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Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the technique of increasing organic traffic to your website. SEO uses various means to accomplish this, but the end goal is to get your site ranked higher on a search engine result page such as Google or Bing. SEO can be a complex and time-consuming activity, but fortunately, you can use a plugin to make this task easier if you have a WordPress site.
Currently, there are two top-ranking SEO plugins, Yoast and Rank Math. This article will review each one to help you choose the plugin that’s right for your site.
Yoast and Rank Math: A Brief Overview
In 2010, Joost de Valk launched the Yoast SEO plugin for WordPress. It wasn’t long before it was the most sought-after SEO plugin worldwide. Today, it’s used by more than 11 million websites with over 5 million downloads.
Yoast helps website owners improve their search engine ranking by optimizing keywords, readability, metadata, and site descriptions.
Rank Math came onto the WordPress scene in 2018. It was launched by a team of developers and content creators known as MyThemeShop. They currently have more than 500,000 active users, and this number continues to grow every day. However, what sets Rank Math apart from Yoast is its automation features and its integration with WooCommerce.
Yoast vs. Rank Math: Feature Comparison
User Interface
Yoast’s interface is less modern than Rank Math, but it’s easy to navigate and works efficiently. Rank Math is just as user friendly as Yoast, only more attractive with a sleek, modern interface,
Focus Keywords
A focus keyword is the search word or term you want your post or page to be ranked for in search engines. In other words, it’s what you believe people will search for to find you.
Keywords are crucial to SEO, which is why both these plugins encourage you to add keywords to your site. For example, you can add one keyword per site in Yoast‘s free version and five keywords in their pro version. By contrast, Rank Math lets you add five keywords if you’re using their free version and unlimited keywords in their premium version.
Content Optimization and Analysis
Both of these plugins offer suggestions to help you optimize your content to improve your search engine ranking. However, the criteria for search engine ranking are constantly changing, and therefore SEO techniques must keep up to date with these changes.
Rank Math constantly updates its optimization suggestions, whereas Yoast is less on the ball. However, Rank Math doesn’t give the same readability tips that Yoast does. Instead, Yoast offers a separate readability analysis, highlighting areas that need work and suggesting how you can improve these areas. By contrast, Rank Math’s readability analysis is part of the site’s overall SEO score and doesn’t offer the same specificity that Yoast’s analysis does.
The Yoast plugin is weighty and can be a cause of slow page loading speeds. Rank Math, however, has fewer lines of code and adds fewer files to a website. As a result, it doesn’t slow page loading speeds.
Usability
These plugins offer a straightforward and intuitive setup and include interactive wizards to guide users through each step.
Rank Math offers two setup modes: easy and advanced. The easy option is for beginners who may find all the setting options overwhelming. In this case, Rank Math does all the work and applies all the default options.
The advanced option is for professionals and seasoned SEO specialists who want complete control of their websites.
Yoast’s dashboard is simple to navigate, and it offers suggestions that are easy to follow.
WooCommerce Integration
WooCommerce is WordPress’ eCommerce feature. Yoast and Rank Math both integrate with WooCommerce. However, Rank Math lets you optimize the metadata of a product for free, whereas Yoast only offers this feature to premium users.
Additional SEO Tools
Advanced SEO will require additional tools. Both Rank Math and Yoast offer advanced SEO tools, including:
- Google Search Console Integration
- XML sitemaps
- SEO breadcrumbs
- Site verification
- Schema markup
- Social media optimization
- Automatic canonical URLs
- Post preview
Rank Math offers many of these tools for free, while Yoast reserves many of these features for premium users. Additionally, Rank Math has features that Yoast doesn’t. These include a keyword rank tracker that helps you monitor your site against the competition and analyze your highest and lowest ranking posts. Furthermore, Rank Math offers an advanced schema generator that lets you choose from a list of pre-made templates or create custom ones. They also offer Google Trends integration, image SEO, automatic image captions, advanced redirects, 404 log, and advanced ‘nofollow’ link options.
Read: How to Fully Optimize SEO’s Digital Marketing
Conclusion
Although both plugins do SEO well and there’s really no wrong choice, we have to give the advantage to Rank Math. This plugin offers advanced features that no other SEO plugin does. Plus, these features are available for free.
Additionally, Rank Math is module-based, so you can pick and choose what features you want and don’t risk overloading your site.
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