If you are having a hard time looking for the best WordPress SEO plugins to optimize WP SEO, you can pick one of them in our list here. However, another problem comes, you might have another struggling to choose between 2 plugins in that list: Rank Math vs Yoast SEO. Well, Yoast SEO is absolutely famous and it has been the oldest one from the beginning of WP. However, Rank Math is rapidly growing in popularity now with various options even Rank Math is a newbie.
So, what to do now? Worry no more. We’re glad to inform you that we are going to highlight some features and how they compare to save your treasure time and easily decide which one meets your needs.
Let’s go!
Rank Math vs Yoast SEO – Introduction
Yoast SEO
Yoast SEO was officially launched in 2010 by Joost de Valk and became one of the most powerful plugins all the time with the mission that it is SEO for everyone. With millions of users, this plugin surely helped them have good rankings in search engines. Especially, Yoast SEO is always the first name to be called when someone asks what plugin to use for SEO.
Yoast SEO comes with 2 kinds of versions: Free and paid. The free version basically includes everything to manage your SEO. The premium version gives you a bunch of options such as content insights, internal linking suggestions, seamless integration of Yoast SEO in Elementor, etc.
Rank Math
Unlike Yoast SEO, Rank Math is new which was established in 2018 by MyThemeShop. But, it is rapidly spreading in popularity by their intelligent features. This plugin comes with the “smart automation features” that let you have all powers as an SEO expert by few clicks only. Also, Rank Math is integrated Google Schema Markup aka Rich Snippets, LSI Keyword Tool and Google Search Console , helping you optimize your contents easily and get highest site rankings
With free, pro and business versions, you can make decisions on which version meets your needs. From the pro version, you can “track 500 keywords” and unlimited personal websites and much more.
Both of these plugins are excellent for SEO. Still, there are some differences between them. Let’s check out with us!
Top features to compare: Rank Math vs Yoast SEO
Keyword analysis
Every SEO plugin should have a focus keyword function and Rank Math – Yoast SEO does it well. To add the keyword(s), you just enter the target keyword(s) in the keyword box and the plugin definitely analyses your content and gives you suggestions for changing to better optimization.
Yoast SEO
If you are using the free version, it only allows you to enter one keyword for each post. But, if you upgrade to the premium one, you can enter multiple keywords. You can check the “SEO analysis” suggestions at the below of the content part in the editor sidebar.
Yoast SEO comes with 3 traffic light bullets: Green color means good, yellow color means ok and the red color means bad. Sadly, they do not have an exact numeric rating for you to monitor.
Rank Math
Different from Yoast SEO, Rank Math lets you analyze up to 5 keywords in one post. Moreover, you can go with unlimited keywords just by using a filter. Rank Math only shows the analysis tips in the sidebar of the block editor.
Rank Math has the specific score from 0-100 together with some color-coding. If a score above 80, it is the most optimal which is good.
Content optimization
Rank Math and Yoast SEO has the “readability” function and Rank Math has more options: Title readability and content readability. Both plugins provide real-time guidelines on how to improve your posts.
Yoast SEO
In Yoast SEO readability part, you also see 3 colors and it turns green light if your writing reads well. If not, it suggests you want to improve. Especially, Yoast SEO has the “eye” icon which will help you to highlight sentences with purple color that need to be tweaked. They will check your passive voice if you wrote more than 10% which is considered not good or recommend using more transition words and much more.
Rank Math
Rank Math provides the similar content readability guidelines. But, they are more about the overall SEO score than a separate analysis.
Ease of use
Rank Math vs Yoast SEO give you interactive wizards that will guide you step by step. Both are good but we would recommend Yoast SEO as it is easy to use.
Yoast SEO
As a result, you can easily set up and run Yoast SEO by the configuration wizard. This wizard takes you through all the necessary settings like SEO title templates, the schema data and the indexing.
Furthermore, the Yoast SEO dashboard is the traditional one which surely is familiar with all loyal users. It has suggestions that are easy to follow if your site has any issues.
Rank Math
Unlike Yoast SEO, Rank Math is a little bit of a hassle. It required you to do a 4 steps configuration process after installing and activating.
However, Rank Math is a newbie so that’s why it comes with a modern interface. There are 2 options: Easy and advanced. Easy mode is for beginners and advanced mode is good for higher levers such as SEO specialists.
Other features
For basic optimization, not only Rank Math but also Yoast SEO has all the important features such as XML sitemaps, post preview, social media optimization, schema markup and much more
Nonetheless, Rank Math gives you more features for free. For example, you can only use the internal linking suggestions and the find & add high-performing keywords in premium Yoast SEO. And, Rank Math lets you access advanced keyword analytics or preview social media shares for free.
Also, Rank Math develops the keyword rank tracker feature which is great to monitor the rankings but Yoast SEO has not had this.
If you want to see the highest and lowest ranking postes, to use a powerful schema generator, google trends integration, client management dashboard, advance redirects, local SEO pro, etc, then Rank Math includes all of these.
Conclusion
Overall, 2 SEO plugins: Rank Math vs Yoast SEO are powerful plugins. Rank Math has a lot of features especially with the free version. And if you like to focus on content analysis, Yoast SEO is considered the number 1 plugin. We hope you enjoyed reading this article and had an idea which one you like.
Read More: Top 5 WordPress tools for SEO optimizing