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…

Rank Math.

learn how to increase your search traffic in 28 days

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:

Yoast SEO vs Rank Math review SEO

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:

title readability rankmath

They allow you to optimize for up to 5x target keywords per page for free, which you would have to pay for with Yoast-

focus keyword rankmath

And, they have a 1x-click advanced SEO analysis tool, to help you perform a site-wide audit in a jiffy:

Site Wide Audit Tool

And best of all?

 It’s absolutely free.

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.

Check if you are using blacklisted backlinks

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:

Yoast to Rank Math Migration 34x Key Stats

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

setup wizard

And you should see this prompt:

import data from yoast

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

setup wizard

You will see this page:

rankmath import seo settings

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:

site details

Click ‘Save and Continue’.

Now, connect your Google Search Console account:

connect google services

*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.

sitemap

*Save and continue.*

On the SEO Tweaks page, leave everything as default. That should look like this:

seo tweaks rankmath

*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-

image seo settings

*Save your changes.*

Then go to:

Rank Math > Titles & Meta > Global Meta

On this page, turn ‘Capitalize titles’ ON.

global meta rankmath

*Save your changes.*

Then head to:

Rank Math > Titles & Meta > Homepage

And fill out your homepage information:

Homepage Information

*Save your changes.*

Finally, go to:

Rank Math > Titles & Meta > Social Meta

And fill out all of your social profiles:

social meta rankmath

*Save your changes.*

And…that’s it!

 Once you have completed this list you have set up the world’s best free SEO plugin.

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-

Process Review

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:

Removed Canonicalization Tags

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.

download the link building checklist

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.

download the on page seo checklist

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:

  1. Rank Math top-level plans are lower than Yoast.
  2. Yoast doesn’t offer an unlimited licence but Rank Math does with its Pro plan that supports unlimited websites.
increase your search traffic in 28 days

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:

Rich Snippets Errors

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-

Rich Snippets Fixed

There was also a remarkable drop off in the errors on my site after installing:

Less Site Errors

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?

rank math 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.

We have publish tons of SEO case studies

Frequently Asked Questions

Rank Math is a Search Engine Optimization plugin for WordPress that I was so impressed by, I migrated all of my sites to use it. They offer a lot of incredible features under one roof and best of all – it’s 100% free.
Rank Math is totally worth it. It's probably the best alternative to Yoast at the time of writing. It's a handy plugin that can help you with your SEO tasks such as on page optimization, content analysis, redirects, rich snippets, etc. All of that, for free!
Yes, it is! At the time of writing Rank Math is 100% free for anyone to use. Not surprising that it's becoming a 'must have' SEO tool.
The biggest difference is pricing, RankMath is completely free. Yoast on the other hand has a freemium model which means you have to pay to access all of the plugins features. Rank Math allows you to enjoy all of those premium features for free, but that might change in the future if they release a premium version.
Yes – there is a dedicated setup wizard that will take you through the migration process. Rank Math will import all of your settings in one click but please see my full tutorial above for the correct testing procedure.
No, you can’t use Rank Math and Yoast on the same website. You need to migrate from one plugin to another. If you don’t know how to do that, just follow my step by step process.
Yes, it is! Rank Math’s main objective is to help people improve their SEO results by giving them actionable recommendations to work on.
Yes, Rank Math is a safe WordPress plugin! They had some vulnerability issues in the past (earlier versions) but have found a way to fix them in their latest version.

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.

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What Are Your Thoughts?

313 Responses

  1. Adrian Lawrnece

    I am trying Rank maths – it does seem better than Yoast but there are more bugs for example I have to save a page maybe 3 or 4 times if I change the meta tags, they change on the page but rank maths thinks the meta description is blank until the 4th save attempt.The schema feature seems to help. I have noticed an improvement in ranks since implementing but issue with SEO is its hard to know what reasons are behind changes, maybe would have happened anyway etc

    1. Matthew Woodward

      Thank you for sharing your experience with us, Adrian! Keep it up!

  2. Snake

    I switched all my sites to rankmath… there is no doubt it is a superior plugin. Although the equivalent Yoast cost is actually much higher as you would need to buy all the yoast paid plugins to get the same functionality that Rankmath provides in just 1 plugin, and almost all of it is in the free version.Even if pay for the Rankmath pro, it is only $59 per year for ALL functionality, so again still lot cheaper than Yoast, where you have to buy multiple plugins.Yoast definitely dropped the ball here and obviously thought they were untouchable, so did nothing to improve or be more competitive.The only really downside is the support.So far my experiences with Rankmath support have not been great. They kept deleting my posts on their facebook group, and then banned me from the group.When I asked why, they claimed the group was not for support and I was not allowed to post questions.This was of course total nonsense, as that is exactly what the group was used for, and people were posting questions on a daily basis and getting answers.Although my posts were questions to the group, not support requests.I believed they were deleting my posts because they were related to missing functionality and functionality that was not working correctly, which they did not want others to see.Despite that, I am still a paying customer.Although I cannot really rate yoast support either, I did find them rather arrogant.

    1. Matthew Woodward

      Wow, thank you for this in-depth feedback! Sorry to hear that your experience with the support team wasn’t great…

  3. John Carpenter

    In my Experience . Rank math is garbage plugin. Full of bugs. Why i still prefer yoast, it is because of their support and less buggy nature. Even other seo plugins better than rank math. Their schema has some issues, reported some time ago and that problem still not fixed (even though they claim it got fixed) and they not replying to support thread any more. That not how paid customer should be treated.. Rank math becomes popular because of their aggressive misleading marketing. That is what i think…

    1. Matthew Woodward

      Thank you for giving us your point of view!

  4. tata

    bad customer service, scam, they keep changing on the plans to his benefits one day u see the keywords limit 20000 the next day 10000 , and when you ask him politely, he gets violent . he doesnt know how to customer service

    1. Matthew Woodward

      Yeah, they are making some changes and creating new plans. I’m sorry you had such a bad experience with them though.

  5. antonio

    Such an useful info that you shared with us.

    1. Matthew Woodward

      Hope it helps!

  6. Kevin

    The 404 page is not as good as in Yoast and neither is the redirects section. In yoast it automatically redirects when you trash a post ans then gives you a simple offer to send it. Rank math does not do this yet. You still have to do all this manually. I aslo found that this article is an old article as it does not seem to allow import of yoast anymore.

    1. Matthew Woodward

      Hey Kevin! Thanks for giving us your opinion. I just wanted to remind you that Rank Math is free (unlike Yoast) and is constantly improving to offer the best services to their clients. So yes, Yoast has some features more “developed/advanced” than Rank Math, but do they worth all the money you have to pay for?

  7. Broker fraud Recovery

    good post

    1. Matthew Woodward

      Thanks! Always happy to help!

  8. Codeaxia Digital Solutions

    thank you so much I really appreciate your work here and you provide me best information which I need most thank you very much !!!!!

    1. Matthew Woodward

      Cheers!

  9. Pat

    I just looked at the new pricing for RM Pro. The comparison chart seems to show that Free will have none of the features it now has. Is it a typo that the free column has X all the way down?

    1. Matthew Woodward

      Hey Pat – I just checked as well, and if you click on “compare more feature” at the bottom of the comparison chart, you can see all the features it has now and that it’s going to keep- for free. Most of the features you can see at the top are news and will only be available for the pro & business versions.

  10. Rishab

    Rankmath is far better than Yoast

    1. Matthew Woodward

      I couldn’t agree more!

  11. AJITHJI

    Thanks for sharing

    1. Matthew Woodward

      No problem!

  12. maulik shah

    Thanks for sharing this interesting article, If it is really provides such information free as compare to Yoast premium I would definitely give it a try.

    1. Matthew Woodward

      Yep! Try it and let me know what you think of it 🙂

  13. maulik shah

    It was a really interesting article, thanks for sharing it with us,.

    1. Matthew Woodward

      No problem!

  14. maksudur

    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.

    1. Matthew Woodward

      Great – Let me know if it works for you 🙂

  15. Abdul Ahad

    Thanks for the deep review. It’s time to quite yoast seo and move to rank math,,,

    1. Matthew Woodward

      I couldn’t agree more, Abdul! You’ll see, it worths it!

  16. moonawan

    this article is very helpful thanks a lot dear keep it up.

    1. Matthew Woodward

      Thanks for reading my blog!

  17. ansar habib

    I like the helpful info you supply on your articles. I’ll bookmark your blog and check once more here frequently. I am relatively certain I will be informed a lot ofnew stuff proper here! Good luck for the following!

    1. Matthew Woodward

      Thank you, Ansar!

  18. Yash Singh

    Amazing article brother! Your big fan from India. I even gave you a backlink to this article.

    1. Matthew Woodward

      Thank you Yash – I appreciate it! 🙂

  19. Site Para Advogados

    Great article! I was searching for RankMath vs Yoast SEO and just found this post. Im definitely moving to RankMath now…

    1. Matthew Woodward

      Good decision! 😉

  20. Tent Depot

    Excellent post. thank you for this! This is very helpful.

    1. Matthew Woodward

      No problem! Glad you enjoy my work 🙂

    2. BODYMAN

      It was great and useful. Thank

  21. Lars Petersen

    Irritated that I opened your email this evening (the Pro Seo Tools from sept 15.). Now I see this:1: I’m behind on so many levels2: I have a lot less time to watch soccer on TV3: I have to clean my office, because I will be sitting there for hours when I crawl through all the information from your website.4: my plan on making an affilliate website will have to come on the table again.All and all – less sleep, and less leisure time. 🙂

    1. Matthew Woodward

      Haha sorry, Lars… 😉 keep the hard work up – It worths it!

  22. Mohammad Atique

    Yes, the article is very informative for those who wants to switch from Yoast to Rank math. I got to know benefits also from this website.

    1. Matthew Woodward

      Thanks, Mohammad – Are you going to switch?

  23. kamran

    useful information seen on internet today. It contain very useful information. Article is nicely explained and easy to understand. Thanks for sharing this valuable information with us. Keep your good work.

    1. Matthew Woodward

      No problem Kamran! Always happy to help!

  24. Klaas Koopman

    Matthew, how about SEOpress? I’ve been reading some good stuff about it. But I can’t find a proper SEOpress vs RankMath review anywhere?

    1. Matthew Woodward

      Hey Klass – I personally don’t use SEOpress but I heard good stuff about it too. Perhaps, I should add it to my list for an eventual article!

  25. songlyricst

    which seo plugin use your website

    1. Matthew Woodward

      Please read the post – I use Rank Math on my website.

  26. citysearch

    I’m not going to lie, I have to try it! Looks very interesting! Thanks!

    1. Matthew Woodward

      Great! Try it and tell me how it goes! Would love to hear your feedback.

  27. mohsin

    hye Matthis is good thought and i really inspire good job keep it up

    1. Matthew Woodward

      Thank Mohsin!

  28. Hitesh

    Migrating from Yoast SEO Premium to Rank math! But… Did you find any feature that Rankmath lacks and still better in Yoast premium?Help me out, please..

    1. Matthew Woodward

      To be honest, nop – Rank Math does a pretty good job.

  29. alisbha khan

    I love this article it’s amazing and inspiring

    1. Matthew Woodward

      Thank you Alisbha.

  30. Dev

    Thanks for the informationI hope this will help me

    1. Matthew Woodward

      No problem Dev!

  31. Abhay Gautam

    Hi Matthew,Awesome Post! I am great fan of your website and the case studies you publish on this. After reading this indepth post i am pretty much sure that RankMath SEO Plugin is way far better than Yoast SEO plugin. I totally agree with you that installing too many can slow down your website and here Rankmath does a great with lots of inbuilt features like Redirection, AMP and Analytics.Whereas while using Yoast plugin we need to install different plugins for doing AMP, Redirection and analytics. Thanks for sharing…Cheers,Abhay

    1. Matthew Woodward

      Thank you for your comment Abhay! Keep up the good work!

  32. Olivier Mamet

    Check out SEO Press. Premium is a one payment unlimited use and the depth is pretty good.

    1. Matthew Woodward

      I will – thanks for the suggestion Olivier

  33. Rajan

    best article thanks for sharing with us

    1. Matthew Woodward

      No problem, Rajan!

  34. Shihab

    That’s right information!! No need for extra Payment with yoast seo plugin.Thanks for sharing a great exprence!

    1. Matthew Woodward

      No problem! Always happy to help!

  35. Shayur Maharaj

    Great piece with some compelling points.

    1. Matthew Woodward

      Thanks, Shayur!

  36. CBM

    Thanks i using seo yoast with 3 add ons and now rank math handle alone for everything, Thanks for helping out take out time and share awesome review. have a great day

    1. Matthew Woodward

      No worries! Happy that Rank Math works well for you!

  37. Michael Evans

    It is worth to try using Rankmath, but to be sure we would apply in our non production site first.Thanks for sharing this Matthew!

    1. Matthew Woodward

      No problem, Michael! Thanks for reading.

  38. Jalaj Pandey

    I’m using Yoast plugin for SEO but I’ve also heard about RankMath plugin, and your article just cleared my all doubts, I’ll use rankmath on my new travel blog.Thanks for sharing 🙂

    1. Matthew Woodward

      Hey Jalaj – Glad I helped you make the right decision!

  39. eduardo

    I was trying Rank Math at the start of building my website, but as a multilingual site (with translate press pro) I found that RankMath was not working perfectly. So I build with Yoast and (free option) and it looks to work fine. After reading your review I’m trying to come back to Rank Math but the plugin is not detecting my Yoast settings, so setup wizard starts from 0 and if I try to import before the setup wizard don’t take all data.

    1. Matthew Woodward

      Hey Eduardo – Have you followed the process step by step? If you’re having issues, I suggest you send an email to Rank Math, they’ll help you out!

  40. lutfi

    thanks for the advice, my website has just switched to rank math.

    1. Matthew Woodward

      Great news!

  41. Rabi

    Hi, Matt. Can I also follow the same steps here to migrate from All in One SEO free to Rank Math?

    1. Matthew Woodward

      Hey Rabi – Yes, you can!

  42. Hasnain

    I agree with a lots of things here, Yoast was getting outdated. But there are not a lot many competitors for SEO Yoast…

    1. Matthew Woodward

      Yes, you’re right! But Rank Math does perfectly the job – for free – so no need to look for hours for other competitors! 😉

  43. Paul

    I’m using Rankmath, not really fond of the Schema results though. And im also curious what Seopress can do :). Maybe in the next review ?

    1. Matthew Woodward

      Hey Paul! Maybe, thanks for the suggestion!

  44. kumkum

    I think rank math is much better than Yoast for beginners or new bloggers…

    1. Matthew Woodward

      Totally right!

  45. Larry Bohen

    Is there any value in deactivating Yoast SEO, rather than deleting it on my website while I activate and test Rank Math?

    1. Matthew Woodward

      Nop. I would suggest you follow my step by step process to have a successful migration!

  46. Binil P

    Rank Math does make a lot of difference in rankings. Have been using it for quite some time now. The results are pretty good.

    1. Matthew Woodward

      Glad to hear that! keep up the good work!

  47. sunil sharma

    awsome guide matthew previously i was using yoast plugin but after reading your article i will go for rank math.thanks for such a informative guide.

    1. Matthew Woodward

      Great news, Sunil! Let me how the switch goes!

  48. Glenn Freeman

    Great post. I switched from Yoast to Rank math about 6 months ago and I have never looked back.

    1. Matthew Woodward

      Nice! You certainly made the right decision!

  49. nilkumar pal

    I really like this content, I have learned by reading this content

    1. Matthew Woodward

      Glad to hear that! Hope you’ll apply what you’ve learned.

  50. Chris

    Thanks for you recommendation, Matthew. I have made the switch tp RankMath. It was easy to do and I found the Schema much easier to configure than All in One SEO. This should now eliminate the errors on my store pages that I was getting warnings about from Google.

    1. Matthew Woodward

      Hey Chris. That’s good news!

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