Rank Math Review – Why I Ditched Yoast For RankMath

Are you wearing black?

Because today we’re holding a funeral.

It’s for a dear old friend of ours…

The Yoast SEO plugin.

It has been a relatively faithful friend and served us well for many many years.

It was there for the high rankings…

…and for the low ones.

But the time has come to say goodbye. Because there’s a new free SEO plugin in town…

Rank Math.

Rank Math Review: Why I Ditched Yoast For Good

Rank Math creates the perfect foundation for increasing your search traffic.

In comparison to Yoast, it’s:

And it achieves all of this without slowing your website down. Just take a look at this side-by-side comparison:

Better still, it has more modern-day SEO features.

For example…

They have a 100-point page analysis test that goes deep into the needs of each page:

They allow you to optimize for up to 5x target keywords per page for free which you would have to pay for with Yoast-

And, they have a 1x-click advanced SEO analysis tool, to help you perform a site-wide audit in a jiffy:

And best of all?

Take a look at this quick video to learn more about Rank Math:

 
So I’m going to show you how to setup Rank Math the right way and migrate from Yoast if you need to.

How To Migrate To Rank Math

You can painlessly migrate to Rank Math in just a few clicks.

They have a comprehensive setup wizard that allows you to:

Meaning you could be up and running in the next 10 to 20 minutes.

Step #1: Backup Your Site And Perform A Quick Audit

The first step is to back up the current version of your site which you can do this using a free plugin like Updraft.

Once you have your backup, use a site audit tool like:

To perform a quick crawl of your site to get a snapshot of your current SEO situation.

This is so we can compare our site before and after the migration to make sure everything went as expected and we didn’t create any holes.

I noted down some random stats from my crawl in a Google sheet:

You can get your own version of the sheet by clicking here.

Keep this information handy because we’ll be using it as a benchmark to make sure your Rank Math deployment was successful (better safe than sorry right!).

Now let’s start setting up Rank Math…

(Optional) Step #2: Migrate From Yoast (or other SEO plugins)

If your site is currently using Yoast SEO or any of the other popular SEO plugins, you can quickly migrate everything to Rank Math.

This allows you to easily make the switch without:

Rank Math will automatically detect which SEO plugin your site is running and offer to migrate you.

Just go to-

Sidebar > Rank Math > Setup Wizard

And you should see this prompt:

Make sure the 4x import boxes are ticked. Then click “Start Import from Yoast SEO”

You can now start configuring your site…

Step #3: Configure Rank Math

If you didn’t import from Yoast…

Go to your WordPress dashboard.

Open:

Sidebar > Rank Math > Setup Wizard

You will see this page:

Click ‘Start Wizard’.

If you did import from Yoast…

You will already see the screen about website information. Either way, fill out the basic information for your site:

Click ‘Save and Continue’.

Now, connect your Google Search Console account:

*Save and continue.*

Now it’s time to create your sitemaps. You’ll want to turn ON:

And turn OFF anything else that isn’t required.

*Save and continue.*

On the SEO Tweaks page, leave everything as default. That should look like this:

*Save and continue.*

That completes the initial setup. On the final page click the ‘return to dashboard’ option.

Then go to:

Rank Math > General Settings > Images

If you are generally on top of your alt tags (which you should be) you can leave these two options set to off.

But if you want Rank Math to automatically generate them for you (not recommended), you can enable it here-

*Save your changes.*

Then go to:

Rank Math > Titles & Meta > Global Meta

On this page turn ‘Capitalize titles’ ON.

*Save your changes.*

Then head to:

Rank Math > Titles & Meta > Global Meta > Homepage

And fill out your homepage information:

*Save your changes.*

Finally, go to:

Rank Math > Titles & Meta > Global Meta > Social Meta

And fill out all of your social profiles:

*Save your changes.*

And…that’s it!

Step #4: Review The Changes

The final step is to see how migrating to Rank Math has affected your site.

Use the tool you used earlier to re-crawl your site and then compare the results-

Most of these changes for me were minimal and upon further investigation, they were nothing to worry about.

BUT…

Pay close attention If you see changes like this:

In this case, Rank Math made a HUGE change to my site.

It removed canonicalization tags from my tag archive pages because they were no-indexed but that’s OK because the pages aren’t indexed anyway.

If you see any radical changes your not sure of, let me know in the comments and I’ll help you out.

Rank Math VS Yoast SEO

Overall, Rank Math is a competitor that must be taken seriously by Yoast SEO – the best SEO plugin for WordPress.

Yoast SEO plugin offers a free plan with some good features but they are limited, if you want to go in-depth, you need to buy the premium version.

While Rank Math offers the exact same features for free and more. Indeed, Rank Math gives you access to features that are not even included on the Yoast premium version.

Overall, there are 3 reasons why Rank Math is considered more affordable than Yoast:

1. Rank Math top-level plans are lower than Yoast.
2. Yoast doesn’t offer an unlimited licence but Rank Math does with its premium plan that supports unlimited websites.
3. Rank Math proposes a single premium plan with all the features while Yoast has multiple. So if you want to get access to the same features, you will need to do different purchases and will end up paying more.

Wrapping It Up

Here are the headlines of my Rank Math review:

It can also INSTANTLY help you to fix many website issues.

For example…

My rich snippets were filled with errors and “bloat” from a third-party plugin I was using:

As you can see it produced a number of warnings and errors!

But after installing Rank Math and using their rich snippet feature these problems were solved instantly-

There was also a remarkable drop off in the errors on my site after installing:

So, the real question is…

Why pay $89 a year for Yoast when you can get the more powerful Rank Math for free?

Oh, and did I mention that they have excellent customer support?

What are you waiting for?

Download Rank Math now – it’s 100% free.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is Rank Math?
Rank Math is a new SEO plugin that I was so impressed by, I migrated all of my sites to use it. They offer a lot of incredible features under one roof and best of all – it’s 100% free.

Is Rank Math any good?
Rank Math is totally worth it. It’s probably the best alternative to Yoast at the time of writing. It’s a handy plugin that can help you with your SEO tasks such as on page optimization, content analysis, redirects, rich snippets, etc. All of that, for free!

Is Rank Math Free?
Yes, it is! At the time of writing Rank Math is 100% free for anyone to use. Not surprising that it’s becoming a ‘must to have’ SEO tool.

Rank Math vs Yoast
The biggest difference is pricing, RankMath is completely free. Yoast on the other hand has a freemium model which means you have to pay to access all of the plugins features. Rank Math allows you to enjoy all of those premium features for free, but that might change in the future if they release a premium version.

Is it easy to migrate from other SEO plugins like Yoast?
Yes – there is a dedicated setup wizard that will take you through the migration process. Rank Math will import all of your settings in one click but please see my full tutorial above for the correct testing procedure.

Can I use Rank Math and Yoast?
No, you can’t use Rank Math and Yoast on the same website. You need to migrate from one plugin to another. If you don’t know how to do that, just follow my step by step process.

Is Rank Math good for SEO?
Yes, it is! Rank Math’s main objective is to help people improve their SEO results by giving them actionable recommendations to work on.

Is Rank Math safe?
Yes, Rank Math is a safe WordPress plugin! They had some vulnerabilities issues in the past (earlier versions) but have found a way to fix them in their latest version.