Impressed with the Features, I Switched from Free Yoast SEO Plugin to Rank Math On Flashlearners.com and Hilearners.com.
I Switched Flashlearners back to Yoast SEO Plugin and Hilearners is still Running on Rank Math. After using both SEO Plugins, here is my honest Yoast vs Rank Math Review…
Rank Math And Yoast Plugins are good for Onpage SEO. Stick to Rank Math if you’re already using it and don’t migrate from Yoast SEO to Rank Math unless you care about the extra Rank Math Features and don’t want alternatives.
From my experiences, moving from Yoast SEO to Rank Math won’t increase your Rankings on Bing and Google. Migrating from Rank Math to Yoast SEO won’t do any magic either. This is because both Plugins cover the basic Onpage features you need.
Your blog posts can rank Google Front Page even without putting focus keyword, meta description, or anything inside a plugin box. Search Engine Ranking is based on quality content, backlinks, user intent and good knowledge of the topic.
Rank Math users have a lot of configuration options and are free to turn off features they aren’t interested in. It has more options than the Yoast SEO Plugin.
But do you need the extra Rank Math options badly and unwillign to replace them with another Plugin? If yes, then you can make a Switch.
I’m currently using Yoast SEO Plugin (Free Version) because the extra Rank Math Features don’t bother me yet. Remember, the more the features you enable, the more resources they use on your blog.
Rank Math Extra Features
I am not really bothered about Rank Math Extra features…
1. Rank Math has up to 16 different Structured data. But I need just 4 of them (Article, News, FAQ and Tech). Both Plugins have this Schema.
Now, Neither Rank Math nor Yoast has the BlogPosting Schema yet. Many Schema & Structured Data Plugins give more options than Rank Math and Yoast.
2. 404 Monitor and Redirection… I don’t like the 404 monitor in Rank Math. A high percentage of 404 errors logged are usually from URLs I know nothing about.
For Redirection, I normally don’t redirect 404 errors; I fix them. On rare occasions, I use .htaccess to create redirects. If you need the redirection option badly, you can install a redirection plugin or switch to Rank Math.
I use deadlinkchecker.com and similar tools to scan my blog for 404 errors and fix them. For deliberately deleted posts, I allow 404 errors until the post leaves Google index. I also have a custom 404 page to show “lost users” what they may like.
3. Multiple Keywords in Rank Math: Using multiple keywords is beyond putting them on a box. You can use wisdom to know keywords to use while writing.
I optimize articles while writing. I know the keywords to use on every post. Yoast + Semrush Integration is also not a big deal to me.
4. User Interface… I don’t care. Some bloggers feel the Yoast SEO user interface is better while others believe Rank Math has a better UI. For me, both of them offer a good user experience.
5. Search Console on Rank Math: I don’t care since the search console Tab is always open on my browser. Just like Google Analytics, I don’t like monitoring stats right on my Wp-Admin.
6. bbPress, buddy press, woocommerce and Google web stories: I don’t care about any of them.
7. Automatically capitalize the first character of all title tags: I love doing that myself. Making the first letter of my post titles capital letter isn’t big for me to handle.
8. Adding missing alternate attribute. This is a very good feature. However, I add alternate attributes of my choice to images immediately I upload. Besides, some alternate attributes added to images by Rank Math may not be what you want.
9. SEO Score in letters versus number: Yoast Scores your Onpage SEO for a post as “Needs Improvement, Ok or Good” while Rank Maths Scores it from 1 to 100. If you care about that, fine. For me, there is really no difference.
10. Ping Search Engines in Sitemap: The latest WordPress has a sitemap and lazy load feature. It also can ping search engines when you update posts.
11. Rank Math being lighter: My page size and load time didn’t change with any of the plugins. So, I don’t care about Rank Math being ligher.
Yoast Sitemap also Pings search engines. You can choose between WordPress native sitemap and plugin sitemap.
XML Sitemap shouldn’t be enough reason for you to change plugin. When you turn off the sitemap feature in plugins, the native sitemap feature gets enabled.
I find Google XML Plugin more effective than all the sitemap and ping features of Rank Math and that of Yoast SEO too.
12. SEO Test… I use seositecheckup and many other tools to check my SEO Score off-page. SEO Checking and Pagespeed testing are better done outside your WP-Dashboard.
Note: moving from Yoast to Rank math, you won’t lose any data like SEO title, settings or meta description. Rank math will copy everything.
Bad Parts of Yoast SEO And Rank Math
Both Yoast and Rank Math Plugin has parts that I really hate:
1. Rank Math tells you to write up to 600 words before you can rank. Some articles don’t need up to 600 words. For example, how can I use 600 words to tell readers that a University has released admission list?
Many new bloggers would want to add meaningless paragraphs to an already complete post just because they feel it will make them Rank higher.
Quality always win over quantity. If it is necessary to write 10,000 words article, go ahead. But don’t force it when you are loss of words.
2. Yoast Plugin forces you not to paginate comments; they even flag it under site health. I have posts with thousands of comments. How can I leave thousands of comments on one page? Won’t the page take forever to load? Besides, Yoast SEO doesn’t have the option to lazy comment.
3. Yoast SEO tells you to always put your keyword at the first sentence or beginning of your article and title. This always doesn’t work as you may be forcing keywords where they don’t belong.
4. Rank Math has the option to nofollow and open all external links in a new tab. Many new bloggers would turn on that option without understanding the consequences. That is a terrible practice.
Yoast Is More Trusted Than Rank Math
Apart from these differences in features, Yoast SEO Plugin and Rank Math and basically the same. Many big brands use Yoast SEO plugin and it has gained so much trust due to its age in the industry.
Many big News, Education and Tech WordPress Sites are still using Yoast SEO. In fact, blogs campaigning for Rank Math SEO Plugin are using Yoast SEO.
Harsh of Shoutmeloud wrote a review that Rank Math is better than even premium Yoast SEO Plugin. He gave nice points which are true. But the question is, why does he still use Yoast SEO Plugin? This speaks volume.
