When it comes to SEO plug-ins for Wordpress, there are two standards that it seems most people use. Those are All-in-One SEO and Yoast SEO.

Personally, I have been using Yoast SEO. And, while you can do a ton with the free version, I actually do have the Premium version and have been pretty happy with it.

But, I came across something that might be better.

And some people think it will actually grow to become a new standard and outpace Yoast eventually when it comes to Wordpress SEO.

And get this…

It is free.

It does the stuff that the Premium version of Yoast SEO does, but you don’t have to pay a thing for it.

It is called RankMath.

Now, to be clear, I don’t have much experience with this plug-in yet. I have turned it on on my staging site and I may be switching to it on my LIVE site. But, it isn’t as if I have been using this for long and can vouch for it based on a well of experience. Yet.

But, I gotta say, I like what I’m seeing.

First of all, if you’ve been using either All-In-One or Yoast, switching to RankMath is super easy. It will import everything and you lose no data. It will then turn off the former plug-in and you’ll be off to the races using RankMath.

But, here’s what I dig about it so far…

• It has a smaller code footprint (meaning it is faster)
• It has a super easy setup wizard so you’re not left trying to figure out what to do
• It will track keywords, ranking, etc.
• It handled all your redirects (which Yoast requires the paid version to do)
• It can control your robots.txt file
• It gives a nice interface for optimizing every blog post for search, with advice on what to do
• It will monitor 404 errors
• You can optimize your posts in bulk
• It supports rich snippets (Yoast does not)
• The interface us prettier, which does matter to me.

There’s more, but this plug-in packs a punch, does everything you would need from an SEO plug-in… and it costs nothing. Which is pretty amazing.I think RankMath is going to grow in popularity.

It is pretty new… and doesn’t have the track record of the other ones.  Some have reported bugs. Also, because it is new, switching to it may be a one-way street because other plug-ins won’t have an import from RankMath. So, as with anything, back up first and I also recommend testing in a staging site.

But, it looks quite promising.