How to Switch to Anansi SEO from Rank Math, Yoast and Other SEO Plugins

Changing SEO plugins usually goes wrong in small ways, like a title template that no longer matches or a redirect that quietly stops working. Anansi SEO copies your data from the plugin you use now and prints nothing until you tell it to. The old plugin’s data stays exactly as it was.

Which plugins Anansi can import from

Anansi imports from six plugins: Rank Math, Yoast SEO, All in One SEO, SEOPress, The SEO Framework and Redirection. For every SEO plugin in that list, it brings over each post’s and term’s:

• SEO title and meta description
• focus keyword
• canonical URL and robots settings
• Facebook and X titles, descriptions and images
• primary category and breadcrumb title

It also copies the plugin’s settings, such as title templates, the separator, social profiles and sitemap choices, and its redirects. From Redirection, it copies the redirects only.

A few things stay behind, and the import tells you about each one:

• 404 logs. Anansi starts a fresh 404 log instead of copying the old one.
• Social images that aren’t in your Media Library. The import lists them as values it couldn’t map, so you can add them again.
• Rank Math schema, which doesn’t need copying. Anansi reads it where it is, and you can edit it in Anansi’s schema editor without changing Rank Math’s copy.

If you come from Rank Math, there’s a head start: Anansi already reads your Rank Math titles, descriptions and redirects before you import anything.

Step 1: Install Anansi, and keep your old plugin running

Download Anansi and install it like any plugin. A new install starts in preview mode, which means it prints nothing for your visitors. Your current SEO plugin keeps doing its job, so nothing changes on your site while you set up.

Everything below happens on one screen: Anansi SEO → Import & Migrate.

Step 2: Pick your old plugin and run a dry run

Under 1. Pick a source, Anansi lists each plugin it found, marked Active, Data found or No data, with counts. Choose the one you’re leaving.

Then click Run dry run. It reads everything and shows what would happen, without writing anything. The report has one row per field, with columns for what it found, what it would import, what’s already the same, and what it kept because your Anansi value differs.

Read the Values that can’t be mapped list before you go further. Most template variables convert by themselves, so Yoast’s %%title%% becomes Anansi’s %title%. A variable Anansi doesn’t know is listed with a note that it will print nothing, which gives you a chance to fix that template first.

The Kept values list shows anything you had already set in Anansi. The import leaves those alone unless you turn on Replace values Anansi already has, which is off by default.

Step 3: Import

Import now stays greyed out until the dry run for that plugin has finished. Once it has, click it. Anansi works in batches of 50 and saves its progress after each one, so a big site won’t time out. If the import stops, Resume unfinished import picks up where it left off.

You can run the import again later. It doesn’t create duplicates, and duplicate redirects are skipped. When it’s done, the report shows how many redirects it found, how many were new, and how many were skipped or invalid.

Step 4: Prove nothing changed

Before visitors see anything new, check that your pages will come out the same. Under 4. Prove it, click Save snapshot. Anansi records what your site prints today across a sample of pages: the home page, posts and pages of each type, archives, categories, authors, search, your 404 page, redirect sources and your sitemaps.

Then click Compare with Anansi preview. Anansi checks every one of those pages against what it would print, and reports how many are identical and how many differ. It also lists anything your old plugin prints that Anansi doesn’t, so nothing goes missing without you knowing.

To look at a single page, use Preview a page on the Anansi dashboard. Paste a link and you get each tag side by side: Now (what visitors see) and With Anansi. Tick Only show differences to see just the lines that change.

Step 5: Go live

When the comparison looks right, open the Anansi dashboard. Tick I have previewed my pages and want Anansi to print SEO tags for visitors and click Go live.

Then deactivate your old SEO plugin on the Plugins screen. Anansi waits while Rank Math, Yoast, All in One SEO, SEOPress or The SEO Framework is still active, and its dashboard says so. It takes over the moment the old plugin is off.

A few things keep working without any changes on your side:

• If your theme calls yoast_breadcrumb(), rank_math_the_breadcrumbs(), aioseo_breadcrumbs() or seopress_display_breadcrumbs(), or uses one of their breadcrumb shortcodes, Anansi answers those calls once the old plugin is off.
• Anansi’s sitemap index is at /sitemap_index.xml, and links to /sitemap.xml or WordPress’s own /wp-sitemap.xml redirect to Anansi’s sitemaps.

After going live, run Compare live site once more to check the real pages.

Switching back

If something looks wrong, click Back to preview on the dashboard. Anansi stops printing straight away. Reactivate your old plugin and your site is back to how it was. Its data is all still there, because Anansi never changed or deleted it.

Moving a large site from the command line

If you use WP-CLI, the same steps are commands:

• wp anansi import yoast runs a dry run first, then asks before importing. Use rank-math, aioseo, seopress, tsf or redirection for the other plugins.
• wp anansi snapshot save before-switch saves a snapshot, and wp anansi snapshot compare before-switch --preview compares it with Anansi’s output.
• wp anansi mode live and wp anansi mode preview switch Anansi on and off.

Custom code from your old plugin

If you or your developer added code that uses Rank Math or Yoast hooks, read Moving custom code from Rank Math or Yoast SEO. Many Rank Math filters keep working as they are, and the page lists which ones need a change.

Anansi SEO is free. You can download it from the Anansi SEO page.