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Updated on December 30th, 2023 at 12:45 pm

Rank Math vs All In One SEO. If you are wondering which one of these two WordPress SEO plugins is best for your new blog, then you’ve landed on the right page.

When it comes to starting and running a money-making blog, one of the most important things to stay on top of is search engine optimization.

But with so many amazing WordPress SEO plugins available out there, it’s very easy to get lost in what we like to call analysis paralysis. You just can’t decide.

Should I go with Rank Math? Should I go with All In One SEO?

If this sounds like you right now, then don’t worry. I have compiled a conclusive comparison of these two plugins to help you make an informed decision.

In this post, we’ll compare Rank Math against All In One SEO with respect to their features and decide which one is better than the other.

I’ll also finish off by revealing which plugin I personally use for this blog and therefore highly recommend to you too.

Alright, let’s get this battle started.

Onboarding – Rank Math Vs All In One SEO

Getting Started with Rank Math

Getting started with the Rank Math plugin is super simple. Once you install and activate the plugin, the setup wizard appears and it guides you through a few steps to set up Rank Math features on your site.

The first step is usually to create and connect a free Rankmath.com account.

rank math registration

The reason you need to do this is so that the plugin can integrate with your Rank Math account and provide you with keyword suggestions from Google search right in your dashboard.

This step is optional when you are getting started but it is highly recommended. Here is why.

After connecting your site with your Rank Math account, the setup wizard takes you through a total of 5 steps to configuring every detail for your site.

The steps may seem a bit complicated for a complete beginner, but they are easy to understand and complete in a few minutes.

rank math wizard site is ready

Getting Started with All-In-One SEO

The All In One SEO plugin is easy to set up as well.

all in one SEO setup wizard

Once you have installed and activated the plugin, a setup wizard appears and it helps you to set up AIOSEO for your site.

This process involves entering a bunch of information about your site such as:

  • Which Category best describes your website?
  • Homepage Title + Meta description
  • Additional site info i.e phone number, logo, social profiles
  • SEO features to be enabled
  • Search Appearance Settings

If you’ve purchased the PRO version of AIOSEO, the last step in the wizard is usually to enter your license key. Otherwise, you can skip that step, click to finish the wizard, and then proceed to your dashboard.

For a complete beginner, this can seem quite complicated and a bit daunting. But most features are self-explanatory and the wizard is relatively easy to navigate and complete.

âš– Verdict: I have personally tested both All In One SEO and Rank Math on my blog here and I would say that Rank Math was much easier to set up and get started. So this particular round goes to Rank Math for its easier setup wizard.

Keyword Analysis – Rank Math vs All In One SEO

I’d say this round is quite crucial because the most important feature of an SEO plugin is its ability to optimize your blog pages for search.

So you definitely want to go with one that has the best features and will therefore help you rank higher in search results and get more visitors to your blog.

Luckily, both Rank Math and AIOSEO are industry leaders and they come with numerous features to help you optimize your pages for search appearance.

Owing to their individual effectiveness in keyword analysis/optimization, I believe determining one winner between the two will be quite tricky. But we’ll do it anyway, so let’s check out their features.

All-In-One SEO Keyword Analysis

The AIOSEO plugin comes with some cool SEO features. The most significant is the meta box which appears both at the bottom of your content and on the right sidebar.

The meta box allows you to enter your Focus Keyphrase which is the term the plugin uses for the main keyword you are targeting for a particular post.

all in one seo scoring system

Once you have added your keyword, AIOSEO analyzes your content in accordance with the given keyphrase. It then gives you a TrueSEO score based on a few criteria.

As seen above, it checks things like:

  • Focus keyphrase in the SEO title
  • Focus keyphrase in the meta description
  • Focus keyphrase length
  • Focus keyphrase in URL
  • Focus keyphrase in the introduction

AIO SEO also factors in things like your content length, internal and external links, meta description length, paragraph length, sentence length, and active/passive voice presence. All these factors contribute to the score.

If your TrueSEO score doesn’t turn green, the meta box shown above gives you suggestions on how to improve the score.

This in my opinion is quite amazing because it helps you to make sure your page is highly optimized to rank for that keyword.

Rank Math Keyword Analysis

Much like AIO SEO, Rank Math also has a meta box with an amazing interface that appears in your WordPress post editor.

The Rank Math meta box only appears on the right sidebar when you click on the score.

rank math meta box on the right sidebar

As you can see above, Rank Math allows you to use more than one keyword for your posts, even in the free version of the plugin.

This, in my opinion, is one of the biggest advantages of Rank Math over AIO SEO. All-in-One SEO only allows one keyword per post in the free version. But you can get unlimited keywords if you upgrade to PRO.

On the other hand, Rank Math allows up to 5 keywords for the same post in the free version, and unlimited keywords when you upgrade to the PRO version.

Going back to keyword analysis, the Rank Math interface works very much the same as All in One SEO.

It gives you a score based on metrics like:

  • Focus keyword in the SEO title
  • Focus keyword in the meta description
  • Focus keyword in the URL
  • Focus keyword in the first 10% of the content
  • Keyword density
  • Focus keyword in subheadings
  • Internal and External Linking
  • Content length
  • Table of Contents presence/absence

If your score doesn’t change to green, you can follow the given suggestions to improve on it.

Now, most of these tests and scores are pretty much similar to how All in SEO works, except for one thing… There is just one last metric that Rank Math factors into your score that AIOSEO doesn’t.

It’s a Rank Math exclusive feature, and I personally think it’s quite impressive. Let’s take a closer look at it.

Content AI – A Rank Math Exclusive Keyword Analysis Feature

What is Content AI?

Content AI is an amazing Rank Math Artificial Intelligence that enables you to access related keywords, suggestions, questions, and links right in your WordPress editor.

It also gives you suggestions as to how long your content should be, how many internal and external links you should include, and how many media elements should be present in your post in order to compete with other high-ranking posts that are similar to yours.

Isn’t that pretty cool? I think that it is.

Rank Math’s Content AI allows you to assess other well-performing and high-ranking posts on Google and gives you suggestions on how you can make your post a little better than theirs.

Check out its interface.

Rank Math Content AI

As you can see, the Content AI gives you suggestions on how to optimize your post by providing actionable data + keyword suggestions from Google search directly in your WordPress editor.

âš– Verdict: Owing to the fact that Rank Math allows up to 5 keywords in the free version, while AIOSEO allows only one, I think it’s easy to give this round to Rank Math… again. Also, Rank Math’s Content AI feature is pretty cool and makes the decision even easier. So yeah, this second round goes to Rank Math.

Schema Markup – Rank Math vs All In One SEO

If you are not familiar with what Schema Markup is, here is a brief introduction.

Search engines like Google require structured information in order to be able to understand your site and what your content is about.

That’s the purpose of what is called Schema.org data. It helps search engines understand your content and easily rank you higher in search results.

If you’d like a little more info on how Schema markup works, you can find it here.

But for now, what you need to know is that schema markup is a must-have if you really want your page rankings on search results to be better.

In that regard, let’s take a look at how our two SEO plugins implement Schema Markup.

Rank Math Schema Markup

In the free version of the plugin, Rank Math allows users to pick from 15 predefined schema types, while in the PRO version, you can choose from an unlimited number of schema types.

You can also create your own custom schema and implement them in your content.

For bloggers, the most common schema type that you’ll be using for your posts will be the ‘Article’ schema type. But if you do things like products reviews, you can use other schema types as well such as Product, Software, e.t.c

Other available schema types in the Rank Math schema generator include:

  • Book
  • Course
  • Event
  • Music
  • Job Posting
  • Person
  • Restaurant

You can see them all here.

Rank Math Schema Generator 1 jpg
Rank Math Schema Generator 2 jpg

All In One SEO Schema Markup

The All In One SEO plugin also allows users to add Schema.org data to their content.

Unfortunately, the free version of the plugin does not allow users to generate or use any Schema markups. Schema generation for All-In-One SEO is an exclusively PRO feature.

In the PRO version of the plugin, you get to generate and validate unlimited schema for your content and therefore rank higher in search results.

âš– Verdict: As a somewhat beginner blogger myself, I haven’t focused too much on going PRO with any WordPress SEO plugin. Not yet at least. So due to the fact that Rank Math allows users to generate and implement Schema markup in the free version of the plugin, I believe it’s an easy decision to give this round to Rank Math… again.

XML Sitemaps – Rank Math vs All In One SEO

Sitemaps make it easy for search engines like Google to crawl and index your pages. If your site pages are not indexed, they cannot be served up on search results.

This is where XML sitemaps come in. They help search engine crawlers navigate and index your site so that it can appear in search results.

In this regard, both Rank Math and AIOSEO come with pretty amazing features to help customize and generate XML sitemaps for your site pages and posts.

Both plugins implement almost the same customizations when it comes to sitemaps and so we won’t look at each of them separately here.

They both allow you to include and exclude pages/posts in your sitemap. They also allow you to view and submit the generated sitemaps to search engines so that your site can get crawled and indexed.

Both plugins also automatically notify Google, Yandex, Bing, and other search engines whenever you publish a new post or modify your existing sitemap, which I think is quite amazing.

âš– Verdict: This round is a tie. Both Rank Math and All In One SEO have amazing features to create, customize and submit XML sitemaps to search engines. This helps your site get indexed faster and therefore get ranked on search engine result pages (SERPs).

Other Features – Rank Math vs All In One SEO

Both Rank Math and AIO SEO come with numerous SEO features that we simply cannot cover in this post because there are too many.

We’ve only looked at the most important ones such as onboarding, keyword analysis, schema markup, and XML sitemaps.

Now let’s take a look at some other features that each plugin offers.

Rank Math Extra Features

  • Advanced SEO Analytics – Rank Math allows you to analyze metrics like ranking positions, ranking history, keywords that you rank for, search impressions and search clicks right in your dashboard.
  • Instant Indexing – This feature allows you to submit your content for indexing through the Index Now API. Well, actually from my experience, it submits the content automatically so you don’t have to do it manually.
  • SEO Analyzer – This feature analyzes your entire WordPress site’s SEO and gives you insights on how to improve your site and implement SEO best practices.

All-In-One SEO Extra Features

  • Link Assistant – This AIOSEO PRO feature is really amazing as it helps you to interlink your content by providing linking suggestions in your WordPress editor.
  • SEO Audit Checklist – Much like the SEO Analyzer in Rank Math, this feature analyzes your entire site, checks for errors, and gives you suggestions on how to implement SEO best practices for your entire site.
  • WebMaster Tools – This feature helps you to connect and integrate your site with services such as Pinterest Site verification, and Google Analytics integration among others.

Both plugins have a vast range of features. I have only highlighted the most important here… the ones with the highest impact on your blog’s SEO.

If you’d want to see the entirety of the features included, you can find them on the Rank Math features page and the All In One SEO features page.

âš– Verdict: This round is another tie. Both plugins have a vast range of amazing features that will help make sure your site is following SEO best practices and will therefore rank higher on search results.

Rank Math vs All In One SEO Comparison Table

Here is a tabled recap of what we covered in this comparison battle between Rank Math and All In One SEO.

FeaturesRank Math SEOAll In One SEO
Getting StartedEasy and quick setup wizardEasy onboarding process but with a few more steps
Keyword Analysis5 keywords at a time + Content AI (pretty cool feature)1 allowed keyword (multiple keywords in PRO)
Schema MarkupMultiple Schemas available in the free versionNo Schema Markup for free users (multiple Schema types in PRO + custom Schema)
XML SitemapsAvailableAvailable
PricingFreemium PluginFreemium Plugin

Related: 10 Amazing Blogging Tools You Need To Know About

Final Verdict: Which One is Better?

Well, this is a tough question to answer.

Both Rank Math and AIOSEO are amazing plugins with amazing SEO features to make sure that you stay on top of your search engine optimization game.

But from the comparison battle we just did, it’s clear that for me, Rank Math is the better option between the two.

Rank Math features an easy-to-use interface and offers additional features that AIOSEO doesn’t.

Especially for a beginner blogger, being able to add Schema Markup to your content in the free version, and also optimize for up to 5 keywords in one post is something that AIOSEO just doesn’t do.

For those reasons, I prefer Rank Math SEO, and it’s the one I use for this very blog that you’re reading.

Of course, the final decision about which plugin you’ll use is yours, but if you asked me, I’d say to go with Rank Math.

I hope that my comparison in this post has given you some good info in order to make an informed decision on which SEO plugin to use for your blog.

If you do decide to go with Rank Math, then click the link below, it will take you to Rank Math’s website where you can download the plugin and install it on your WordPress website.

Get Started With Rank Math SEO Today

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