’t Matter (Much)

I personally don’t use Yoast or Rank Math’s content analysis.

If you know anything about SEO, you know to include your keyword in SEO title, meta description, URL, post title, and a couple times in the content body. You know to write a catchy SEO title, snippet character limits, and to write in-depth content with nice graphics and videos.

Sometimes, my SEO title doesn’t need a number or power word. Sometimes, my sentences are longer than they should be. It’s OK. Most recommendations have good intentions and can help, but there are many instances where it’s not completely necessary to get all lights 100% green.

Green lights don’t always mean higher rankings.

 

15. Switching From Yoast To Rank Math

Just do it, you’ll be happy you did.

I was initially worried about changing SEO plugins since about 90% of my traffic is from Google and I was afraid something would go wrong. But Rank Math’s setup wizard couldn’t have made the process easier and everything went very smoothly.

Step 1: Download Rank Math From Plugins Menu Or Their Website

Rank-math-seo-plugin

Step 2: Sign Up For Rank Math And Connect Your Account

Connect-rank-math-account

Step 3: Begin The Rank Math Start Wizard

Rank-math-start-wizard

Step 4: Import Data From Yoast (And Redirections If Needed)

Import-yoast-settings-to-rank-math

Step 5: Configure The Settings (See My Full Rank Math Setting Tutorial)

Rank math links settings

Step 6: Delete Yoast

Step 7: Find Tune Your Rank Math Settings

  • Enable modules you would like to use
  • Check your breadcrumbs
  • Fill out social profiles (social meta)

This is the video tutorial I used to import Yoast to Rank Math:

 

Still Have Questions? Leave A Comment.

If you still have doubts on whether Rank Math vs. Yoast is better, or you have questions about configuration, leave me a comment and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can. I hope this helped!

Cheers,
Tom

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39 Comments...

  1. I have an e-commerce website selling similar products made by several different manufacturers. Therefore I have inventory items (each in a range of sizes) with the manufacturer’s name in the focus keyword that often results in lengthy keywords. Product descriptions are usually 3-5 lines long. No external/internal links, table of contents, etc. Yoast has been acting up on my website and much of its content analysis doesn’t apply to my particular situation. So I thought to try Rankmath. Seems to be much of the same.

    Reply
    • Hey David, I would love to use SEO Framework especially since unlike Rank Math, I don’t think it uses jQuery (Rank Math is the only plugin on my site that uses jQuery and would love to get rid of it). I would be using SEO Framework if it supported HowTo schema which I use in a lot of my articles. Last time I checked though, it doesn’t :/

      Reply
  2. Not impressed at all!
    1. Been writing sites since 1994, WP since 2006.
    2. Install RankMath, and the first thin I notice is that I can’t remove old Yoast data, yes I followed the directions. Finally used phpMyAdmin to acccomplish this after support was no help.
    3. Next thing I notice is that on the import from Yoast, RankMath failed to import my “Keyword Phrases” so I have over 7,600 articles with out a Keyword. Roll back site to a week ago, and start ALL OVER again. This time it gathers the words.
    4. When trying to add a new redirect, after adding all the data, the page goes blank, and the redirect isn’t added. I have to go back to access the admin area.
    5. I was told to recreate tables….no help there.
    6. Joined, or should I say tried to join the private FB group 3 days ago. PENDING.
    7. As far as I am concerned this product is fraudulent with its advertising and I will be asking PayPal to reverse the charge, which I am sure they will.

    Reply
  3. Hey Tom,

    I have used many SEO plugin like YOAST, AISEO etc but Rank Math did really awesome job. It has everything at free of cost which you will get in paid version of other SEO plgin.

    Thanks for amazing content,

    Reply

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