Virtually every WordPress client and just about everything prospect that we look at utilizes Yoast’s WordPress SEO plugin to manage key elements for search engine optimization (SEO). Aside from the free plugin, Yoast offers an array of specialty plugins as well.
I’ve always found Yoast’s SEO plugin to be quite good, but there are a couple of pet peeves I’ve had:
- The Yoast SEO administrative panel has its own user experience that’s different from WordPress’s default user experience.
- Yoast is always pushing for folks to upgrade to one or more of their paid plugins. Hey… they provided a great free plugin that’s widely used, so I want to see them monetize that offering. However, sometimes it’s just a bit too pushy in my opinion, and loading more and more plugins isn’t what I really want with clients… I want less.
- The Yoast plugin requires quite a bit of resources and was slowing my site down.
We know – with mobile and search being critical – that you can lose hundreds or even thousands of visitors if your page load times are slower than your competitor… so the speed was the critical issue for me. It’s a bit disconcerting that an SEO plugin might actually slow down your site. I recognize that this is likely with any plugin, but it’s extremely critical with SEO.
Rank Math WordPress SEO Plugin
My friend, Lorraine Ball, mentioned the Rank Math SEO plugin and I had to immediately test it out. Lorraine’s agency, Roundpeg, builds beautiful and affordable WordPress sites for a ton of customers. I was instantly interested in testing out the plugin and loaded it up across several sites to see how well it performed.
The wizard to convert from the Yoast SEO Plugin to Rank Math is simple. Another advantage of the plugin is that you can also have it import and control your site redirects. I do wish they offered groups to organize your redirects, but reducing the number of plugins is worth the loss of that feature.
I especially appreciate Rank Math’s content analyzer, which is quite good for SEO novices to write and improve the content for keywords they may be targeting. There are a ton of features packed into this SEO plugin – with integrations to Google that make it incredibly powerful.
Rank Math Benefits and Features
- Easy to Follow Setup Wizard – Rank Math practically configures itself. Rank Math features a step-by-step installation and configuration wizard that sets up SEO for WordPress perfectly. Upon installation, Rank Math verifies your site’s settings and recommends the ideal settings for best performance. The step-by-step wizard then sets up your site’s SEO, social profiles, webmaster profiles, and other SEO settings.
- Clean & Simple User Interface – Rank Math is designed to present the right information to you at the right time. The simple, but powerful user interface highlights important information about your posts alongside the post itself. Using this information, you can improve your post’s SEO instantaneously. Rank Math also features advanced snippet previews. You can preview how your post will appear in the SERPs, preview rich snippets, and even preview how your post will look when shared on social media.
- Modular Framework – Use only what you want and disable the rest. Rank Math is built using a modular framework so you can have complete control of your website. Disable or enable modules whenever you need them.
- Code Optimized for Speed – We wrote the code from scratch and ensure every line of code has a purpose. We have put years of experience into this so the plugin is as fast as it possibly can be.
- Created by People Behind the MyThemeShop – With Rank Math, you know you are in good hands. Coding and maintaining a portfolio of 150+ WordPress products has taught us a thing or two about making better plugins. And, we have poured all our knowledge into coding Rank Math.
- Industry-Leading Support – We take care of our own. You won’t be left high and dry when you use Rank Math. We offer the fastest turn-around time for support queries and fix bugs faster than you can find them.
After over a year of running this plugin, I’ve upgraded to the paid version and migrated all of my clients to it. I’ve also updated my recommendation list of WordPress plugins for business with Rank Math as an alternative for Yoast and the Redirection plugins.
Rank Math vs. Yoast SEO
The transition of all my clients to this plugin has been incredible. I’m definitely not trying to downplay the quality of Yoast nor the impact it’s had on the WordPress SEO industry, but this re-engineering of an SEO plugin has been dramatic. It’s faster, it’s easier to use, and it’s much more robust – especially the Pro version, which is now translated into German, Spanish, French, Italian, Japanese, and Dutch.
I’m certain you’ll see the benefits. As an aside, I’d honestly like to see the team at Automattic bring this incredible plugin under their company to give SEO the attention it deserves. The Jetpack SEO options are woefully inadequate.
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