Wondering which is the best SEO plugin in 2022? Well, Yoast SEO and Rank Math are the two most popular and highly recommended WordPress SEO plugins. If you are confused about which plugin to choose, we will help you compare these two WordPress SEO plugins, i.e. Yoast SEO vs Rank Math. After reading this article, hopefully, you will be able to choose the best WordPress SEO plugin for your business website or blog. Yoast SEO and Rank Math both have pros and cons, and we are going to cover all that in this article. So keep reading!
How to Choose the Best WordPress SEO Plugin?
When there are too many choices, choosing the best solution is always difficult for anyone. Let’s suppose you have a WordPress site, and you want to use an SEO plugin. You go to the WordPress plugin directory and search for the SEO plugin. You see a lot of options in the search results that might confuse you that which plugin you should choose. All the plugins available on the WordPress plugin directory work pretty much the same, i.e. optimizing your WordPress site for search engines.
But you cannot try all of them to determine which plugin is the best. So, how will you choose the best SEO plugin for your WordPress site? This question is often by WordPress users. Well, there are three simple ways to choose the best WordPress SEO plugin out of too many choices –
- Whenever you search for the SEO plugins in the WordPress directory, it shows the best options at the top of the search results. Out of hundreds of options, you just need to select four or five.
- After that, you need to check the active installations of those SEO plugins that you have selected. The more active installations a plugin has, the more popular it is among WordPress users.
- Besides checking the active installations, you should also check the reviews and ratings of the SEO plugin you are planning to use.
Yoast SEO and Rank Math are the two most popular WordPress SEO plugins that meet all 3 conditions mentioned above. They both appear at the top of the search results, they both have a good number of active installations, and they both have received good reviews and ratings from WordPress users. And that is why Yoast SEO and Rank Math are the two most recommended WordPress SEO plugins in 2022. And the best part is that they both have been successfully tested with the current WordPress version 5.7.2.
So, without wasting any time here, let’s compare the Yoast SEO vs Rank Math SEO plugins.
Yoast SEO vs Rank Math
To compare Yoast SEO vs Rank Math, we will discuss all the features these two plugins offer, including their pros and cons. Just have a close eye on the comparison, and then decide which WordPress SEO plugin is better to use.
Optimizing websites for search engines is very important, and that is why people use WordPress SEO plugins. Whenever it comes to choosing the best SEO plugin, Yoast SEO is the most preferred choice. Since 2010, it has been helping WordPress users to optimize their websites and get a higher search engine ranking. The Yoast SEO plugin is trusted by millions of WordPress users. But this does not mean that you have only one choice. There is one more WordPress SEO plugin that is becoming a new SEO powerhouse. We are talking about the Rank Math SEO plugin, the best alternative to Yoast SEO.
WordPress users often get confused while choosing between Yoast SEO and Rank Math. Both are absolutely the greatest WordPress SEO plugins of all time. If you are not sure which plugin you should choose, it is better to compare them. So let’s see the comparison between Yoast SEO vs Rank Math.
Note: The only objective of comparing Yoast SEO vs Rank Math is to help you choose the right SEO plugin for your WordPress site.
Yoast SEO
Yoast SEO is a powerful SEO solution for WordPress users, assisting them to optimize their WordPress site for Google, Bing, and other search engines. The plugin has been designed with only one major objective – taking care of your website’s SEO. No matter whether they have any prior SEO knowledge or not, they can easily optimize their website to get a higher search engine ranking. The WordPress SEO plugin has over 5 million active installations, and it has been downloaded over 300 million times so far. These numbers are enough to say that Yoast SEO is the #1 WordPress SEO plugin in the world.
The Yoast SEO plugin is available in both free as well as premium versions. The free version has all those features that you need to optimize your WordPress site for search engines. On the other hand, the premium version helps you unlock even more advanced features. Let’s check out the features offered by Yoast SEO (free and premium).
Key Features of Yoast SEO
Free Version
- It allows you to add your focused keyword (one in the free version). FYI, a focused keyword is a keyword or key phrase you would like your post or a web page to rank for in the Google search results.
- Besides adding a focused keyword, the plugin also enables you to add meta tags like Title and Description, without modifying even a single line of code.
- With this WordPress SEO plugin, you can improve the readability of your blog posts and web pages. This is one of the best features of Yoast SEO, available in both free and premium versions.
- You can check the preview of your web page or blog post, i.e. how it will look like in the Google SERP (search engine results page).
- No matter which version you are using, be it free or premium, the plugin works in every WordPress editor including Elementor.
- This WordPress SEO plugin allows you to create a more customizable sitemap for your website.
Premium Version
- The premium version allows you to add up to 5 focused keywords on a single web page or blog post. So you can easily optimize your content for more than 1 keyword, thus helping you reach a wider audience.
- You get features like Internal Linking Suggestion and Internal Linking Block in the premium version.
- The premium version allows you to redirect old URLs to new ones so your visitors will not be stuck on the 404 Page Not Found error. This will help you improve your site’s user experience.
- If you upgrade to the premium version, you can check the preview of your social posts, i.e. how they will look like when you share them on Facebook and Twitter.
- The best thing you get in the premium version is full access to all the Yoast academy courses. From beginners to advanced level courses are available. You can choose the desired course and become an SEO expert by yourself.
Pros & Cons of Yoast SEO
| Pros | Cons |
| Easy to install and easy to use | Less number of features as compared to other plugins |
| Keyword and Metadata optimization | The premium version is quite expensive ($89) |
| Ability to proofread content and fix errors | Only 1 target keyword optimization in the free version |
| XML sitemap generation | This plugin is quite pedantic |
| Premium version is available with advanced features | Plugin size is quite big, making your site heavy |
Rank Math
Rank Math, on the other hand, is relatively a new SEO plugin, launched in 2018. It is also known as the best alternative to the Yoast SEO WordPress plugin. Currently, it is the second-most popular WordPress SEO plugin, after Yoast SEO. But if you compare the features of Yoast SEO vs Rank Math, the latter has the upper hand. The features provided by Rank Math are outstanding and fully automated, thus allowing you to optimize your website within a few clicks. And the best part of using the Rank Math SEO plugin is that you get almost all the features to perform key SEO tasks free of cost.
The features which you get in the premium version of other SEO plugins, you will get most of them free in Rank Math. And that is why the Rank Math SEO plugin has rapidly grown its popularity among WordPress users in a very short time. More than 800k WordPress websites are currently using the Rank Math SEO plugin. And if we talk about the ratings and reviews, the plugin has got 5-star ratings and positive reviews from WordPress users around the world. Let’s check out the features offered by Rank Math (free and premium).
Key Features of Rank Math
Free Version
- The Rank Math SEO plugin also allows you to add your focused keyword. But unlike Yoast SEO, Rank Math allows to you add up to 5 focused keywords in the free version.
- With Rank Math, you can add SEO title, permalink, and meta description without requiring a single line code. It is actually a basic SEO feature that is offered by almost all WordPress SEO plugins.
- Besides on-page SEO, you can also set titles, descriptions, and images for your social media posts on Facebook and Twitter.
- Rank Math allows you to create a more customizable sitemap for your website.
- It allows you to connect your site to Google Search Console so that you can submit sitemaps automatically and view Search Console analytics on your WordPress dashboard.
- The Rank Math SEO plugin helps you with redirections, i.e. you can easily create as well as manage 301 and 302 redirects. Besides, you can also monitor your WordPress site for 404 errors.
- You get the Internal Link Suggestion feature in the free version that will suggest other content on your website to link to the web page or blog post you are creating.
- The basic WooCommerce SEO functionality allows you to set titles and descriptions for your products and eCommerce shop.
Premium Version
- The premium version is fully automatic so you do not need to spend all your time on manual SEO. With Rank Math, you can quickly grow your website traffic.
- Keyword rank tracking is one of the best features you get in the premium version. You can easily track your keywords’ performance along with your site’s search engine ranking over the past 12 months.
- Advanced Google Analytics Integration and Advanced Schema Generator are two premium features of Rank Math that no other WordPress SEO plugins offer.
- The pro version of Rank Math allows track 500 keywords.
Pros & Cons of Yoast SEO
| Pros | Cons |
| Easy installation with modern user interface | Does not help much in improving your content’s readability |
| The free version has both basic and advanced SEO features | Migrating from Rank Math to any other SEO plugin is not easy |
| It is a lightweight plugin so it does not make your site heavy | Incompatibility with other installed plugins |
| Track keywords’ performance and site’s search engine ranking | The number of installations is limited |
| Rank Math’s pro version costs you $59 | Limited documentation |
Conclusion
So that’s all. After comparing Yoast SEO vs Rank Math, it is not wrong to say that both the WordPress plugins are great SEO solutions. We have discussed the features of both the plugins along with their pros and cons. So it is no more difficult for you or anyone to choose between Yoast SEO vs Rank Math. It would be the most preferable situation because whichever you choose, it would be a great choice. Although Yoast SEO is the most popular and highly recommended WordPress SEO plugin, the Rank Math SEO plugin has gained vast popularity in a very short time. Even many people have switched from Yoast SEO to Rank Math.
We have tried both the plugins, and both are great. Make a list of the features that are actually required, and then see which plugin meets the requirements best. We hope you liked this article where we have compared Yoast SEO vs Rank Math. Please share your feedback in the comments section below. Also, tell us which WordPress SEO plugin you are using.