Ayup! I’ve been using (and really rather enjoying) SureRank for the last year. It’s now my go-to SEO plugin, having fully replaced Yoast on both of my WordPress sites. It’s clean, modern and, most importantly, helps your content rank extremely well.
The developers of this nifty little tool are Brainstorm Force. If you’re familiar with WordPress, you may know them as the folks behind the popular Astra theme. In 2025, they also released SureMembers, SureDash, SureFeedback, SureContact and, of course, SureRank.
The plugin is completely free, with a paid upgrade available for those who need it. Pricing starts at $99/year or $399/lifetime.
How SureRank won me over
First things first, Yoast served me undeniably well. I must have used it for about 11 years in the end. It was my first foray into SEO. Honestly, it felt like a superpower. That said, I fully agree with the founder’s recent claims. Having sold the business, Joost pointed out that the plugin had, in fact, flooded the internet with overoptimised content.
We turned SEO into a checklist. Our traffic light system, meant to encourage good habits, became a finish line. People wrote to get the green light. They optimized, published, and moved on. Sometimes they were writing with purpose. But sometimes, they were just filling in the blanks.
As Yoast barely managed to move with the times, the demand for an up-to-date alternative grew. Et voilà, SureRank was born. Upon installing the plugin, you’re greeted with an exceptionally designed experience.
The desired outcome of using Yoast or SureRank is the same. The latter, however, achieves this in a more natural, current way.
Simple, effective SEO settings
As you’re building a post or page, you’ll see the SureRank logo on the top right of your dashboard. Handily, it’s right near the publish button. This means you can quickly check over your settings before going live.
I wasn’t a fan of Yoast’s traffic light system towards the end of my time using it. SureRank adopts a similar process, but will only show you one light. It’s included as part of the logo/symbol and will display as red, amber, or green. This is based on:
- All images on this page have alt text attributes
- This page includes images or videos to enhance content.
- Links are present on this page.
- Page URL is short and SEO-friendly.
- Search engine title is present and under 60 characters.
- Search engine description is present and under 160 characters.
- Open Graph tags are present on the page.
- Page contains at least one subheading.
- Canonical tag is present on the page.
- No broken links found on the page.
Additionally, it will show you if your page/post is indexed on Google. Extremely useful! There’s an option to add a focus keyword if you want to. Personally, this has always previously led to unnatural writing. It could potentially be valuable if you’re new to SEO, though.
One of my favourite UX/UI gems is the ability to dismiss any suggestion. Say, for example, you’re publishing a blog post without any images. It would obviously become flagged as an issue, but you can easily remove the warning. This saves any unnecessary amber or red warnings making your dashboard look untidy. Massive tick. Bravo!
What makes SureRank notable is that it’s from a trusted brand, Brainstorm Force, makers of the popular Astra theme and many other plugins that are used by millions of websites, making it a credible challenger to today’s top SEO plugins.
Natural writing
One thing I was desperate to escape was writing over-optimised content. I’d well and truly fallen into the Yoast traffic light trap; Editing my blog posts in a completely unnatural way, simply to hit a full set of green lights.
A huge part of my decision to switch to SureRank was based on a complete overhaul of how I write online. I wanted natural, organic, personal and imperfect content representing both me and my business.
This is how it should be. Human. It’s the only thing that makes your articles unique now. Thankfully, SureRank doesn’t gamify optimisation anywhere near as much as Yoast. Yes, the plugin is there to guide, support and advise, but it will leave you to your own devices when needed.
Pure, undistracted writing awaits. And yes, it turns out Google were telling the truth when they said this is what they want (see final section).
SureRank is a lightweight WordPress SEO plugin that cuts through the bloat with essential features like meta tags, XML sitemaps, and schema markup, prioritizing speed and simplicity over feature overload.
With over 100,000 sites already using it, this isn’t some random plugin trying to make a quick buck; it’s a legitimate game-changer built by the same team behind Astra.
SureRank’s popularity
As I write this, the 100,000 mentioned in the above quote has jumped to 300,000+. Nice! Generally speaking, the folks using this plugin absolutely love it. It’s rated 4.7 out of 5 on wordpress.org. Additionally, blog posts and YouTube videos reviewing SureRank are unquestioningly positive.
This is just so easy to use, even right out of the box. As the checklist goes, I love that it’s simple and straightforward without a lot of extra stuff just to make it look bigger than it needs to be. The SEO analysis is also extremely helpful and pointed out things that my previous SEO plugin missed.
Does it actually work?
In a word, yes. In addition to the above, SureRank handles all of the behind-the-scenes stuff that I wouldn’t have a clue how to implement. Combined with my return to natural writing, I’ve been ranking posts on the first page of Google within as little as five hours.
Of course, there are many different elements at play here. SureRank, however, is evidently one of the key ingredients. Big fan! Coming from Yoast, it’s a refreshingly modern update to SEO as you know it in WordPress. Highly recommended!