Rank Math is a recently launched WordPress SEO plugin. It works better than Yoast free version and comes with all its premium features for free.
But should you switch to Rank Math from Yoast?
It also has some features not seen in Yoast such as Schema support and 404 monitors.
Do note that I use Yoast premium here and I’ll compare both wherever I find something similar between them.
Rank Math is developed by people behind MyThemeShop a popular WordPress theme and plugin shop. In this article, I’ll show you all of Rank Math’s benefits and how the plugin works on a live site.
Here are some of its very amazing SEO features:
- SEO analysis
- WooCommerce SEO
- XML sitemaps
- OpenGraph mark-up
- 404 monitor
- AMP and local SEO
- Google search console Integration
- External/Internal Link Counter
- Redirection and role manager
- keyword optimization for 5 different keywords
- Rich snippets
- Breadcrumb navigation – Similar to Yoast, you can add breadcrumbs using Rank Math in any WordPress theme
It also comes with a setup wizard when you install it for the first time. Much similar to Yoast configuration wizard, but also allows you to configure advanced SEO settings like robots.txt file creation.
As soon as I came to know about Rank Math, I started to test it on my staging site. Let me show you different settings and modules from inside the plugin in this review.
Interlink Suggestions
Internal links are significant for SEO. To help you interlink relevant content throughout your content, Rank Math will suggest you few articles from your blog every time you write a new blog post. This is a feature that was only available in Yoast premium and SEOPressor till now.
You can insert the suggested links by simply clicking on the anchor button that appears inside your editor section once you write at least 200 words.
If you’re using Link Whisper plugin, you won’t use it that much but still, it is a great feature to have for beginners.
Advanced SEO Meta (Inside Editor)
You can toggle advanced SEO settings for each individual posts by switching to an advanced SEO meta box below the WordPress post editor. It is compatible with both Gutenberg and classic TinyMCE editor.
The advanced settings include:
- No index
- No archive
- Nofollow
- No snippet
- No image index
- and canonical URL etc.
Rich Snippet Support
Schema helps Google and other search engines better understand your content.
Rank Math will also help you add rich snippet schema without a need for another plugin. You can handle and change rich snippets settings for individual posts as well.
Social Optimization
It also allows you to optimize each blog post for Facebook and Twitter. You can set different titles and meta descriptions for Facebook and Twitter as well as different featured images for both.
It also adds necessary OpenGraph data for Twitter as well as Facebook.
Readability Analysis
Readability of your content is essential and helps you rank higher if you optimize it. Rank Math also checks for readability issues in your content.
In the WordPress editor, it shows you a detailed readability analysis while suggesting improvements so that your content is easy to read.
Sitewide SEO Analysis
This is one of my favorite features of Rank Math, the sitewide SEO analysis.
If you run this analysis and have some errors in your SEO setup, the plugin will show you a report of what’s right and wrong. It will give a score out of 100.
Below each error, it will show you how to fix the error and improve your overall SEO score.
Below are some up-coming features of Rank Math:
Google Search Console Central Integration
This feature is in progress and will be released soon. Rank Math allows you to see all your search console data, including keywords you are ranking for, search impressions, etc. right from the plugin dashboard itself.
It’s a quick way to check your posts’ rank. I’ll update this post as soon as this feature releases.
Keyword Comparison and Trends Tool
It will soon have an inbuilt keyword comparison and trends tool. Rank Math integrates with Google trends and shows you the data right in your plugin dashboard and will also help you automatically compare two keywords.
It also displays a graph for the keywords to help you compare different keyword’s popularity.
Update 2019: There’s a new update in Rank Math which adds features like:
- A re-worked framework, the team says it makes the plugin faster
- bbPress gets its own module for forum SEO
- Automated article and blogPosting schema (hope to see FAQ schema soon)
- There are plans to bring a premium version of Rank Math too.
Pros
Rank Math is a solid SEO plugin. It makes WordPress SEO friendly the moment you set it up. It is easy to understand, looks clean and loads up quickly. So the code of the Rank Math plugin is clean and optimized.
Here are some of Rank Math’s pros:
- Intuitive user interface – It’s easier to get around compared to Yoast and All in One SEO.
- Quick SEO setup – Comes with a quick setup guide to implement important SEO factors.
- The keyword comparison tool eliminates the hassle of using multiple tools to find keywords.
- FAQ by Rank Math add-on allows you to add Schema for Google FAQ SERP snippets.
- Site Audit inside the WordPress dashboard helps you to quickly find weak SEO implementations and errors.
- Features that Yoast offers after charging a Premium, are free in Rank Math. For instance, automatic redirections.
- Support is very good, quick to respond.
- And it’s completely free
Cons
- Migrating to Yoast SEO isn’t easy – no native option to do so
- AMP SEO isn’t as extensive, plus the integration with AMP for WP isn’t smooth.
- Conflicts with other plugins due to being relatively new.
- The free plugin business modal is bound to not sustain, so shifting towards premium plans is inevitable. When that happens, the plugin will lose its USP (Unique selling proposition).
Review Conclusion
I do believe Rank Math has potential. And it is getting wildly popular.
But Yoast is the best SEO plugin out there, and it has been there for the last 9 years. Yoast is an ever-growing plugin. They have constantly been innovating their back-end as well as the front end to keep up with evolving SEO updates.
Rank Math also has some features that are identical to Squirrly, which makes it a better alternative for the Squirrly SEO plugin.
If you have a new blog, you can install Rank Math straightaway.
Even if you have a reasonably old blog, you can swiftly use it as it comes using import function to help you import all SEO settings from all popular SEO plugins automatically.
However, if you wish to go back to Yoast, you won’t be able to do that so easily since there is no straightforward option to move setting back to Yoast.
You can try the Rank Math plugin by downloading it from here.
Do share your opinion on Rank Math in the comments section below.
I tested Both plugins and i can see Rank math is easy to setup, make things easy to newbie, by how quickly setup his own blog.
In the other hand what i don’t like in Yoast every time i open my dashboard there is an update for it and even and there is no a complete documentation for it.
If you want a good setting you need to buy their service. and even i think yoast developer’s they don’t understand how google work by using the old method by focus on meta (title + description and focus keyword). and keyword ratio.
Now we need something follow google update and advice us how we can setting a good article or page structure and gain google trust.
This is just my view about the both plugins
Regards
Badr
That is a detailed guide. Rank Math is really a killer when compared to Yoast & more over it’s free. Most of the premium features offered by Yoast SEO is available for free in Rank Math. Easy to setup & Good user interface. Been using Rank Math from past 6 months. Really liked it over other SEO plugins.
Indeed it is @Appu