Import from RankMath

Hi Cemal,

This feature is planned for the next major release. You can follow its progression here: https://github.com/sybrew/the-seo-framework/issues/548.

I have no ETA on the next major release.

Until then, I’m afraid you’ll indeed have to migrate via another plugin or start fresh (which I recommend for smaller sites).

Thank you for the update @cybr, I will chug along after having updated over five hundred posts. It will be hard to start fresh again. Interestingly, data from Genesis SEO seems to move to RM but not the other way around even using SEO Data Transporter via Yoast.

We’ll wait until such time when the programmers write the few lines of DB inquiry codes that will bring the data back. Luckily for me, SEO and traffic are not too important for my site other than satisfying my own curiosity.

Thank you,

Cemal

Looking forward for this feature also. I want to migrate from Rank Math.

A feature I like from Rank Math is the instant indexing feature. How does The SEO Framework compete with this?

A feature I like from Rank Math is the instant indexing feature. How does The SEO Framework compete with this?

How is such a feature helpful to have for anything but news websites, which rely on different APIs already?

In any case, you can try these three for-purpose first-party plugins, to fill in the gaps:
1. https://www.ads-software.com/plugins/indexnow/
2. https://www.ads-software.com/plugins/bing-webmaster-tools/
3. https://www.ads-software.com/plugins/google-site-kit/

A kind reminder that the jack of all trades is a master of none. A Swiss Army knife will never be as robust as a real knife, screwdriver, scissors, etc.

When you are a beginner a Swiss army knife is always more appealing. But now I begin to realize the need to move towards something better like this plugin. Thanks for the suggestions.

Does the free version Support WooCommerce product schema? I try to understand the pricing tiers but I can’t figure out if I’ll ever need a paid version or whether just the free would be enough. Is the Pro version addressing news websites?
Since Rank Math has me covered with the free version for a WooCommerce store, I need to understand this bit.

The free version supports WooCommerce out of the box. TSF lets WooCommerce manage all the product Schema.org structured data, which does that perfectly, and TSF won’t interfere.

For most sites, a premium subscription isn’t worth considering. For questions about our premium services, please reach out to us at https://tsf.fyi/contact.

Let us hope that the direct and complete import from RankMath will be coming soon. I have done quite a bit of work on my site using RM, I don’t want to lose it and start all over again.

Cemal

Thank you @cybr . Looking forward to migrate from Rank Math as soon as the migration feature is available!

Hello guys, so just to add a bit of context to your questions. You both ask about slightly different things.

Cemal, we need to address the issue of interchangeable SEO data. There is no way around it, it should be easy to migrate to us, or from us. There is a lot of money and politics involved. Currently, in SEO, locking people in your own SEO plugin became the norm. We submitted patches to TSDT, but the plugin is dead. If SEO plugin devs cared about WP values, they would follow suite.

Instead, they are gone the way of being able to import the data and possibly lock you out from exiting. The TSDT was ideal.

We can now either go way of forking TSDT and maintaining it for other all SEO plugins or make our lazy import tool.

The best outcome for users if we all agreed to fork TSDT and all contribute. I do not see why TSF should lead the effort, we are 2 people, others in dozens.

We do consider forking TSDT, but that would mean doing all the work for others. We don’t think it is fair.

So the options at hand are either we all as SEO plugins agree on maintaining the fork of TSDT plugin, or we do what they did, making our own import plugin and call it a day.

For us, the overhead is insane undertaking in a space we were already exploited by big players.

Barnabas, in your case. I base my decisions on advising development of TSF on documentation of Google. We never do fads, so instant indexing was an instant wait.

Please correct me if I am wrong, but Indexing API for Google is almost useless.

There are other things to consider, like news sitemaps, that is a whole another story. And I believe we do that well enough.

The core of TSF doesn’t cover edge cases, and this certainly is. As my colleague pointed out, the first party tools do… well, a job. But they are first party. That is why WP is great.

If all plugins you use are made by sane people, what is the problem? Why we need to reintegrate something that was done? By either Bing or Google.

TSF is made in a way to be effective, and that mostly means doing everything right and not pretending we hold a key to success.

We will always do our best, but it is a ripe time for people to understand a lot of what is going in the world of SEO WP is an upsell and marketing strategy.

At the end of the day, you can decide for yourself, who you like. And I think that is the only cool thing currently about WordPress Plugin Directory.

Cheers, Pierre.

@lebaux I understand the dilemma you are facing. A collaborative effort to solve this problem is ideal if the others are willing to play. Otherwise, having done your part with the TSDT plugin to migrate among SEO systems, I wouldn’t blame you if you chose to implement your unique import from a few popular ones. The problem seems to be RankMath. Using TSDT and Yoast, it can import the SEO data but the reverse is not possible. Even when I go through Yoast again back to Genesis, I lose all the metadata I entered. This kind of mistake is hard to see when starting to use the new plugin. Now, I feel I got handcuffs and cannot move.

Falling back on my very old days of relational database programming, I cannot help but ask. Is this a case of importing a few relational database tables with indexes? My coding days are far behind me, but a few flecks floating in my mind make me ask this question.

Maybe I will write an article on my site on how to select an SEO plugin looking at the variables down the road. This should not be a one-way trip. The data is my data. Unlike image gallery plugins with thousands of images in hundreds of galleries, SEO data consists of words and relations all residing in tables. In any case, let me sleep on int.

Best wishes in your endeavors,

Cemal

@lebaux I understand totally your points. Only now I begin to realise the marketing strategies behind SEO plugins. When starting my website 1.5 years ago, a programmer told me to use the SEO Framework but because I was a beginner I got attracted by the influx of people turning and suggesting to use Rank Math. Only now I regret this..

I’m willing to leave behind Rank Math but what would you suggest is the best way to do this currently? To start fresh and rewrite everything from scratch? Contact Rank Math so they create a migration tool? My website is less than 200 pages.

Best regards,
Barnabas

Thank you both for your responses!

Camal, TSDT used to work, because there was a simple way things were stored, so it was all just pouring data over. I would not say this contract broke purely of malice, every SEO plugin tries to make things faster, better, and it often requires making custom solutions. Those eventually broke portability.

Barnabas, no worries, at some point we all make choices purely because it was marketed to us. You can’t be asked to understand everything, SEO plugins are not your daily job, just a choice you made along the way. I must say, I am glad a programmer recommended us!
I do not think you necessarily need to migrate now and TSF would magically cure anything. All SEO plugins (to the best of my knowledge) do a good job at the basics needed, no need to migrate over if that poses an inconvenience to you.

The import is currently our problem to solve, not yours. I started working with WP and eventually TSF because things were more open and less commoditized, users were not treated as cattle, but the human greed eventually ruins everything and that is why we all cant have nice things.

Cheers, Pierre.