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 review. Last month I did not renew my paid Squirrly SEO account and plugin and switched to RankMath. Much easier to use and does dig deeper. The best part, no charge.
Glad to hear that the switch was a success for you!
Hey! If you’re interested in social media, then I recommend you to have a look here: https://searchlogistics.com/blogging/ Scroll down a little and you’ll find a blue section called “Social Media & Email”. There you can find several articles on this topic. Hope it helps!
Thanks Matthew for review. Did you try The SEO Framework plugin? I moved from Yoast to it several years ago and more than happy with it. It’s interesting to know your opinion.
Not yet, but I’ll have a look at it, for sure! Thanks for the suggestion, Alexander.
Matthew, do you only use Rank Math now and not SurferSEO? Or do you utilise both plugins?
I only use Rank Math now. I recommend you to use this plugin on its own, and not combining it with other plugins, so there is no competition between the two tools, and your site isn’t slowed down.
Matthew… can u share information “Social media optimization”
Great article, many thanks Matthew. I’m looking at using Elementor page builder on my Genesis site and now see that Rank Math integrates well with this whereas Yoast doesn’t at all! Another reason I intend to swap.
Thank you, Simon!I’m glad I helped you to take your decision. Let us know how the swap goes!
Thank you very much. I got very useful information. Thank you.
Thanks for reading!
Well I gave all to Yoast but today I must try this and see if I can come up at all. Thanks
Try and let us know how it goes!
Its been a while since I switched to rank math and now im not having 2nd thoughts about it
Very helpful, a friend actually invited me to check up your Article and it’s worth the time reading. thanks Matthew
Thank you! I’m happy you enjoyed reading my article.
your articles always help me for many SEO related problems
Glad to hear that! Thanks Carol.
I have been a Yoast Premium user for a while now and have considered it one of the better SEO plugins out there. With Google Web Vitals expected in the near future, any help to keep time spent on SEO would be helpful.I noticed that you updated this post in March, no buyer’s remorse?
Non at all! Rank Math all the way 🙂
Thank you for sharing! This is a great help for those who want to improve their SEO.
Happy I could help.
Hi Matthew, After reading this about Rankmath.Am also being a fan of it and after here going to install on my blog. Thank you for this amazing article.
Great news! It’s a fantastic tool.
Thanks for info. Going to give it a try. Sick of the new yoast versions with bug fixes, but new features with bugs so never a stable bug free version. Each new version needs four fixes to not cause issues. Hey…broken site is bad for seo! Also sick of intrusive popups on delete of post, or save permalinks you cannot remove. Or new usertype added when not needed, etc.
I’ve had no regrets from making the switch!
Hey Mat, love your stuff but please be honest – were you paid by the plugin developers to write this review?
No it wasn’t but even if it was a paid review it wouldn’t have changed the output. When I point out to companies asking me to write a review, that I will publish all my findings good and bad, I don’t usually hear back from about 75% of them.
This is the best Rank Math Plugin review I came across! I wish I had discovered it earlier on. 10 days ago I decided to swap from Yoast SEO Plugin to SEO PRESS (also free but with limited functionalities) and I haven’t really noticed any improvements so far. I’m really intrigued now by Rank Math as it looks like offering “paid features” for free, and would like to switch from SeoPress to Rank Math, the only doubt I have is, should I wait a bit longer before doing a second plugin switch in such a short time. Do you think I can do it? Thanks for your advice on this.
Yes of course, just make a backup of your site, then if you don’t like it, switch back!
Finally decided to give it a try and really loving it so far.
Great decision Alessio 🙂
This post is just amazing. The way you explain everything about Rank math. I just switched to Rank Math yesterday & your post motivate me to use it more… Thanks!
Awesome, nice one Rajesh.
Great tips, I have just started getting more serious about writing/blogging and anything that makes the best use of time is helpful!
In that case you should take a look at Surfer SEO – https://searchlogistics.com/seo/reviews/surfer-seo/
This is very helpful article and informative as well. Thank you so much for posting.
Happy I could help Romel
Thank you so much, this plugin really offers what it doesn’t in Yoast SEO premium, plus I didn’t have to pay almost 100 bucks for plugins which aren’t that useful compared to this.
Yep it’ll make you money and save you money at the same time 🙂
I just switched over to rankmath from yoast. However I’m a little hesistant…I hope they don’t get everyone on it for free and then start charging….or reducing its capabilities until you pay a fee?
They seem pretty trustworthy to me.
Finally I am convinced with the features. It really better than Other SEO plugins.
Agreed!
Thanks for sharing.
Hope you found the review useful.
Excellent review, currently I am using Rank Math on my blog. Good SEO plugin
Glad you agree Palash 🙂
thank you very much matt for this great tips, i am moving to rank-math todayi didn’t believe it when my friend said rank math works well than Yoast. But with the point you listen am going for rank math
Thanks – glad the article helped 🙂
Thanks for the article. I think rankmath is gaining some weight.
It certainly is.
I used Yoast SEO for 6 years but i am happy with the migration rank math is the feature 🙂
It’s a great tool Malik!
The truth about Rank Maths is that;It is entirely different from Yoast SEO.If you are planning to have a green light while writing you blog post;Rank Maths is the answer to that, unlike Yoast Plugin.It’s not that am downgrading or discouraging you from using Yoast Plugin.Rank Maths help you to setup your blog title that best satisfy search engine and human search.One good thing is themeta description tag.It calculate the length of your meta description writeup, by displaying it in numbers.Showing you a red bar if you write above 160 characters.Anything I like about Rank Maths, is the;Keywords bar.It has the ability to display long tail keywords.Like, when you type marketing startup;It will display; * Marketing startup * Marketing startup ideas * Marketing startup ideas agencyBut the problem is that, it will not give in deep of those keywords.That is what I can say about Rank Maths plugin for now.Setup Rank Maths is not as difficult as you think.I have use Yoast Plugin and it’s great.But after I started using MyThemeShop Plugin, and I discovered Rank Maths, that was when I decide to Leave Yoast Plugin for Rank Maths Plugin.
Thanks for sharing your experience Paul.
love it, really really amazing.
Certainly is a great tool.
Great set of tips from the master himself. Excellent ideas.
Thanks very much!
Rank Math is really a killer plugin when compared to Yoast & others. Moreover it’s a free plugin offering pro features. Most of the premium features offered by Yoast SEO is available for free in Rank Math. Easy to setup & very good user interface. I have been using Rank Math from past 6 months. Really liked it over other SEO plugins.
Glad to hear you are having a great experience with Rank Math too !
Hi MattGreat read and a surprising one too! Thanks for sharing these article.
No worries!
Can someone point me to one major website who made the switch from Yoast and can show via Google Analytics any traffic improvement over time?
Hi,thanks for such an informative piece of content…I was using yoast seo on my site for a long time but now i think i will switch to rank math
Hope it goes well Ankit
Thanks for sharing your idea.
Happy to help.
I was using Yoast free and even then it felt clunky and outdated (and I hated having to scroll to the bottom of a 2,000 word post every time I needed to check something).I can’t get over how good RankMath is. My posts are taking longer to write, but they’re better posts now, and my blog is going to do better for it. Now if only we can find a free, decent keyword research tool! 😉
Try this out – https://searchlogistics.com/steal-your-seo-strategy/
Hi Matthew;thanks for this tutorial.I plan to switch to Rank Math really soon, and it will come in handy.I was hesitant because I didn’t want to mess up my SEO but you gave me the idea to track what’s happening with a Google spreadsheet.Very cool:)
Good luck Nikola!
Very informative………thanks for sharing
No problem Vikas 🙂
I would definitely love to try this tool. It looks promising with features to improve posts.
I was very impressed when I made the switch
Changed from Yoast to Rank Math a week ago. I had been sitting on third and fourth position on all my keywords for about a year. Within a week went to no 1 position. I only found this tool when I looked at the no 1 ranking for my keywords and noticed they used Rank Math. I researched it and thought why not I can always go back to Yoast. Best move I have made.
Haha fantastic news Maggie 🙂
Obliviously rankmath is best.I was use rankmath on my clients websites..They are awesome.
Yup, very true
Great news – hope you like it as much as I do 🙂
Thanks for this review on RankMath. I just started using it after reading your content.
Useful Information for SEO. Thanks for sharing
No worries- happy to help
Very nice review, Matthew, After reading your review. I have installed Rank Math on one of my website and I was able to import all the setting from the yoast premium and also from Schema Pro plugin. This free plugin doing the work of two premium WordPress plugin. My website had close to couple of thousands of pages. All the SEO settings were imported in less than five minutes. I am going to install Rank Math Plugin on my other WordPress websites.
Great news Niharika! It’s such a great tool considering it’s free!
interesting information…..
Thanks William
You gave us lots of information, along with examples that are very helpful for me. Thank you so much for sharing.
Glad you found this review helpful 🙂
I also shift to Rankmath and find it very useful. They are doing really great job.
Glad to hear it Kuldeep.
Been using Rankmath for months now. Absolutely love it and the team is very responsive and professional. I want to buy the Pro when it comes to simply support all their hard work.
Great feedback thanks Johnny and I’ll definitely be purchasing it too 🙂