Rank Math Review
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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…
What Will I Learn?
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:
- Faster
- Easier
- More intuitive
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:
- Migrate from Yoast & other SEO plugins
- Quickly add essential site information
- Optimize all your previous posts
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 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:
- Needing to update your old posts
- Going through all your settings again
Rank Math will automatically detect which SEO plugin your site is running and offer to migrate you.
Just go to-
Sidebar > Rank Math > Dashboard > Setup Wizard
And you should see this prompt:
Make sure everything is ticked, including “Recalculate SEO Scores”. Then click “Start Import”
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 > Dashboard > Rank Math > Setup Wizard
You will see this page:
Then, tick “Advanced” and 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:
- Sitemaps
- Images
- Posts
- Pages
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 > Homepage
And fill out your homepage information:
*Save your changes.*
Finally, go to:
Rank Math > Titles & 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.
RankMath Pros & Cons
These are the pros and cons you need to think about for RankMath:
| PROS | CONS |
|---|---|
| ✅ Free access to advanced SEO features | ❌ Feature overload for beginners |
| ✅ Optimise a page for up to 5 keywords | ❌ Auto-generated alt tags need manual review |
| ✅ Migrate from Yoast with just one click | ❌ Basic SEO knowledge is required to get the most out of it |
| ✅ Clean and intuitive user interface | ❌ Some core advanced features are only available in paid plans |
| ✅ Built-in 100-point SEO analysis tool | ❌ No live chat support |
| ✅ Pro plans can include up to 500 sites | |
| ✅ Regular performance and feature updates | |
| ✅ Reliable and helpful customer support |
📋 RankMath Pros: What I Think You’ll Like
- Free Premium-Level SEO Features – One of the biggest pros for RankMath is the quality of features on the free plan. For smaller sites and basic users, you likely won’t even need to upgrade to a paid plan to manage your SEO effectively.
- Optimise Your Pages With Up To 5 Keywords – Your pages and posts will rank for a number of different keywords, not just one. RankMath allows you to add up to 5 target keywords per page and gives you specific recommendations to optimise your page for all of them.
- Easy Migration From Yoast – RankMath’s free migration wizard allows you to change from Yoast (and other SEO plugins) to RankMath seamlessly in just one click. All imports should take less than 10 minutes, and all your SEO optimisations will remain intact.
- Clean, Robust and Intuitive Interface – The RankMath dashboard is easy to use and navigate. Even more complex SEO tasks feel simple, and all the features are organised logically. You can get to any feature you need in less than two clicks. That’s impressive!
- 100-Point SEO Page Analysis Features – RankMath goes deep into SEO when analysing your pages and helps you optimise them for keywords. The scoring system is comprehensive and analyses each page for over 40 different ranking factors, including providing specific, actionable improvements.
- Up To 500 Websites On Agency Plan – If you purchase an Agency plan for just $59.99/month, you can use RankMath Pro on up to 500 websites. This will literally save you thousands compared to other premium SEO plugins.
- Constant Updates And Improvements – One thing I love about RankMath is how often they ship updates. Their development team is always working behind the scenes to improve the tool and add more features. That means they adapt quickly as the SEO industry evolves.
- Helpful Customer Support – Although there is no live chat support, RankMath customer service typically replies within 3-4 hours. At most, it may take them up to 24 hours. All their responses to me were helpful, and it is clear that the customer support team is very knowledgeable.
📋 RankMath Cons: What I Think You’ll Dislike
- Feature Overload For Beginners – There are a ton of tools and features inside RankMath. It may take a little while to get used to the tool suite. The good news is that RankMath has a setup wizard which will take care of the big things for you.
- Auto-Generate Alt Tags Must Be Reviewed – Auto-generated alt-tags sound good in theory, but the reality is that it’s very hit-and-miss. I found that the generated text was too generic for most of my images. If you use this feature, just double-check everything.
- Basic SEO Knowledge Required – The truth is that RankMath still requires some basic SEO knowledge. While you can set it up if you’re a beginner, you need to know what you’re doing to take advantage of all the features. It’s the same for other SEO plugins like Yoast, but it’s just something to keep in mind.
- No Live Chat Support – RankMath doesn’t offer live chat support. You have to go through the process of submitting a ticket and waiting for a response. Support is efficient, but if you need immediate assistance, you will have to rely on their extensive product documentation and solve the problem yourself.
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 2 reasons why Rank Math is considered more affordable than Yoast:
- Rank Math top-level plans are lower than Yoast.
- Yoast doesn’t offer an unlimited licence but Rank Math does with its Pro plan that supports unlimited websites.
Wrapping It Up
Here are the headlines of my Rank Math review:
- Rank Math is free to use but also offer premium plans starting at $6.99/mo.
- Rank Math is better than Yoast Premium ($99+ per year)
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 $99 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.
Rank Math is a great SEO plugin because it helps to optimize your website for better rankings in a couple of clicks.
It is also easy to use, even if you are unfamiliar with SEO.
They also have a great support team that is very responsive and they add new features constantly.
Frequently Asked Questions
Rank Math Review
- Review Of: Rank Math
- Reviewed By: Matthew Woodward
- Rating:
- Updated On: Apr 10, 2025
Summary:
Rank Math is the new best free SEO WordPress plugin for anyone that is building out their website. I have been running it across my fleet of sites for the last 9 months and have now converted all of my sites from Yoast SEO to RankMath.
View More DetailsYou Might Also Like
What Are Your Thoughts?
313 Responses
Great post. I tested a few different SEO plugins last year and liked Rankmath so much I started using it on a few of my own sites. I love the rich snippet part, it just works.
Cheers Henry – I’m very glad I made the switch 🙂
Matt, I’m so glad I found you! I just came across your work maybe 2 months ago and so much has changed in my SEO work since then. You’re the best. Excited to try this as all your other suggestions have worked so well too.
Hey Julieanne, that’s great to hear my blog has been helping shape your SEO strategy! And I’m sure you won’t be disappointed with Rank Math either.
Hey MatthewYour blog posts are the coolest.What are the specific affiliate and traffic WordPress plugins you use?Ronak.
Hey Ronak, thanks a lot. You can see my set up here – https://searchlogistics.com/tools-of-the-trade/
I am sold and have shared this within my Facebook groups and elsewhere on the various platforms that I operate for online marketers. Thanks and this is yet another no-brainer!Cheers!Dave
Great job. thanks for posting your blog. It’s useful for me.
No worries – glad I could help 🙂
good article thanks im using yoast seo, yoast is the best plugin for wordpress
Have you tried Rank Math?
I have been using yoast for a while now and it will be hard for me to switch to rank maths.
Why?
Your review motivated me to try this plugin on one of the websites. As long as I like it. Thank you!
Let me know what you think Michael.
Thanks for the information, I will try using rank math instead of yoast seo
Great decision!
Thanks for the article Matt, i’m really confused right now because i have been using yoast for thr past one year but i’ll try out rank Math to see if it truly works for me. Thanks again
You got nothing to lose!
The Post is very interesting and useful. Thanks for posting…
Glad I could help Hemanth
Absolutely I agree. I’ve been using Rank Math for over a year and I’m very pleased. After I started using Rank Math, I started to believe I was robbed by Yoast for years.
Rank Math are certainly taking the lead
I was using Yoast, but one a I tried Rank Math, i still using this because of its features. Yoast’s main features comes in paid plugin but Rank Math providing this all for free.
It’s a no brainer for sure.
Hi there,Really great content ! I absolutely concur with your investigation, I additionally changed to RankMath. There’s one thing that you should be cautious on the off chance that you are changing from All In One SEO. RankMath doesn’t have a Google Analytics code work, so ensure you embed your following code physically, else you will get a huge zero on your traffic.Thanks for sharing effective content………..
Thanks very much for the advice Zanta.
I just came to read about the best SEO plugins since I enjoy reading your articles, and boom… it’s RankMaths. I once switched from Yoast Premium to RankMaths, but had to switch back, reason been that how can a FREE plugin be better than a premium one. But then I created a poll in a Facebook booggers group between Yoast and RankMaths, and of course RankMaths won 🙂 I guess with this, it’s a complete switch for me. But Matt, are you really using RankMaths for this site?
I certainly aim using RankMath – made the switch a while back and gave it some time to see how it performed before publishing this review.
Thank you for this awesome article. I had shifted my site a couple of month ago and still doubted that whether I did it right or sud I shift back to yoast? this article cleared things up. Thanks
Happy I could give you peace of mind Suman 🙂
its so helpful I have a lash extensions blog and I increased visitors for many thousand in just 6 months, because Im uploading lashes tipps every day. thank you for the advice. hope it gets even bigger now
Best of luck Tina!
Thank you for sharing information, useful for me
Glad you found this useful 🙂
I just did the switch from yoast premium to rank math. I managed to do it in less than 3 minutes. I mean everything went so smooth. I am re-running a SEO Audit with semrush now, to see if anything shows wrong. If all look good I am going to apply this to more sites.
Glad to hear it Chris!
Hi Matthew! I agree your analysis. Thanks a lot for this information.
Happy I could help Julia 🙂
Rank Math is awesome, no doubt about it.But let me talk about their support team, OMG.. Trust me, they are better than even the paid ones.
Awesome feedback – thanks for sharing Samar!
Yep RankMath is certainly the leading tool right now 🙂
Great article, I’ve used Rankmath for a couple of years now. Very good plugin, haven’t had any issues. Unfortunately Yoast was giving my website a lot of problems.
Thanks for the feedback Marcus!
I started using Rank Math early last year when they first launched and since then, I have nlt tried any other plugin.They are good.
Agreed
I was a big fan of yoast seo, then begin change my mind when they killed free version by remove almost all free tools.Then i naturally discovered rank math as alternative, advice it to my friends that also prefer it.
It’s a great tool Renaud!
Yes i am use it also.Very good plugin.
Indeed it is!
Wooooo, thanks Matt. I saw your email some hours ago. I was excited ut worried at first. Before now I wanted to ditch Yoast for RankMAth but was afraid of losing ranking for my site. Gladly I found I could migrate without losing nothing. I just did. Thanks for the guifer ans spread sheet (even though I didn’t use it, lol).
Glad I could clear up any concerns 🙂
I’m using Yoast on other sites but I installed RankMath as a test on my new site and I’m loving it so farI also used All in One SEO Pack for some time but I didn’t like it so moved back to yoast but looks like now I got my winner
Using rankmath months ago and very happy with it and their support!
Glad to hear it Jorge
I’m using the paid version of Yoast for one client but will try out Rank Math on other client sites as I’ve been hearing positive things about them for a while now. It’s worth a look while its still free 😉
Definitely worth it Jose!
I’m thinking of trying
Make a backup of your site, if you don’t like it – roll it back!
This is interesting Mathew,I will try it out if it will help my Ranking. Thanks
No problem!
Looks good, will give it a try. Thank you Matt 🙂
No problem Shabu!
I’ve always wanted to move from Yoast and try something new but didn’t know any better alternative. Recently, I’ve been hearing positive reviews about RankMath. This guide right here will help me take a decision.
Great plugin and most importantly – great support!
Awesome review on Rank Maths, I think it’s high time I make the switch as well.Although I did few months ago and had some issues with the setup, however your guide will help do what’s necessary.I’m wearing my black for the funeral Yoast…Thank you Matthew Woodword
What problems did you have?
Great review Matt have you tried their instant index addon with rank math. I notice that it really does work here is the linkhttps://rankmath.com/blog/google-indexing-api/
Yes it’s running on this blog
Hi MathewThanks for the great tip.Just a quick question, why do you say it is not recommended for rankmath to set up your alt tags automatically?At the moment I have a plug in that whenever i save an image it automatically transfers the image name to my alt tags.
Because Alt tags are meant to be descriptive text of the image and offer additional SEO opportunities you should retain full control of
You’re right! No need for extra Payment with yoast.I’m currently using Rank Math and I’m happy I did that.Thanks for the awesome post. You just reminded me I took a good decision.
Great minds or something like that!
Thank you for this details review!Seeing SEO EXPERT like you using RANK MATH makes it a better alternative.I move from Yoast recently to rank math and I have seen a great improvement in a few months. 2 months to be precise. It was a great achievement for me this year.
Well its unlikely that moving from Yoast to RankMath or vice versa would have a big impact on search traffic but there’s being a number of Google updates making people happy
This is something worth checking and if it is as good as you say, it is safe to say this is going to disrupt the industry like any good product does.
They’ve been disrupting it for a while
I totally agree with your analysis, I also switched to RankMath. There’s one thing that you need to be careful if you are switching from All In One SEO. RankMath doesn’t have a Google Analytics code function, so make sure you insert your tracking code manually, otherwise you will get a big fat zero on your traffic…
Ahhh good extra tip, I am using MonsterInsights for my GA so that didn’t wobble me (which ironically used to be a Yoast product)
I’m not going to lie, I have to try it! Looks very interesting! Thanks!
Let us know how you get on!
Yes, RankMath is certainly the better plugin. I also shifted from Yoast to Rank Math for my website https://newerajobs.com and it is now performing much better. Lot’s of Results are now showing Rich Snippets.
Good job Sridhar!
Hi Matthew! Thanks a lot for this information. But isn’t it easier to just delete SEO yoast and then install rank math instead of migration?
Not unless you want to manually set everything up again
Thanks Matthew, actually I was looking for best Seo plugin from few days and I was also ready to pay few bucks if I got any good plugin.But as you are telling rankmath is all the features as Yoast premium have than thank you man to save some of my money to invest on any seo plugin.If it is really provide such information free as compare to Yoast premium I would definitely give it a try.
Yes I am sure you won’t be disappointed
I’m using RankMath it serving me well and I’ll Shift all my other sites to RankMathI Love the feature of SEO score
What were you using before?
We’ll pay $89 because RankMath will probably sell our info away… Who owns RankMath btw?
What makes you think that? Yoast has being in the headlines for the wrong reasons many times recently.RankMath is owned by https://mythemeshop.com/
This is very interesting. Since years Yoast has been my go to plugin but i always felt limited with it. Now would switch to RankMath. Thanks for putting this up Matthew.
Please let me know how you find it!
Hi MattGreat read and a surprising one too!So sad you ditched a longtime friend! :-)Anyways it’s looks like for a better interaction and business. :-)I have been using Yoast for a longtime now.Though the migration looks like a bit complicated one I think your guide will guide to fix it.Will surely try this too.Do we need to uninstall the existing Yoast before the migration or uninstall after the migration?I am bookmarking it for my use.Thanks Matt for this indepth guide.Season’s Greetings from Philipscom India.~ Phil
The migration is done in literally a couple of clicks of the mouse, it really is hard to do it wrong so don’t worry!
I always thought its a hype. With its band of loyal followers. Almost like a cult. Your review made me want to switch. Just the part on speed, I’m sold!
There’s a reason they have built up a band of followers