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Rank Math vs Yoast: Which WordPress SEO Plugin is the Best?

Lisa Sicard
rank math vs yoast SEO plugins

When it comes to WordPress SEO plugins, there’s no shortage of options, as many tools do the job well.

However, the two that stand out with ease are Rank Math and Yoast.

Both SEO plugins offer powerful features and comprehensive solutions for optimizing your website for search engines.

But how do you know which one is right for you?

This article gives a detailed Rank Math vs Yoast comparison to help you choose the one that best suits your needs and amplifies your SEO efforts.

What is Yoast SEO?

Yoast is a comprehensive SEO plugin that offers extensive features for optimizing your content for search engines. Its range of tools and features makes it easy for you to improve your on-page SEO and enhance your website’s visibility.

Founded in 2010, Yoast has earned its place as the most popular and go-to SEO plugin for website owners. A clear testament to this is its over 13 million users worldwide, which is far higher than what any other SEO plugin can boast of.

Here are some of the key features of Yoast SEO:

Content Analysis

Yoast enables you to analyze your content, ensuring it’s structured to perform well on search engines. It provides information on what you need to add to your content before hitting publish.

With Yoast’s content analysis tool, you can get recommendations on internal links, word count, keyphrase length, image optimization, meta description, and more.

It also provides information on the readability of your content. Here, you’ll learn the volume of transition words in your content, your passive word usage, subheading distribution, and even the reading ease.

XML Sitemap Generation

Automatic XML sitemap generation is one of Yoast’s core features. Whenever you add or remove content from your website, Yoast automatically updates your sitemap and notifies the search engines of the changes made.

The good thing about this feature is that Yoast allows you to choose which content type should be added to your sitemap, enabling you to determine which pages of your website get crawled and which ones don’t.

Snippet Preview

Yoast provides a preview of how your content will appear in search engine results, allowing you to optimize your meta titles and descriptions for better click-through rates.

With this feature, you can create short, persuasive titles and meta descriptions that capture the attention of your readers at a glance.

Canonical URLs

The Yoast plugin helps you set canonical URLs to avoid duplicate issues on your website. It ensures the search engines understand your preferred duplicate page versions and show them more to your audience.

Redirect Manager

If you’re using Yoast premium, the Redirect Manager is one of the key features you’d enjoy on the SEO plugin.

It enables you to easily set up and manage 301 redirects for outdated and broken URLs. Without the redirect manager, your website visitors risk landing on 404 pages, which can lead to poor user experiences.

Internal Linking Suggestions

Yoast Premium comes with a feature that provides internal linking suggestions. This is essential for helping you direct your website visitors to your most relevant pages and for improving your site structure.

What is Rank Math?

Rank Math is an alternative to Yoast that was introduced in 2018. Like Yoast, Rank Math provides tools and features to improve your on-page SEO and boost your website visibility in search engine results pages.

Here are some of the key features of Rank Math:

Content Analysis

Rank Math enables you to analyze your content for keyword usage, readability, meta tags, and more. This feature provides actionable data to optimize your content for better visibility and lead generation on search engines.

I love how detailed Rank Math is with content analysis. Once you upload your content, Rank Math runs it through 20 different tests, providing suggestions for improvement.

XML Sitemap Generation

Sitemap generation on Rank Math is the same as on Yoast.

Once you make changes to your website, adding or removing content, Rank Math automatically generates a new XML sitemap to help search engines crawl and index your website efficiently.

Redirection Manager

Rank Math provides a redirection manager feature that allows you to set up and manage 301 and 302 redirects for your website’s URLs.

404 Monitor

Broken link monitoring is one of Rank Math’s core features. It monitors your website for 404 errors and provides tools to manage and fix them effectively.

Rich Snippets

Rank Math allows you to add structured data markup (Schema.org) to your content, which can enhance your search listings with rich snippets like star ratings, breadcrumbs, and more.

Integration with Google Services

Rank Math integrates with Google Search Console and Google Analytics, allowing you to view important metrics and data directly within your WordPress dashboard.

Rank Math vs Yoast: Summary Comparison

Rank Math and Yoast are both powerful SEO plugins for optimizing your content for search engines. They provide essential features like content analysis, sitemap generation, redirection management, rich snippets, and more.

Yoast has been around much longer than Rank Math and is obviously more popular among WordPress users. However, Rank Math offers many more features and is attracting many WordPress users who want to achieve more with their SEO efforts.

Both tools offer free forever versions and free trials in their premium versions. Rank Math’s pricing starts at $59 per year, while Yoast costs $99 per year.

Here’s a table that summarizes the Rank Math vs Yoast comparison:

FeaturesRank MathYoast
Content scoring systemColor coding + percentage scoringColor-coding only
On-page analysisProvides detailed content reportProvides detailed content report
Content readabilityBasic readability reportExtensive readability report
IntegrationsIntegrates with essential WordPress pluginsIntegrates with essential WordPress plugins
Ease of useIntuitive and easy-to-use interfaceBeginner-friendly interface
Customer supportEmail, contact forms, and phoneEmail, contact forms, and phone
Pricing$59 per year (free personal websites)$199 per year for business (100 websites)$499 per year for agencies (500 websites)$99 per year$229 per year (bundle of 5 websites)
Free trialYes Yes
Free forever planYes Yes

Rank Math vs Yoast: Detailed Comparison

Here’s a detailed comparison of Rank Math and Yoast SEO to help you choose which is best for your SEO needs:

On-Page SEO Analysis: Rank Math vs Yoast

On-page SEO analysis is the core functionality to look for in an SEO plugin. Both Rank Math and Yoast SEO offer these functions.

On-page SEO analysis on Rank Math is in-depth, as the plugin offers real-time suggestions and checks for optimizing key elements like keyword usage, meta tags, headings, content length, internal linking, etc.

Once you upload your content on WordPress, Rank Math analyzes it and gives you a score from 0 to 100, which comes along with some color coding. Your score determines the color you get, which indicates the level of optimization done on the web page.

For example, you get red for scores between 50 and below, orange for scores between 51 and 79, and green for 80 and above.

This is slightly different from how Yoast handles on-page SEO analysis. While Yoast offers the same features as Rank Math, enabling you to optimize for your keyword, check content length, add meta tags, etc., it doesn’t provide a percentage score for your optimization process.

Yoast provides insights into your optimization progress with a color-coding system. Red shows poor optimization, orange shows “okay,” and green means you have good optimization.

To green up your content on both platforms, you have to add a focus keyword, internal links, external links, slug, images, and meta description.

Rank Math vs Yoast on On-Page SEO: Tie

The major difference between doing on-page SEO on Rank Math and Yoast is their content scoring system. While Rank Math uses color and percentage to score your content optimization level, Yoast uses only colors. 

Content Readability: Rank Math vs Yoast

Both Yoast and Rank Math offer features to help you determine how readable your content is to your audience.

Rank Math’s content readability feature is basic, as it evaluates only your usage of headings and subheadings, short paragraphs, images, and videos. It focuses mainly on giving your readers breathers to enable them to read even long articles with less effort.

Yoast, on the other hand, provides a much more robust content readability feature. In fact, it has a separate content analysis feature that scores your content using the same color-coding system.

With Yoast SEO, you can analyze your content for the following:

I love this Yoast feature because it enables me to structure my content for any audience. Many readers will leave your page if they find your content difficult to read. 

Rank Math vs Yoast on content readability: Yoast

Yoast is the clear winner here as it provides you with more features to analyze the readability of your content. I love that it provides an extensive transition words analysis, stating the percentage of transition words your content should contain based on its length.

Keyword Optimization

Any efficient SEO plugin should provide you with features to optimize your content for a particular keyword. Rank Math and Yoast do this effectively.

While this is part of on-page SEO, we’d analyze separately how Rank Math and Yoast handle keyword optimization.

Rank Math enables you to optimize your content for up to five keywords. If you sign up for the pro version, you can do more.

It also gives you insights on the right places to add your keywords for maximum optimization. For example, it notifies you to add your focus keyword to your SEO title, meta description, URL, subheadings, etc.

With Rank Math, you get the keyword density of your article, which tells whether your keyword and related phrases are well distributed throughout the article. The plugin also identifies the importance of image optimization by notifying you to add an image with your focus keyword as alt text.

Keyword optimization with Yoast is as extensive as it is on Rank Math. However, you can only optimize for one keyword per page unless you’re on Yoast premium, in which case you can optimize for more.

Yoast notifies you to add keywords to your introduction, SEO title, meta description, and subheading. It also notifies you if you’ve used a keyword before, which helps you avoid keyword cannibalization.

Like Rank Math, Yoast also shows you the density of the keywords in your content and advises you to increase or decrease them accordingly.

Rank Math vs Yoast on Keyword Optimization: Tie

Both plugins provide you with the same features to optimize your content with your chosen keyword.   

Integration with other Tools

Both Rank Math and Yoast SEO integrate with other tools to give you a wonderful experience. Here are the tools they integrate with:

Rank Math Integrations

Yoast SEO Integrations

Rank Math vs Yoast on Integrations: Tie

Both Rank Math and Yoast offer almost the same integrations. They allow you to integrate with Google services, WooCommerce, and other applications or plugins that use WordPress’s codex.

Free and Premium Features: Rank Math vs Yoast

Here are lists of the free and premium features on Rank Math and Yoast:

Rank Math Free Features

Rank Math Premium Features

Yoast Free Features

Yoast Premium Features

AI Features of Rank Math vs Yoast

Both Rank Math and Yoast offer powerful artificial intelligence (AI) features to help you better optimize your content for SEO.

Rank Math’s Content AI tool is packed with over 40 AI features to help you elevate your content creation, optimize SEO, and do lots more with ease.

There are AI features for almost everything, including:

Yoast, on the other hand, provides powerful AI features for writing SEO-friendly titles and meta descriptions. With Yoast AI, you can create powerful and attention-grabbing titles and meta descriptions that drive your audience to your site within seconds.

Rank Math vs Yoast on AI Features: Rank Math

Rank Math is the easy winner here. While Yoast provides AI features for writing SEO titles and meta descriptions, Rank Math provides more, including features for generating blog post ideas and writing full blog posts.

User Interface and Ease of Use: Rank Math vs Yoast

Both Rank Math and Yoast offer intuitive user interfaces you’ll find fascinating when navigating their platforms.

Rank Math offers a modern and clean interface that enables you to turn specific features on or off according to your needs. Turning more features on than you need might clutter the interface and make it difficult to find essential things.

I love that Rank Math offers a comprehensive setup wizard that guides you through setting up your plugin and choosing the essential features and settings you need to get started.

Though Rank Math offers many features, the platform is easy to use, especially for those with some experience using SEO tools or plugins.

Yoast SEO is popular for its user-friendly and straightforward interface. Many WordPress users started off with Yoast, and its simple and clear dashboard makes it easy for them to choose it for their SEO needs.

The Yoast dashboard presents a clear overview of your SEO tasks and notifications, making it easy for you to access key features and settings.

I love how easy it is to set up the Yoast plugin on your WordPress website. The setup wizard assists users in configuring basic SEO settings, connecting to Google services, and setting up social profiles.

The color-coded feedback system (red, orange, and green) for SEO and readability analysis makes it easy to understand what needs improvement in your content.

Rank Math vs Yoast on User Interface and Ease of Use: Yoast

Yoast is more beginner-friendly than Rank Math. This is mainly because of its straightforward setup, familiar interface, and clear, color-coded feedback system.

While Rank Math provides a robust dashboard and interface, it can be quite overwhelming for beginners who might not know what to do with the extras, as the essential features cut it for them.

Customer Support

Though they’re easy-to-use platforms, Rank Math and Yoast offer support services should you need help setting up or navigating the tool.

Rank Math provides comprehensive documentation, video tutorials, and a support forum. It also provides priority support via email, contact forms, and phone to its premium users.

This is the same with Yoast SEO. It offers extensive documentation, tutorials, and a large user community for support. You’ll also get priority support when you subscribe to Yoast Premium.

Rank Math vs Yoast on Customer Support: Tie

Judging by the services they offer, Rank Math and Yoast are on par with their customer support services. However, in my opinion, Rank Math responds more quickly to questions via email than Yoast.

Rank Math vs Yoast: Pricing

Both Rank Math and Yoast offer freemium and premium services to their users. Rank Math, however, offers you more features for free than Yoast.

Here is the breakdown of their pricing plans.

Rank Math Pricing

Rank Math offers four pricing plans:

Free: This is Rank Math’s free forever plan. It gives you access to

Pro: Costs $6.99 per month and gives you access to track 1,000 keywords and work on unlimited personal websites.

Business: Costs $20.99 per month and gives you access to track 20,000 keywords and to work on 100 client websites.

Agency: Costs $49.99 per month and gives you access to track 50,000 keywords and to work on 500 client websites.

Yoast SEO Pricing

Yoast offers two types of pricing plans to its users.

The core premium plugin: This costs $99 per year for use on a single website. It also offers discounts if you’re seeking to use the plugin on multiple websites. Here’s a breakdown of the discounts:

Bundle of five plugins: This costs $299 per year for access to the Yoast core premium plugin and these five specific plugins:

Rank Math vs Yoast: Pros and Cons

Here are the advantages and disadvantages of Rank Math and Yoast for your SEO needs:

Rank Math Pros

Rank Math Cons

Yoast Pros

Yoast Cons

Final Verdict: Rank Math vs Yoast SEO Plugin

Both Yoast and Rank Math are excellent options for WordPress SEO plugins. Each offers a unique set of features and benefits, depending on your needs.

While both are great choices in terms of quality and performance, ultimately, it comes down to personal preference and budget constraints when deciding which plugin works best for you.

If you are just getting started, then Yoast might be the better choice because it offers more beginner-friendly features while still giving experienced users enough options to customize their site’s optimization strategy.

However, suppose you want more advanced control over optimizing your site. In that case, Rank Math might be the better choice due to its granular control capabilities and lack of bloatware options found in some other plugins, like Yoast.

In either case, both plugins offer powerful tools that can help increase your visibility in SERPs. In the comments below, I’d love to hear which SEO plugin you prefer and why.

Frequently Asked Questions on Rank Math vs Yoast SEO Comparison

Is Rank Math Better Than Yoast SEO?

Rank Math provides more features than Yoast SEO, but both tools provide the essential features you need in an SEO plugin.

Therefore, the argument about which is better, Yoast or Rank Math depends on your needs. If you need a simple tool that does the basics well, Yoast is ideal. However, if you want the extras, Rank Math will be the better tool for you.

Is Rank Math good for SEO?

Yes, Rank Math is good for SEO. It provides the essential features you need to optimize your content for increased visibility on search engines.

Is Yoast still the best?

While Yoast remains the most popular SEO plugin, it currently competes at the same level as Rank Math for the best tool.

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