Choosing a WordPress SEO plugin, especially between Yoast and Rank Math, can be tricky. It isn’t easy for beginners to pick between them because they pretty much work the same way. However, before choosing one of them, there are a few factors you should consider. If we talk about Yoast SEO, it has been in the market for a long time with almost around 5 million active installations.
This plugin has established a solid user base as many creators use and trust it worldwide. Yoast SEO is unquestionably the best plugin available in the market. In comparison, Rank Math is new in the market, but we have seen users liking it and reviewing it as a trusted plugin. However, its features are gaining popularity in the SEO market as it attracts so many users already.
In such a scenario, users can get confused between both plugins. Therefore, we will compare both top SEO plugins in this article to help you make the best decision based on facts and figures, so if you’re looking for the answer of why you should use Yoast or Rank Math, this is the right place. So let’s Start!
How Does an SEO Plugin Improve a WordPress Website?
The primary goal of SEO plugins is to optimize the content for different search engines, including Google, Bing, and others, to be ranked better than your competitors, also called On-Page SEO. The SEO plugins are not sufficient to keep the overall SEO approach. However, these plugins help content creators with basic guidelines while creating the website content. These plugins also work even if you have install WordPress on your computer .The core things that these plugins help through are titles, keyword density, meta description, readability, length of the content, use of key phrases, and many other areas. You can create robots.txt and sitemap.xml through these plugins, automate your WordPress SEO and get your site among top-ranked searches.
Yoast SEO Plugin
Right now, the most downloaded and considerably the best WordPress plugin is Yoast SEO. It has helped millions of users in search engine optimization using the advanced features available for content creators. Yoast plugin was launched in 2008, and since then, it has been the most trusted and helping SEO plugin for users worldwide.It has everything that ensures to satisfy the users coming to the website and the search engines.
There are highly professional and expert developers, testers, SEO experts, and architects who regularly improve the plugin for a better user experience.
The Yoast SEO plugin is a reliable option for business owners, bloggers, content creators, developers, and SEO experts. This dedicated plugin keeps the website in its top form and generates high traffic.
Take a look at some core Yoast SEO plugin features.
Features of Yoast
- Snippet preview for desktop and mobile
- Detailed SEO analysis
- Readability analysis
- Advanced XML sitemaps functionality
- Control over site’s breadcrumbs
- An indexable feature introduced from version 14.0
- Authoritative URL to avoid duplicate content
Following are the features provided in the premium Yoast subscription
- Social previews
- Optimization for synonyms and related keyphrases
- Auto internal linking hints
- Tools for focused keywords and many other essential features
Yoast SEO Plugin – Pros and Cons
The Yoast SEO plugin is popular because of the flexibility it offers for your content creation.
Pros
- You can easily set up the titles, meta descriptions, and other social media sharing info for different pages.
- The most important thing about the Yoast SEO plugin is that it is beginner-friendly.
- To help beginners using Yoast, the developers have hidden advanced options, allowing you to turn on the custom fields manually.
Cons
- The Yoast SEO and readability suggestions for you stuffing the keywords sometimes disregard the LSI importance. In that scenario, as a beginner, I take suggestions as only suggestions.
Rank Math Plugin
Rank Math is a relatively new plugin but a fantastic option for WordPress SEO. It works better than the accessible version of Yoast as it comes with its premium features for free. Well, should you choose Rank Math over Yoast?
You can see some features in Rank Maths that are not seen in Yoast, including Schema support and 404 monitors.
Features of Rank Math SEO Plugin
- Simple and Easy User Interface
- Easy to Follow Setup
- Lightweight (Code optimized)
- Excellent Support
- Modular Framework
- OpenGraph mark-up
- Bulk Edit Titles and Descriptions of All Content
- Rich Snippets
- XML sitemaps
- Woocommerce SEO
- 404 monitor
Rank Math SEO Plugin – Pros and Cons
Rank Math is a handy SEO plugin, and as you set it up, it makes WordPress SEO friendly. The plugin is easy to understand, simple and loads up immediately. It is because of the clean and optimized Rank Math plugin code.
Pros
- An intuitive user interface.
- Quick SEO setup
- The keyword comparison tool
- FAQ by plugin add-on that enables you to add Schema for google SERP snippets
- Site audit
- Premium features offered in Yoast are free in Rank Math.
Cons
- The absence of a native option for migrating to Yoast SEO, having conflicts with other plugins as it is new.
- The free plugin business model is bound not to sustain, making the premium plan shifting necessary. In that case, it will lose its unique selling proposition, known as USP.
Now, it’s time to compare some core things that might help you make a better decision based on your needs.
Setup Configuration – Yoast vs. Rank Maths
We are going to compare the setup configuration of each plugin. The first impression of software is the setting up, and it makes a considerable difference indeed.
Yoast SEO
Yoast SEO plugin setup provides eight steps: setting up the basic settings like site type, organization type, search engine visibility, authors options, title setting, etc. Also, you can see the embedded video guide that can be helpful, especially for beginners during the setup process.
Rank Math
Rank Math setup, on the other hand, is straightforward in design. There is a five steps installation wizard after the initial installation of Rank Math. A user can create an account using Google, Facebook, or email. Then you will name the site, search console details, sitemap configuration, optimization, and confirm the setting. You can go for more advanced settings after you finance the initial stages.
So, I think both SEO plugins offer a great user experience. However, Rank Math offers extra options, including search console, sitemap, and optimization, that can help automate some SEO tasks, i.e., external links no-follow and redirecting pages.
User Interface – Yoast vs. Rank Math
The fact is, the user interface is one of the essential parts of any software. The more the clean and straightforward interface, the more it attracts the users and increases the value. We are going to compare or discuss the user interface for both plugins.
Yoast SEO Plugin
The Yoast UI is not as appealing because it focuses more on functionality. The plugin provides you with everything that is well organized and defines categories. A beginner can easily understand what’s happening and perform specific tasks using this neat but straightforward user interface.
Rank Math
The UI of Rank Math is pretty clean, allowing you ease in turning on and off available features. All features are explained inside the box with their status. Compared to Yoast UI, Rank Math has a more visually engaging user interface that looks stylish and improves the user experience with attractive and well-organized features.
I think the Rank Math user interface is easier to use; on the other hand, Yoast also has no difficulty setting.
Performance Comparison – Yoast vs. Rank Math
Performance is not sure for these plugins because it is a technical term, but Rank Math claims and is reviewed positively for its lightweight, fast, efficient, and optimized coding. Compared to Rank Math, the 14.0 version release of the Yoast SEO plugin comes with an advanced feature, ‘indexable.’ This feature allows Yoast SEO to index pages. It enhances the performance of the site and makes it work even faster.
Pricing – Yoast vs. Rank Math
If we look at the pricing of these top SEO plugins, the Rank Math is free. Whereas the Yoast SEO plugin is not entirely free; you have to pay to access some premium features. You can easily enjoy the features for free at Rank Math before it offers the premium version.
Conclusion
You can see there are no significant differences in both plugins. So, it could be hard to suggest a particular plugin that meets your needs. However, I like Rank Math as it is easy to use, but your goals might not be the same as mine. Rank Math is new, whereas Yoast SEO has been in the market for a long time and is trusted by millions of users.
If you’re already using the Yoast SEO premium, you better not switch to Rank Math. However, you can try both plugins for free and then decide based on your personal experiences.
