Confused between Rank Math and Yoast SEO?
In this article, I’ll help you with a detailed Rank Math vs. Yoast SEO comparison and help you choose the best of the two.
We will discuss features, and differences between free and paid versions of both the SEO plugins and discuss long-term stability as a factor too.
Quick Navigation
- Why Should You Use a WordPress SEO Plugin?
- Yoast SEO vs. Rank Math: Detailed Comparison
- Performance
- Tool Setup
- Focus Keywords
- Rich Snippet
- NoFollow Link Control
- Image SEO Settings
- Data Import
- 404 Monitor & Redirections
- Redirection
- Google Search Console
- Content Analysis
- SEO Audit Tool
- Role Manager for Multi-Author Blogs
- Support
- Social Previews
- Rank Math Pro vs Yoast Pro
- Rank Math vs. Yoast SEO (Stability)
- Rank Math vs. Yoast SEO: Final Takeaway
Why Should You Use a WordPress SEO Plugin?
SEO plugins help search engines identify your schema, detect FAQ sections, know your page’s meta description, etc.
Other than that, an SEO plugin like Yoast or Rank Math, or all-in-one SEO help you check your content’s readability scores, keyword density, and social media optimization, and overall act as a yardstick to help you optimize your content for SEO.
However, in this article, we will compare Rank Math & Yoast, two of the most popular SEO plugins, and see what to choose.
Related Reading:
- Essential things to do after WordPress installation (Don’t miss these!)
- Blog post checklist: Things to do before hitting that publish button
What is Yoast?
Yoast SEO is the OG of SEO plugins. It is used by over 13 million websites and is very popular amongst users helping them optimize their content for users and search engines.
Yoast SEO is various other paid offerings that help in different tasks like the Yoast SEO Pro, video SEO plugin, Woocommerce SEO plugin, and Yoast SEO for Shopify to name a few.
What is Rank Math?
Rank Math is relatively newer but has nearly amassed 1.7 million users (despite being a couple of days younger). It promises more SEO functionality (than Yoast SEO) and yet comes with fewer lines of code (meaning less bloat and faster page loading time).
Rank Math offers two versions, the free version has more than enough features for regular users, and the paid version extends the functionality with features like Google Analytics integration, keyword rank tracker, and advanced schema generator, to name a few.
Important: Add Me to Search: Learn to create your People Card on Google
Rank Math vs. Yoast SEO: Detailed Comparison (2023)
1. Rank Math vs. Yoast SEO: Performance
Both Rank Math & Yoast SEO have almost identical features; however, Yoast eats up more space on your WordPress site.
Rank Math has 30k lines of code which are far more efficient than 43k lines of Yoast SEO. With optimized and efficient coding, Rank Math sends fewer PHP requests, the size of the plugin is fairly less, and it offers you more features.
Verdict: Rank Math is faster and more efficient in overall performance compared to Yoast.
2. Rank Math vs. Yoast SEO: Tool Setup
On comparing the setup of both tools I found that Rank Math has a better and easier configuration compared to Yoast SEO.
Firstly, in Yoast SEO, there’s no feature to import the settings which you get in Rank Math.
Secondly, Yoast SEO has a lot of unnecessary suggestions that you don’t need while setting up an SEO plugin for your website.
For instance, they ask you to join the newsletter and also promote their YouTube videos and blog content which isn’t necessary at all.
On the flip side, you won’t find any such bloatware in Rank Math whatsoever. Rank Math has only five options to get you started with the initial configuration.
One more thing which I didn’t like about Yoast is, they don’t have anything written above the numbers.
Like in Rank Math, you get to know what’s coming up next. With Yoast SEO it shows up when you hover over it which is kind of dated.
Verdict: Overall, Rank Math feels more solid compared to Yoast SEO in tool setup to me.
3. Rank Math vs. Yoast SEO: Adding Focus Keywords
Focus keywords are a big part of SEO while you optimize your content.
So while comparing both Yoast vs. Rank Math hand in hand, I found great insights which resulted in Rank Math being more powerful than Yoast SEO.
Here are all the differences:
1) While writing the focus keyphrase/keyword, Rank Math has a feature called content AI (not the same as AI writing software) which gives you suggestions on improving the content.
This report includes suggestions on:
- Related keywords and questions
- External links
- The overall content score for the target keyword
Whereas in Yoast SEO, once you enter your target keywords, you can get a list of related keywords.
Yoast gets this related keyword data from the SEMrush SEO tool (click here to get SEMrush Free Trial) via Yoast free version. However, the free version doesn’t give you any content suggestions such as which keywords to add to the content, title, and headings.
2) Rank Math’s free version allows you to add multiple focus keywords to optimize your content.
On the other hand, in Yoast SEO, you have to buy the premium version to add more than one keyword.
3) The SEO improvement suggestions that you get with Rank Math are way better than what you get in Yoast SEO.
In Rank Math, suggestions are divided into multiple sections that are missing in Yoast SEO.
However, I liked how Yoast shows you the problems and the improvements that need to be done while improving SEO which isn’t available in Rank Math.
Verdict: Yoast SEO is the clear winner in this category.
Related: Best on-page SEO techniques that work (free checklist)
4. Rank Math vs. Yoast SEO: Rich Snippet
Rich Snippet is nothing but a way to tell the search engines what your page is all about.
Without schema integration, search engines will only show the title, URL, and description. However, if you use schema, search engines like Google and Bing will pick up information like star ratings, images, time, the name of the reviewer, and more.
You could also add information like howto schema, movie booking time, stock available for products, and pricing of them, to name a few.
Rank Math gives you eleven options to choose the type of Rich Snippet.
You can also decide the type of article whether it’s a blog post, a news article, or a normal one.
On the flip side, with Yoast SEO, you won’t get any such options. If you want to use Yoast SEO, for schema integration, you have to install third-party schema plugins.
Nevertheless, with Rank Math, you get schema integration right in the plugin so you don’t have to install additional plugins.
Please Note: In addition to adding custom schema types through Rank Math, you could also import the schema of a 3rd party web page (think of your competitor) to your page via the plugin.
Verdict: Rank Math is the clear winner as Yoast SEO lacks the schema integration functionality Rank Math has.
5. Rank Math vs. Yoast SEO: NoFollow Link Control
There are situations that arise while adding external links to your content when you decide to have full control over their nofollow or dofollow status.
While this isn’t possible with Yoast (unless you try some workaround and install additional plugins)
In Rank Math settings, you can find the “Nofollow External Links” option which is by default set to ‘Off’. Change that to ‘On’ and all your external links will be changed to no follow without you manually doing it.
That’s a handy feature that isn’t found in Yoast SEO.
Verdict: Rank Math wins as Yoast SEO lacks control over external links.
6. Rank Math vs. Yoast SEO: Image SEO Settings
Adding ALT text in an image is crucial if you want to rank those images in image search engines. However, we often forget to add alternative text to the pictures while writing content.
That being said, both Yoast SEO and Rank Math show you suggestions if the alternative text is missing in the image. Nonetheless, Rank Math takes it even further by automating the entire image alternative text-adding process.
In Rank Math SEO settings, you can turn on the “Add missing ALT attributes,” and the tool will automatically add alternative text to images that you miss out on while adding the images.
You can also select the type of format you want the tool to add as an alternative text.
If I talk about Yoast SEO, there’s no such feature found in it. Yoast SEO will only show you image alt text missing suggestions while analyzing the results.
Verdict: Rank Math offers more control over missing image attributes and hence triumphs over Yoast.
7. Rank Math vs. Yoast SEO: Data Import
Both Yoast SEO and Rank Math have import and export features. So, why am I even considering it as a difference?
Well, the functionalities that you get in both tools while importing or exporting data are different.
In Yoast SEO, you can export the entire settings and use them with other plugins or sites.
Whereas with Rank Math, you can decide what specifically you want to export it can be general settings, sitemap settings, role manager settings, or anything else.
Apart from that, in Rank Math, there’s a plugin importer option wherein you can import all your Yoast SEO settings with a click of a button.
Lastly, you can also take backups of different settings in Rank Math which isn’t available in Yoast SEO.
Verdict: Yoast SEO lacks the granular control over export settings that Rank Math provides.
8. Rank Math vs. Yoast SEO: 404 Monitor & Redirections
Having 404 pages might affect your sites’ performance in the SERPs. The biggest problem is, we don’t know that our site has 404 pages already lying around.
Not anymore.
With the Rank Math SEO tool, you can monitor all your website pages for 404 errors.
Apart from that, if you find any 404 pages on your website, right from Rank Math you can redirect that page to any of the working pages without any guesswork.
The same feature is available in Yoast SEO as well. However, it’s a premium feature that you get for free in Rank Math.
You can also set some advanced 404 settings like excluding certain URLs from logging into the 404 databases. Also, there’s an option to set the limit of 404 logs you want the plugin to track.
If you want to achieve the same results with the free version of Yoast SEO, the only way to remove 404 pages is by using Google Search Console.
It’s a manual and time-consuming process which I won’t recommend to you.
Verdict: Rank Math helps eliminate the need for another plugin to remove 404 pages.
9. Rank Math vs. Yoast SEO: Redirection
Both the plugins have the redirection feature, but the only difference between them is that it’s available for free in Rank Math, but in Yoast, it’s offered as a premium feature.
Previously, I was using Yoast SEO, and for redirection, I had to use “All 404 Redirect to Homepage.”
Now, as I use Rank Math which can do a similar job all for free, I don’t have to worry about any additional plugin for 404 redirections.
Verdict: Here too, Rank Math wins by saving you from installing one more plugin.
Recommended Reading:
10. Rank Math vs. Yoast SEO: Google Search Console Integration
At the time of configuring the plugins, both Rank Math & Yoast SEO ask you to authenticate Google Search Console.
Although Yoast asks you for the authentication code, I don’t see any practical implementation of it.
On the other hand, Rank Math shows you all the data fetched right from Google Search Console in your dashboard.
Verdict: Although I’d not like to give access to my search console to either SEO plugin, Rank Math clearly offers value if you decide to do so.
11. Rank Math vs. Yoast SEO: Content Analysis
Content Analysis is where Yoast SEO beats Rank Math with a huge gap.
To make things interesting, I choose the same article from two of my websites that have the same focus keyword i.e., “Coke and Popcorn.”
Rank Math shows you a decent number of suggestions; however, analyses like passive voice, transition words, and consecutive sentences are not available.
Rank Math has a very basic content analysis, in my opinion.
On the flip side, Yoast SEO offers all the above analysis which makes it a more mature tool for analyzing the content.
One common feature in both tools is the Flesch reading score.
Verdict: Yoast SEO is the clear winner for helping make your content more readable and user-friendly.
12. Rank Math vs. Yoast SEO: SEO Audit Tool
To run an SEO audit for your site, you can make use of professional tools like Serpstat, SEMrush, or Ahrefs.
If you’re using Yoast SEO, you don’t have any alternative option but to use any of the tools mentioned above to run a site audit. Sadly, there’s no site audit feature available in Yoast SEO.
With Rank Math, the opposite is true.
Yes, Rank Math gives you a detailed SEO audit report for your website all for free. You cannot compare it directly with professional tools like SEMRush & Ahrefs. Nevertheless, the free Rank Math SEO audit tool is fantastic.
The report shows you stats on basic and advanced SEO, site security, performance, and social SEO which is sufficient to give you enough data to work on.
Verdict: Rank Math wins as Yoast SEO offers no such functionality. However, I like to keep dedicated software for tasks like this.
Pro Tip: You could use tools like SpyFU, or Ahrefs to do this with more features.
Also Read:
13. Rank Math vs. Yoast SEO: Role Manager for Multi-Author Blogs
If you have a site with tens of hundreds of authors who open and manage the site, and you don’t want to share all the SEO settings with them.
Well, if you’re using Yoast SEO, there’s nothing you can do here.
But if you’re a Rank Math user or planning to be one, you can decide which settings you want your authors, subscribers, contributors, and editors to have access to.
This is a fantastic feature that I guess even the free version of Yoast SEO should have.
14. Rank Math vs. Yoast SEO: Support Review
I feel both tools have an excellent support team; it’s just the way they offer support is different.
While Yoast SEO offers you email support, Rank Math has a support forum where you can discuss your doubts with regard to the type of query you have.
The forum is divided into multiple sections and the community is highly active.
One thing I don’t like about Rank Math’s support forum is one thread is handled by different staff after each of your replies which creates a lot of communication issues and I have to explain everything over and over again. This results in both energy and time waste.
Verdict: Yoast SEO wins in the customer support department. However, Rank Math is very close.
15. Rank Math vs. Yoast SEO: Social Previews
The last comparison factor between Yoast SEO vs. Rank Math is the social previews.
In Rank Math, you can view how your post will look on all your social media handles when someone shares it.
Unfortunately, there’s no such feature available in Yoast SEO.
16. Rank Math Pro vs. Yoast Pro
Rank Math and Yoast offer an almost similar set of features in the premium version. In this section, we’ll go through the important features of both SEO plugins.
Here’s the comparison overview between Yoast free and Yoast premium versions:
| Item | Yoast SEO Pro | Yoast SEO Free |
| Price | $99 and $229 per year | Free |
| Internal linking optimization | Yes | No |
| Add multiple focus keywords | Yes | No |
| Access to Yoast SEO academy | Yes | No |
| Redirection | Yes | No |
| Content update alert | Yes | No |
| Post SEO optimization | Yes | Yes |
| Crawl settings to improve crawl budget | Yes | No |
| 24/7 customer support | Yes | No |
| Image SEO | Yes | Yes |
| Index Now for faster indexing | Yes | No |
Here’s the comparison overview between Rank Math free and Rank Math Pro versions:
| Item | Rank Math Pro | Rank Math Free |
| Price | $59, $199, and $499 per year | Free |
| Keywords rank tracker | Yes | No |
| Add multiple focus keywords | Yes | No |
| Google news SEO | Yes | No |
| Schema validation | Yes | No |
| Custom schema | Yes | No |
| Index Now for faster indexing | Yes | Yes |
| Access to Yoast SEO academy | Yes | No |
| Redirection | Yes | No |
| Content update alert | Yes | No |
| Crawl settings to improve crawl budget | Yes | No |
| 24/7 customer support | Yes | No |
| Index Now for faster indexing | Yes | No |
| 1-click import data | Yes | Yes |
| Post SEO optimization | Yes | Yes |
When it comes to the comparison of Yoast SEO pro and Rank Math SEO pro, clearly Rank Math has more set of useful features. Advanced structured data types are one of the essentials of Rank Math Pro.
Further reading:
Rank Math vs. Yoast SEO: Stability
Rank Math is relatively new to Yoast SEO and yet it has very minimal to no stability issues whereas Yoast SEO is known to give nightmares to site owners.
I had been using Yoast SEO religiously on all my sites for over 8 years and even stuck with it (loyalty?) after the initial bugs that broke my site’s SEO and created extra hassles that with each and every update it brought.
From causing severe ranking drops to crashing websites (that too in 2022!), Yoast SEO spares no one with their hastily launched updates.
That’s when I decided to switch over to Rank Math to never see an issue again (yet!).
I understand that no plugin is perfect but releasing updates haphazardly when you know millions of sites are at stake (and most of them won’t even know that the update broke their site) is unacceptable.
Verdict: Rank Math wins this test of stability while Yoast SEO fails it miserably.
It’s time to decide which is the best WordPress SEO plugin.
Final Verdict: Rank Math vs. Yoast SEO (2023)
To summarize, I recommend Rank Math as a lightweight and more stable option as compared to Yoast which often breaks down sites and has fewer features comparatively.
Most of the advanced features found in Rank Math are not present in Yoast SEO. Especially, the advanced schema markup support is one of the biggest advantages of using Rank Math.
After comparing all the features in detail, for me, Rank Math is a clear winner (both free and Pro versions as compared to the Yoast SEO plugin).
If you’re not looking for advanced features, I’d recommend you start using the Rank Math free version as it has almost all the basic SEO optimization features you need to SEO optimize your website.
Here’s the final overview between Rank Math and Yoast SEO plugin:
| Feature Item | Yoast SEO (Free) | Rank Math (Free) |
| Focus keywords | Winner | |
| Rich snippets | Winner | |
| Structured data | Winner | |
| No-follow link external | Winner | |
| Image SEO settings | Both | |
| Data Import | Winner | |
| 404 monitor | Winner | |
| Redirection | Winner | |
| Google search console integration | Winner | |
| Content analysis | Winner | |
| SEO audit tool | Winner | |
| Social previews | Winner |
Rank Math vs Yoast SEO (FAQs)
1. Is Rank Math better than Yoast?
Rank Math is far better than Yoast both in terms of performance and effect on page load time. Rank Math has more features like schema integration, search console & analytics integration, broken link monitor module, etc., and yet is built with fewer lines of code making it lightweight.
2. What is better than Yoast SEO?
Rank Math is definitely better than Yoast SEO. Rank Math offers solid stability, has fewer paid plans, and offers more features than Yoast SEO even in the free plan.
3. Can I use both Rank Math and Yoast?
It is not recommended to use both Rank Math and Yoast together. Both have the same core functionality and using them together will cause issues like duplicate meta tags and plugin conflicts that can be detrimental to your site’s health and ranking.
3. Is Rank Math good for SEO?
Rank Math is very good for SEO. Rank Math helps you add relevant schema markup, monitor broken links, and track keyword rankings to name a few. Overall, it helps you create better content for both search engines and users. Not to mention, Rank Math is the most lightweight SEO plugin you can find.
4. Is Rank Math pro worth it?
Rank Math Pro is definitely worth it. Apart from the free version, Rank Math Pro offers more Content AI credits, integrates with Google Analytics, helps you import schema from any website, and offers Google News SEO, and Video SEO to name a few.
5. Is Rank Math safe?
Rank Math is used by over 1.7 million websites and is completely safe to use. They battle-test plugin updates before releasing them to users. I have been using them for a couple of years and unlike Yoast SEO, I have had zero instances of bugs or updates that result in conflicts or ranking drops.
What are your thoughts on this comparison between Rank Math vs. Yoast SEO? Let me know in the comments down below.
