SEO optimisation can be overwhelming if you don’t know the right tools and plugins to help you through the process. What’s even more perplexing is choosing the right plugin from the sea of options. If you are stuck in a similar face-off between two popular wordpress plugins – Rank Math and Yoast SEO, here is your chance to make up your mind, scanning through their prominent features and differences.
Both are wordpress plugins that help users optimise their posts to improve their website rankings. Yoast SEO has been in the game for a while, whereas Rank Math joined the league much later (in 2018, to be precise). Both offer reasonable support features to help users easily navigate through them. Whether you are a beginner or an advanced-level seo expert, you’ll find many useful features in both plugins that can simplify your SEO tasks. Plus, if you wish to upgrade your toolkit, you can always seek an entry to their paid users list.
Coming back to the point, let’s get to their detailed comparison and see which plugin best suits your business needs. See for yourself and choose the tool that fulfils your SEO requirements.
Here we go!
Table of Contents
Introduction
Rank Math:
Rank Math is a relatively new plugin and gained significant popularity in a short period. Among the most prominent features that are only available in Rank Math is AI to help you write content. Whereas, with reference to this, there’s no such feature provided by Yoast SEO.
In Rank Math, you’ll find both free and paid versions to serve your diverse SEO requirements. As you dive into the plugin, you’ll find the features from predefined schema designs to Complete Divi Integration in the free version, other than having the option to explore three categories (Pro, Business, Agency) in the paid version.
Yoast SEO
Yoast SEO’s inception dates back to 2010 when Joost De Valk invented the plugin to automate SEO tasks. It eventually occupied the top spot among other SEO plugins and stood as one of the most popular SEO plugins. Experts and writers prefer using its optimisation features to align their writing with the accepted SEO standards.
Offering superior SEO services for quite some time, Yoast has started with its own All online SEO training courses while extending its users the advantage of learning its functionality from easy tutorial videos. It further offered great assistance in the line of SEO services by providing Local, News and WooCommerce SEO for its users to remain ahead of the competition. In short, it won’t be an overstatement to say that it remained an uncontested winner until Rank Math announced its launch.
Wondering whether Yoast SEO could sustain its spot or if Rank Math superseded it with its bombasting entry! Keep reading, and you’d know!
Setup
Rank Math:
To start with the basic configuration, Rank Math offers a setup wizard to help you with basic features, including XML sitemap, basic schema data, and integrations to Google Analytics and Google Search Console.
If you wish to activate the advanced features of the plugin, you are required to link your Rank Math account to bring its full functionality into play. The advanced settings would enable you to gain complete editing control with features like 404 error and Role Manager.
Yoast SEO
Yoast SEO also provides a setup wizard that you can open directly from the WordPress Dashboard. Making the setup much simpler and crisp, Yoast SEO offers demo videos for users to navigate the features and functionalities much more easily.
You are given the option to activate and deactivate features like XML sitemaps and Readability analysis to suit your preference. The wizard is set to take you from basic queries like ‘Site Type’ to more advanced queries like ‘Site Indexing’ over the progression with the plugin.
User-Friendliness
Rank Math:
In general, Rank Math is quite easy to operate. Even if you are a beginner and came to explore the given features, you won’t face problems navigating through its sections.
The settings in Rank Math are displayed in four tabs, i.e. General, Advanced, Schema and Social. General settings give away the option of editing the snippet details or setting a focus keyword. In the Advanced tab, you’d find the option like configuring the robot’s meta information. The Schema tab is meant to generate schema markups, while the Social tab displays the visual information for Facebook and Twitter.
Overall, Rank Math’s user-friendly interface walks the user through the various features and functionalities with much ease and convenience.
Yoast SEO
Being the oldest player, Yoast SEO has been serving its audience quite well. Even after so many years, its layout hasn’t changed a bit which can go either way. For some, it can be a turn-off, while for the ones finding comfort in its convenient settings, it can be the greatest advantage of not having to adapt to the new layout.
Other than that, Yoast SEO offers two setup options. It comes with a meta-box for both classic and block editors. However, the sidebar option is only functional for the block editors and helps get the preview on Google, Facebook, and Twitter. The sidebar option lists all the SEO options in one place, whereas the meta-box comes in four tabs – SEO, readability, Schema and Social.
Although the option choice is completely up to your preference, using meta-box becomes a little more comfortable once you make it your preferred option.
Free Features
Rank Math:
Among the free features of Rank Math, you get – Complete Elementor, Divi and Google Search Console Integration. Here, you’ll find direct access to Advanced >SEO Analysis Tool with a one-click import facility from Yoast SEO, AIO SEO and SEOPress.
Making SEO tasks more crisp and effective, Rank Math offers Link Counters, a 404 error Manager, and a Redirect Manager while allowing you to search for more than one location. Apart from that, you get advanced WooCommerce SEO features and watermark the social media images automatically.
To have an in-depth analysis of the free and pro-version of Rank Math, you could visit the official page.
Yoast SEO
Yoast SEO delivers SEO templates, XMP sitemaps and Social Media Descriptions in its free version. Besides this, it provides a separate readability analysis that scans the content for certain checkpoints and makes it easier for the user to turn it into SEO-optimised content for digital portals.
You also get to incorporate the breadcrumbs into your website in the accessible version of Yoast SEO. Find the internal links to your post and have Google Search Console Integration. The prominent free feature lacking in Rank Math is the Cornerstone Content, where you get a hold of the important website pages.
Premium Features
Rank Math:
Among the premium features offered in Rank Math is the integration of Advanced Google Analytics & Search Console, which you’ll only find in this plugin.
You’ll find the option to exclude logged-in users in GA (Google Analytics) tracking while getting an option to enable the cookieless GA tracking. While you enjoy your stay on the premium list, you can have a keyword ranker and advanced schema generator to easily have your search query clean and orderly.
For a detailed list of premium features, you may visit the official page and get a hold of what you ought to get in the premium version of Rank Math.
Yoast SEO
For the premium category of Yoast SEO, you’ll have an ad-free experience and get an internal linking facility. It further offers paid add-ons for Local and News SEO. Supporting multiple locations, Yoast SEO lists your videos on Google Videos and also provides the support of automated redirection of your broken pages.
From Redirect Manager to multiple keyword analysis (extending to five keywords), there’s a list of advantages that you can get from the premium version of Yoast SEO. To get the complete list of features, visit the official page.
Keyword Analysis
Rank Math:
Yoast SEO
Yoast SEO offers a single keyword analysis in its free version. To analyse more keywords, you must get the premium version which would enable you to analyse multiple keywords.
The keyword report presentation is very much like Rank Math, where you’ll get the colour representation of keywords to compare and pick the best of all. Along with this, you’ll get a content analysis and readability score.
Pricing
Rank Math:
Rank Math offers three annual payment plans of $59 (Pro), $199 (Business) and $499 (Agency) in its catalogue.
In Pro, you can track 500 keywords, unlimited personal websites, a powerful schema generator, 24/7 support etc. In the Business plan, the benefits are further extended where it supports 100 client websites while tracking 10,000 keywords, a powerful scheme generator and 24/7 support all year long. In the Agency plan, you are given the support of 500 client websites where you can track 50,000 keywords and have a powerful schema generator.
Yoast SEO
A pro-version is available at the price of $99 per year, where you can get features like optimising your website for the right keywords, getting previews for sharing it on Facebook and Twitter, avoiding dead links in your website and so on.
Conclusion
Now that you’ve seen a clear comparison- studying clear differences, there’s no hurdle left in you choosing the best plugin for your specific business needs.
Known for their optimal performance in SEO, both Rank Math and Yoast SEO serve SEO objectives quite effectively. On diving deeper into your website’s requirements, you’d know the exact automation plugin your website requires.
Being the latest addition in the trail of plugins, Rank Math brings in many free features you’d otherwise find paid in Yoast SEO. The Rank Math’s free features include – Multiple Keyword Analysis, 404 error Manager, Redirect Manager, Internal Link Suggestion, Local and Image SEO etc.
Also, based on the seniority and number of users, Yoast SEO is still gaining the lead and remains a popular pick among the users – enjoying the status of being numero uno among the other plugins.
All in all, both are pretty decent plugins as far as their performance and features are concerned. Still, if you are looking for a free plugin that is feature-rich and offers some of the most unique features like writing SEO-optimised content using AI along with integrations to GA and search console, then certainly Rank Math is the one you need to pick based on the extensive features it offers, and that too, in the mostly free category.
