Yoast SEO used to be my number-one choice. It was solid, provided some basic features, and played well with most other plugins. Then Rank Math SEO came to life, and it forever changed the way I was optimizing my content for search engines.
As a full-time web developer and blogger, one of my jobs is constantly using and testing various WordPress plugins that may come in handy for my personal projects or my clients. SEO plugins are among the top and first choices when it comes to starting a new website or blog, so making sure that I’m using the best one is crucial.
I’ve used most SEO plugins that are currently available for WordPress, from Yoast SEO and Rank Math SEO to All In One SEO, SEOPress, The SEO Framework, Slim SEO, Squirrly SEO, and many others which I don’t remember their names. And what’s the best of the rest? Well, my personal and humble number one choice (and my imaginary awards) goes to Rank Math SEO.
Have no idea what I’m talking about? Start from here:
- How Rank Math SEO reshaped website optimization
- 10 Things I wish my clients knew about Rank Math SEO
From Rank Math SEO to Yoast SEO: A Complete Mess
A few months ago one of my clients asked me to migrate her website from using Rank Math SEO to Yoast SEO, just because a friend of hers used that SEO plugin, and she wanted to do the same, as she heard that Yoast SEO was a better and more robust choice. When I asked her why, she told me what her friend told her, and none of them made any sense – but I agreed to proceed.
Now, if you ever try to migrate from Rank Math SEO to Yoast SEO, you must felt the pain. If you haven’t done so yet, but thinking about it, I’d recommend staying put. I mean, don’t get me wrong, it’s not like Yoast SEO won’t work or your content won’t rank, it’s all about what you get.
When it comes to both of them, they have very different interfaces. Yoast SEO provides a simpler and cleaner interface, which makes it a solid choice for non-advanced users and content creators. On the other hand, it does so because it has fewer features and options than Rank Math SEO, which comes with a modern and neat interface that’s full of robust features.
First, I followed the instructions given by the Yoast SEO team, which are very basic and simple to follow: Backup your website, deactivate Rank Math SEO, install and activate Yoast SEO, go to their “Tools” page, click on “Import and Export”, choose Rank Math SEO, and start the import process. Once all the data has been imported, you can then head over to their “First-time configuration” to delete the leftovers.
Sounds fairly easy, doesn’t it? Well, that wasn’t the case.
What they don’t tell you is that you’re going to lose so much important data through this migration, it may actually completely kill your rankings.
Losing your Schema Markups, Redirections, and more
You see, unlike Yoast SEO, Rank Math SEO has tons of features missing from other SEO plugins, which means that once you’ve uninstalled it, you’ll have to find a proper way to re-apply all that data back to your content. And no, it’s not your focus keywords, those are fine, but other important features such as your Schema Markups and the Redirections will cease to exist.
Looking at Yoast SEO’s official website, I wasn’t able to find any information on the features you’ll lose once the migration has been completed – and why would they, right? Yet, Rank Math SEO not only shows you how to migrate from their plugin to Yoast SEO, but they also have included a list with all the features and options that they’ll completely remove.
Here’s what we’ve lost:
- Reviews: We’ve used the Rank Math SEO “Review” block on all of our review articles, which is a nice addition if you’re looking for an SEO-optimized way of displaying them. Not only does it give you the option to insert the right Schema Markup to your pages, but it also displays the review with a star rating, description, pros and cons, and more, without the need to use another plugin to do so.
- How-Tos: We’ve been also using the “How-To” block for our guides, providing detailed step-by-step instructions for our readers. It looks great, and you can include the numbers on each step, with a title, description, and a picture, while other important information such as the timeframe and tools used.
- FAQs: Another great block provided by Rank Math SEO that gives you an easy way to answer your visitor’s most frequently asked questions. You can use this block both for your FAQ or About page, and for your articles too, and it comes with the right Schema Markup, so no additional configurations are required.
- Multiple Schema Markups: Speaking of Schema Markups, if you’re using Rank Math SEO Pro as we do, you can easily add multiple Schema Markups to your pages and articles, which disappear once you migrate away from the plugin.
- About and Mentions Links: When you add a link to a post or page, Rank Math SEO gives you the option to enable the “About” and/or “Mention” attributes, which are a great way to let search engines better understand your content and where you send your visitors.
There are other features that you’ll miss too, including watching your statistics, having Google Trends right on your WordPress Dashboard, monitoring your links, easily tracking your winning/losing posts and keywords, adjusting your redirections, using their AI tools, etc.
Rank Math SEO also says that, “With every change in the website comes challenges – especially in terms of SEO. While migrating from one plugin to another, we recommend ensuring that all your SEO settings are intact so as not to have any adverse effects.”.
Now, I know Yoast SEO has been updated through the years and now has its own blocks, including the How-To and FAQ, but when the migration was completed, none of those blocks was available through our content, like we never actually added it. I should have contacted their support team, but my client changed her mind and chose to stay with Rank Math SEO.
The problem with Yoast SEO’s pricing
If those missing features and options aren’t enough to convince you, then you should start thinking about your budget and how much you’re willing to spend for extra features. For example, you can get the Yoast SEO Premium plan for €99 per year, but that won’t include all the extra plugins that the company offers.
If you want full access to all of their features, you’ll have to get the “All Yoast SEO plugins” plan which costs €229 per year and includes the Local SEO, News SEO, Video SEO, and WooCommerce SEO. The most expensive plan is the right one also, especially if you were using Rank Math SEO’s Pro version that has all of that – and even more.
Rank Math SEO’s Pro version on the other hand is as cheap as $6.99 per month (renews at $7.99), and it gives you full access to all of their features. But why is that cheap? Well, because unlike Yoast SEO which the price is for one website, Rank Math SEO Pro lets you install the Pro version on an unlimited number of personal websites – and I manage seven of them, so do the math.
Ultimately, when it comes to my budget and feature availability, nothing can beat Rank Math SEO, and thus why I’ve been using it for all my websites the last few years. For agencies and web developers, Rank Math SEO also provides the Business plan with support for up to 100 client websites, and the Agency plan that supports up to 500 client websites.
Support, documentation, and tutoring
You’d expect that an SEO plugin is all about the features and options that it provides to its users, but in reality, there’s more than that. Let’s say that you haven’t used an SEO plugin in the past, which is completely fine, the first thing you’ll do is usually head over to the official website and find the documentation, maybe watch a video, read a few guides, and finally check what reviewers are saying.
Both Yoast SEO and Rank Math SEO provide their own guides/tutorials, and you can learn a lot by reading them, especially if you’re new to the SEO world in WordPress. Apart from their basic documentation and blog articles that teach you the basics of SEO and how to use their plugin, both have their own online courses that you can watch for even deeper insights.
Here’s what both choices are offering:
- Yoast SEO Academy: The Yoast SEO Academy has a free version from which you can learn the basics of SEO, and it focuses on proper beginner’s training. You’ll learn a lot about WordPress too, how the block editor is working, all about structured data, and more. To get full access to their premium courses, it will cost you €99 per year.
- Rank Math SEO Course: Rank Math SEO has its own online course which helps you understand the best practices for optimizing your content and structure for maximum SERP, how to do keyword research, improve your link-building strategies, teach about technical and local SEO, and more. To get full access to their premium courses, it will cost you $16.41 per month (billed annually).
Why is Rank Math SEO’s online course so much more expensive? Well, for starters, it gives you access to over 50 SEO course lessons, and they add 1 (or sometimes more) new video each month. Apart from watching the lessons and staying updated with their new ones, you also get a Q&A with SEO experts and 24/7 priority support.
If you don’t have the budget for some lessons, don’t worry, as both plugins offer written guides and video tutorials for their users, and especially Rank Math SEO, which seems to provide everything from a cleaner and easier-to-use website. Both will give you all the information you need to start using them, starting as a beginner to being as good as to mechanically doing everything, so you don’t have to worry about the learning curve.
But why – once again – am I choosing Rank Math SEO as the best choice? Well, that’s only because of Jack Cao, the content creator behind most videos and articles that you see on their website and official social media accounts.
I mean, who doesn’t like the guy? He’s great at explaining each and every step, always has a positive attitude, and overall he’s fun and enjoyable to watch – and I can vouch for that based on my clients’ feedback who I’ve sent them many of the videos in the past.
It may be a personal choice, but is the best I found
When it comes to using different SEO tools, the features they provide, the interface they’ve created, how stable they run, how many frequent updates they get, and the support they provide, Rank Math SEO is hands on the best of the rest – when it comes to my personal preferences, that is.
It runs well on every WordPress website I have installed and configured it, plays nice with other third-party plugins and themes, and even if you get into any trouble or errors, you can easily resolve them by either using their built-in tools for cleaning and resetting some data or by opening a support ticket.
If you need even more help, have any questions, or you simply looking for suggestions, they also have a Facebook group that you can use.
Overall, I’ve been a happy Rank Math SEO customer since I first installed the plugin a few years ago, and apart from that one client, no one has ever said anything negative about it, and that’s more than enough for me.
Uh, oh! Legal stuff! Yikes.. Yet important! Affiliate Links Disclaimer: Many of the links on my articles are affiliate links. That means if you click on one and make a purchase, I might earn a small commission, and I'll keep doing what I'm doing, reviewing everything with absolute honesty. Sounds good? Good.
