Yoast SEO has made its name as one of WordPress's most popular SEO plugins. But over time, the software has gone through many changes that users don't like.

For instance, many people consider Yoast SEO bloated software. It has many features that many web admins don't need for SEO optimization. This has made it harder to find the features they want and more challenging to manage their website's SEO.

Yoast SEO has also made many mistakes over the years. A big error in 2018 caused many Yoast users to lose their Google rankings. Yoast changed how images were redirected, and the setting that controlled this change wasn't correctly applied to every WordPress installation.

This has led many people to search for Yoast alternatives.

Luckily, countless SEO plugins are available that offer every SEO feature you need to optimize your website. Below are our four favorite alternatives to Yoast SEO.

1. Rankmath

Rankmath has quickly risen to the number one spot for SEO plugins for many web admins. It offers an easy-to-use interface that lets people of all skill levels optimize their websites for SEO.

On top of that, the free version of the plugin offers almost everything you need to optimize your website. You can do this yourself or use the smart automation features of Rankmath to do it for you.

Let's look at the features you'll get when using Rankmath SEO.

Easy Setup Wizard

Not everyone wants to be an SEO professional. They want something that's easy to use and doesn't require them to learn all the terminology of the SEO world.

One great thing about Rankmath is that it makes it easy for anyone to optimize their website. You can run the setup wizard to get the best SEO settings for your website. You can keep it as simple or as customized as you want.

Simple Import Process

If you already have a website, you probably already have an SEO plugin. It may be Yoast or another system. Whatever the case, Rankmath makes importing your settings easy.

You can easily import your previous SEO settings with a few mouse clicks. Start the import wizard, select your previous SEO plugin, and Rankmath will import everything.

This is a must-have feature if you have a large website and don't want to spend a ton of time copying your SEO fields.

Google Integration

One thing that takes a lot of time is to go back and forth between your different analytics dashboards. You have Webmaster tools for tracking your website's performance on Google and Google Analytics for monitoring your website traffic.

Rankmath can integrate with both of these platforms. You can connect your website to your Analytics and Webmaster tools to get dashboards directly on your website.

Breadcrumb Tool

Breadcrumbs are a great way to make your website more accessible. They offer your visitors a way to browse more of a topic and quickly return to a category. They're also helpful for Google to see an article's category and similar posts.

However, only some themes have breadcrumbs included. If you have one of those themes, you can use the breadcrumb feature in Rankmath to include them in every post.

Redirect Manager

Not all of your website content will be a hit. Some posts will get zero views or need to be updated. That type of content only offers a little value to your visitors. While you can keep that content on your website, some SEO professionals believe pruning underperforming content is the best choice.

However, things get messier if you have links pointing to that page. Visitors will get a 404 error instead of seeing what they expected. Rankmath helps by including a redirect manager to help you redirect visitors from old content to relevant pages.

2. The SEO Framework

The SEO Framework stands above the other Yoast SEO alternatives as one of the most simple options available. Instead of overwhelming the user with countless options and screens, The SEO Framework aims to create a simple system that offers an out-of-the-box experience that requires no input from the web admin.

This SEO plugin analyzes your website for you and determines the best way to optimize each page. It will generate page titles and meta descriptions for you. Of course, you can always go into your page settings to change this if you don't like the results.

The SEO framework also has integration abilities with other WordPress plugins. You can do everything from stop comment spam to add structured data to your web pages.

One thing that helps The SEO framework stand apart from other plugins is the privacy policy. People enjoy this plugin because it collects no data and doesn't connect to third-party servers. This is a must if you're concerned about privacy and don't want data collected on your websites.

3. All in One SEO Pack

The All in One SEO pack is one of the original SEO plugins for WordPress. It was created back in 2007 when WordPress was still an up-and-coming platform.

Over the years, it's cemented itself as one of WordPress's most reliable SEO plugins. There are an estimated three million users of the plugin.

The All in One SEO plugin contains all the typical SEO features you would expect. You can manage your SEO titles, descriptions, and keywords.

The All in One SEO plugin contains all the typical SEO features you expect. You can manage your SEO titles, descriptions, and keywords.
The free version of this plugin also contains more advanced features. You can generate sitemaps, check your on-page SEO score, export SEO data for analysis, and more.

You'll need to pay for the premium version if you want the more advanced features. It costs $49 per year for a basic single-site license.

4. SEOPress

SEOPress is another SEO plugin that's been around for a while. Like the other plugins, SEOPress allows you to manage the standard SEO options you need for your WordPress website.

One thing that sets SEOPress apart from Yoast is that it is white-label and ad-free. You won't need to worry about footprints on your website or advertisements taking up space in your website's backend.

Another benefit of working with SEOPress is the user interface. This plugin is built with beginners in mind. You will only need to spend a little bit of time learning how the plugin works to make the most of it.

SEOPress starts with a free option. You don't need anything more to handle all your website's SEO needs.

But you can upgrade to the pro version for $49 per year. The professional version will allow you to manage custom schema on your website, get insights from Google Search Console and Google Analytics directly on your website, and more.

One thing that sets the professional version of SEOPress apart from the competition is the site license. You can use SEOPress on unlimited websites. Most other options only allow a single website activation.

Don't Stick With Yoast SEO When You Have Other Options

Yoast SEO is a great SEO plugin. It allows you to handle all the common SEO tasks and offers almost every feature you need to manage your website.

However, it is a large program that adds a lot to your website. You can't afford to have bloated software installed when you need to minimize bloat and increase your page performance.

Luckily, there are many SEO alternatives available that offer the features you need to rank on Google. Of all the options out there, we believe Rank Math is the best choice. You can try it for free, so don't wait to install it and see what it offers yourself.

If you're like many business owners, you've put a lot of work into producing content for your website. You heard that starting a blog and answering customer questions is a great way to get visitors to your website.

The question is, why aren't you ranking on the first page of Google?

You need to optimize your content if you want Google to understand and rank it. The good news is that optimizing your website to rank isn't too difficult. Keep reading to learn what on-site SEO is and how you can use it to get more search engine traffic.

What Is On-Site SEO?

Optimizing your website for SEO wasn't always hard. All you had to do is add your keyword to your content, and Google would reward you with rankings. Today, it takes a lot more work.

On-Site SEO is the process of optimizing your website content to boost your ranking on search engines. Now that Google is better at understanding content, it can factor in more information when it ranks websites. Google will consider your content, backend code, and website architecture when making a decision.

How Can You Optimize Your Website?

Now the question is, what are the things you can do to get your website to the first page of Google. While nobody knows everything Google considers when ranking websites, some patterns show us the most important things to optimize.

Keep reading to learn what those things are.

Optimize Meta-Information

Your title and description are the first things Google searchers see about your website. They use it to determine if your content will answer the question they have. The question is, how does Google know what information to show its users?

Your meta-information is what helps Google understand your content. Without your meta-information, Google has to guess the information that you want searchers to see. You need to optimize these tags if you want the right information to show up.

The first tag to pay attention to is your meta-title. Your title is the blue link shown on the search results. Include your primary keyword at least one and use the rest of your headline to let searchers know what they can expect when visiting your site.

The other important tag you need to optimize is your meta-description. Like the title, make sure you include your keyword. Use the rest of your description to convince searchers that you have the best answer for their question.

Use Structured Markup

Have you ever wondered how Google knows what images and text to grab to display in search results? Structured markup helps that happen.

Structured markup is HTML markup that helps Google better understand your content. You can use it to add images, star ratings, and extra-information to the search pages. The good thing about this is that every little bit of content you add to your search results improves your chances of getting a click.

Structured markup can also help with more than adding content to your search result. If you do a lot of searching on Google, you probably noticed that they include instant answers at the beginning of many searches. Your markup will help Google find the answer to those questions and give you a shortcut to the number one spot on Google.

Figure Out Search Intent

Google wants its users to find the information they're looking for. You might be able to get away with fooling search engines for a while with SEO tricks. However, Google can see when people bounce from your page when they don't find answers.

That's why it's essential to match your website content topics to what people want to find. There are a few common types of search intent you need to be aware of.

Informational

An informational query is one where the user has no interest in buying a product. These searchers typically don't want to find pages that try to sell products. They want to find solutions to their problems.

Of course, this doesn't mean that you can't sell to these people. Use your informational posts to answer questions people have. You can suggest products your business sells as a way to start your visitors down the sales cycle.

Commercial

Someone using commercial search terms knows they need to purchase a product. It's the step someone takes before they take out their credit card.

Your commercial posts should inform the searcher about their options and convince them that your choice is the right answer. These posts should drive your visitors to the final part of the buying cycle.

Transactional

A transactional searcher already has most of the information they need. These searchers are looking for specific products to buy. Your pages should provide searchers a way to take that action.

Keep in mind that these people are already primed to buy, so you won't need to do much education. Convince them that your solution is better than the rest of their options.

Focus on Multiple Keywords

If you've looked into keyword research before, you know the educational material's common theme is to pick a focus keyword for your articles. This is an excellent first step to doing your keyword research. However, it doesn't stop there.

Google doesn't want to see websites that have a bunch of articles that target similar keywords. It leads to repetitive content that adds no value for searchers.

If you want to step up your keyword research game, you'll need to build your articles based on keyword clusters.

A keyword cluster is a group of keywords that form the basis of a single topic. Your goal is to create an authoritative source for a subject. Doing this means long posts that cover every angle of an issue.

These posts rank better over time compared to short articles with only one keyword focus. Even if you don't rank your posts for high-search volume keywords, you'll end up ranking for secondary keywords. Your search traffic from these terms is often far more than your primary keyword will give you on its own.

Design for Mobile

You can't get away with designing for only desktop computers anymore. More than 50% of all internet traffic now comes from smartphones and other internet-enabled devices. If your website doesn't show up correctly on smaller screens, you'll turn off a lot of your visitors.

On top of that, Google is planning to begin using its Core Web Vitals algorithm as part of its ranking factor. A poor experience will lead to worse rankings when this happens.

One of the best ways to cater to people with small screens is to use a responsive design. These designs work by calculating the size of your visitors' screens and modifying the website layout to fit those screens.

Of course, it's tough to break your site down into pieces if you've already created a desktop design. It's a much easier process to create your website design for mobile-first.

Adding design elements to your website is much easier than removing them. Doing a mobile-first will save you time and money on development.

Improve Your Page Speed

Just like you can't expect a mobile user to render a desktop website design on their devices, you can't always count on them to have a reliable internet connection at all times. This is a problem when your site has a large file size and takes too long to download. When you only have a few seconds to grab someone's attention on the internet, that's time you can't afford to waste.

Luckily, there are a few things you can do to improve the performance of your website.

Optimize Your Images

The internet doesn't only use text to build websites anymore. A lot of websites have moved to image-heavy formats that use great visuals to capture attention. The problem is that unoptimized images are large and can bog down an otherwise great website.

If you want to reduce your image file sizes, you'll need to run them through an optimization program. A lossless image optimization program will handle this task. It will strip out the unnecessary parts of images without reducing image quality.

If you run software like WordPress, there are plugins available to handle this automatically. Download one for yourself and let it do the job. If you don't have that option, you'll need to download a desktop application or use another web service.

Lazy-Load Images

Optimizing your images won't solve all your issues. If your pages have a lot of visual elements, your visitors still have to download everything. The good news is that they don't have to download everything all at once.

When you lazy-load your images, web browsers will only download images that people immediately see as soon as they load your site. This reduces the initial download size for people who have slow connections. Your other images will download as needed when people start scrolling down your pages.

Use Caching

Most websites today use database-driven websites. Whether it's WordPress or another content management system, these platforms provide a better webmaster experience.

The problem with this is that it makes your site dynamic. Your site makes database calls every time someone visits your site. This process will reduce your page response time.

Caching is the process of creating static copies of web pages that don't often change. This means your visitors won't need to wait for your pages to make database calls.

Most popular content platforms have plugins available to handle this. Install one of these plugins on your site, and caching will be handled automatically.

Another popular option is to use a content delivery network (CDN). A CDN is another web server that hosts a copy of your web pages. Instead of relying on your webserver to deliver your site content, your visitor will download your website files from a CDN server closer to their location.

Make Your Website Crawlable

Your website structure plays just as much of a role in your Google ranking as your regular content. If you want all your pages to rank, Google needs to find them first. Unfortunately, Google bots only have a limited amount of time to crawl your website.

Google assigns a crawl budget to each of your websites. If you have a ton of pages with a complicated structure, Google might not have enough time to crawl all your pages and rank them. That's why it's essential to format your site structure to reduce the number of clicks it takes to find each page.

Ideally, it should take no more than three clicks to get to any page on your site. This is a flat site structure, and it ensures everyone can easily access every page on your site.

The next step is to avoid orphan pages. Big sites can get out of hand quickly, leading to some pages having little to no links to them. It would take a miracle for a user to find them, and the Google bots are no different.

The last big problem with crawlability is duplicate content. When Google finds multiple pages with the same or similar text, how are the bots supposed to figure out which version is most important?

Look through your site to find any content that repeats itself. The most common culprit for this is category pages that have post descriptions. Noindex these pages, so Google knows that you don't want those pages in search results.

Likewise, if you have pages similar to each other, see what you can do to combine those pages. No-index your old page and use a higher ranking page to post higher-quality content.

Use Internal Links

Site structure isn't the only way Google learns about your site. Search engine bots follow every link you have in your website content. That's why internal links are a great way to help Google learn what your essential website pages are.

That isn't the only significant benefit, either. Internal links help keep your visitors on your site longer. Since Google wants people to find the information they're looking for, increasing your visitors' time on site is a great way to show that people find value from your site.

Internal links are also a great way to pass page authority. If you have high-powered backlinks that point to important pages, you don't want that link juice to stop at that page. Internal links help your page authority flow down to lower-power pages to help them rank better.

Don't Wait to Invest in On-Site SEO

You might get lucky and rank on the first page in Google for a few of your pages. Unfortunately, that's typically the exception and not the rule. Invest in improving your on-site SEO strategy so you can take advantage of all the traffic Google has to offer.

Do you need help optimizing your website for higher rankings? Get in touch today to get started.