Rank Math or Yoast SEO? Best SEO Plugin
Rank Math and Yoast SEO are two free WordPress plugins that help you get higher positions in Google. You have probably heard both names, but you have no idea what the differences are between RankMath and Yoast SEO. In this article I compare the plugins to help you make the choice: Rank Math or Yoast?
Content of this article:
- What exactly does an SEO plugin do?
- What are the features of Rank Math?
- Free and Paid Features in Rank Math
- What are the features of Yoast SEO?
- Free and Paid Features in Yoast SEO
- What are the costs of the plugins?
- Which plugin is best for search engine optimization?
What exactly does an SEO plugin do?
An SEO plugin helps you optimize your website for search engines. This way you can rank higher in Google and other search engines. For example, you can rank higher in Google and with a good interface, an SEO plugin gives you various tips and recommendations with which you can improve your website.
What are the features of Rank Math?
Rank Math (900,000+ installs) is still relatively new on the market compared to Yoast SEO (5,000,000+ installs). Rank Math offers a free variant and a paid variant starting at $59 per year on an unlimited number of websites. Rank Math has a handy installation wizard with which you can prepare the basis of your website in a few steps.
When writing posts, pages and other post types, a simple but clear interface has been added. With a simple score on a scale from 0 to 100 you get an indication of the degree of optimization. Through this interface, you can make various SEO-related settings, such as setting the page title, description, permalink and focus keyword. RankMath also has a dashboard with settings as standard, which offers you a large number of other options.
Free and Paid Features in Rank Math
Rank Math has a large number of SEO functionalities. The free features are:
- Add (default) Page titles, descriptions, URL
- Add Descriptions to Social Media Shares
- Giving tips when writing messages and/or texts
- Giving tips when setting a Focus Keyword (keyword optimization) writing messages and/or texts
- Add XML Sitemaps (with exclusion options)
- Add Breadcrumbs
- Monitoring 404 error links
- Add Schema Markup
- Analytics Dashboard in combination with Search Console
- External and Internal link counter
Additions in the paid version of Rank Math are:
- Track keyword ranks (up to 10,000 keywords)
- Schema generator
- Copy Schema Data from other websites
- Integration with Google Trends
- Sitemaps for Google Video and Google News
- Multiple locations for Local SEO
- SEO ranking report via Email
- Bulk Edit option
And much more... you can view the full list on the Rank Math pricing page. Rank Math also displays a table on its own site in which the comparison Rank Math or Yoast is made.
What are the features of Yoast SEO?
Yoast SEO is already an old but popular player in SEO land with over 5 million installs. Yoast SEO organizes its own WordPress conferences and is based in the Netherlands. In 2007 Yoast (then WordPress SEO) published the first version of its SEO plugin. Yoast SEO is generally well known for its Red, Orange and Green dots. The colored dots are an indication of how well a page is search engine optimized.
In addition to the free plugin from Yoast SEO, they also offer paid additions in the form of a Premium variant, Video SEO, Local SEO, News SEO and WooCommerce SEO. All paid versions are annual subscriptions valid for one website only.
Free and Paid Features in Yoast SEO
Yoast SEO offers different functionalities for the free and the paid version. The free functionalities within Yoast SEO are:
- Add page titles, descriptions and a custom URL
- Add Descriptions to Social Media Shares
- Setting a Focus Keyword (keyword optimization)
- Add XML Sitemaps (with exclusion options)
- Set Schema for the entire website
- Internal link counter
Paid functional additions of the premium version of Yoast SEO are:
- Suggestions for adding internal links
- Managing redirects
- Extra focus keywords per post
- Previews for sharing to Twitter and Facebook
- Full access to Yoast SEO Academy
Furthermore, the other paid plugin additions also offer additional functionalities such as:
- Optimizing Video SEO (Video SEO)
- More options for Local SEO settings (Local SEO)
- Generating a News XML Sitemap and Google News integration (News SEO)
- WooCommerce product SEO settings (WooCommerce SEO)
What is the cost of Rank Math and Yoast SEO?
In addition to the free variants of both developers, there are paid plugins for advanced users. The costs of this plugin are as follows:
- RankMath from $59 per year on an unlimited number of websites (PRO variant)
- Yoast SEO from $89 per year for just one website
In addition, possible additions of the paid Yoast SEO plugins cost $69 per year for one website.
If you compare costs for just one website, the difference is only $30 per year. If you are going to use the plugins for multiple websites, it is a lot cheaper to opt for Rank Math. With just one website, the difference is only $30 per year.
Which plugin is best for search engine optimization, Rank Math or Yoast?
Choosing the best plugin turns out to be personal taste in my opinion. I think Rank Math is the best choice for those with some basic SEO knowledge, as the settings dashboard can look quite difficult for a layman.
For the SEO novice, Yoast SEO is a good choice in my opinion. Here you have fewer functionalities, but enough to make a good start with optimizing a website.
In addition, there is always a possibility to switch from Yoast SEO to Rank Math. Rank Math offers a 'switching service' with their installation wizard that transfers previously set data from Yoast SEO to Rank Math.