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Head to Head: Yoast’s WordPress SEO vs All in One SEO Pack
WordPress is a very search engine friendly CMS by default. It can be made even more friendly by using essential WordPress SEO settings and plugins. There are currently two very popular WordPress plugins to help you strengthen your site’s search engine friendliness. Yoast’s WordPress SEO Plugin and the Grand old Daddy of SEO plugins, All in One SEO Pack.
I don’t use SEO plugins for my personal websites, but recently I came across a situation where I had to advise someone on search engine optimization, due to their lack of skills with WordPress I had to recommend them a plugin. That’s how I came across this point where I had to choose one of these two great plugins.
Yoast WordPress SEO
Features
Yoast’s WordPress SEO has more features than All in One SEO. Apart from the usual Title, Meta Description and Meta Keywords optimization, Yoast WordPess SEO offers XML sitemaps, robots.txt and .htaccess configuration, breadcrumbs, RSS optimization and page analysis tool.
Yoast also makes it easier for new users to understand what it does. Once installed the user is immediately shown a tour that uses the latest WordPress feature of on Screen Tool tips. The tour quickly explains the options a new user would want to configure and it also explains some unique features of the plugin. This is something that all powerful plugins should follow.
The social tab of Yoast’s WordPress SEO allows you to add OpenGraph Meta Data to your site’s section. This helps you better integrate your website with Facebook.
Yoast WordPress SEO also makes it easier for users of All in One SEO plugin to import their data. Users can also export their Yoast SEO settings.
Breadcrumbs is a term used in the user interface design for a navigation trail. Yoast WordPress SEO helps you add and configure breadcrumbs for your WordPress Website. Breadcrumbs also enhance your listing on search engines and increase the visibility as well as relevancy of your listing in the results.
The plugin has a very active community of fans behind it, so community support options for the plugin work very well in most cases. Apart from the official WordPress forums, you can also ask questions about using this plugin on any webmaster forum and it will get answered quickly due to the huge number of fans and web developers who are using this plugin.
Review:
Yoast WordPress SEO is an easy to use plugin even for newbies. However, it does not exactly work out of the box. The user should configure it before it can actually be useful for them. The good thing is that the developer has realized this need and has explained everything without exhausting a new user. I particularly liked the new “tour” feature that quickly familiarizes a new user with the plugin.
Yoast WordPress SEO adds a widget in your Post Edit screen, Where you can see a preview of how your website might appear in search results. The snippet shown with some posts on my site, made me realize why anyone would want to click on this result? This forced me to improve Meta description of several posts and pages on my website.
Page Analysis tool in this widget analyzes your post/page and shows your score accordingly. It looks for meta description, title, keywords, usage of main keyword in different sections of the page, word limit, readability, etc. Checking for warnings on this page will improve not only just the search rankings but also the usability of your website. The social tab in the widget allows you to add different descriptions for Facebook and Google Plus.
All in One SEO Pack
Features
All in One SEO pack is around since a long time, it is one of the most popular and well known WordPress plugin. There are less features in All in One SEO Pack than in Yoast WordPress SEO, but it does not mean that All in One SEO Pack is any less powerful. As I mentioned earlier in the “Ultimate Guide to Choosing the Perfect Plugin”, the right plugin is the one that suits your needs.
After installing All in One SEO Pack, first thing you notice is that ugly red warning asking you to enable the plugin from the plugin admin page. I wish the plugin authors would at least make it a little less ugly. The admin page, has affiliate links of some famous WordPress Theme and Plugin developers. Skipping the ads you will find the options. If you want to permanently skip the ads then you can subscribe for the paid version of the plugin.
Unlike Yoast WordPress SEO, All in one SEO Pack has this single admin page for the configuration of the plugin. Each setting has a little description that appears when clicked. This page allows you to change the home page Title, Meta Description and keyword options. Then it allows you to choose Canonical URLs, choose title format for Page, Category, tag and other type of content on your website.
The post edit interface for ALL in One SEO pack is also way too simpler. It allows you to change the Title, Description and keywords of the page. You can also leave it blank and the plugin will use your post title as page title, first 150 words for description and tags for keywords.
All in One SEO is around for a long time now. For support and troubleshooting you can ask on official WordPress forums, or upgrade to premium version of the plugin and ask on the plugin website. In 90% cases you will get your question answered on WordPress forums or other webmaster forums. However, remember it is nice to donate and pay for subscription of the plugins to show your appreciation of the work done by the authors.
Review:
There should be no doubt that ALL in One SEO is not as feature rich as Yoast. But it does have some powerful features. I particularly liked the simplicity of options, less choice means that I will not have to spend a lot of time on configuration of the plugin.
All in One SEO plugin works out of the box in most cases. Once enabled it automatically picks up description and keywords from content and tags of your posts. You can configure them yourself if you want but if you have like 1000 or more posts than imagine the time it would take for you to fine tune each single post.
All in One SEO also has Google analytics integrated into it. This means that you can enter your Google analytics ID in the admin section and it will track your visitors. I don’t know why any one would want to do that? I usually paste the analytics code in the footer section of my website so I don’t know why I should use it with All in One SEO.
Conclusion
I think most people would say that Yoast is a clear winner here and maybe they are right. But the thing is that All in One SEO Pack is not a bad plugin either, it does all the things that one would want their SEO plugin to do. Breadcrumbs can be created within your WordPress themes, Keyword Analysis can be done by plugins and browser extensions, there are excellent plugins for sitemaps, and why would anyone want to edit robots.txt and .htaccess inside their admin section? I mean if a user is able to understand and edit these files then they are probably users with advanced skills and can do that manually anyway.
In my opinion All in One SEO is not lacking in features, it does lack in terms of ease of use, support, user friendliness and design. Yoast is a winner because it has an extra layer of polish that is missing from All in One SEO. The pointer tips tour, the page analysis tool, the snippet generator, all of this makes the user experience better.
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I understand why you think that you could also use separate plugins for these, but I think you’re wrong. If you decide that a certain page shouldn’t be indexed, you can add a noindex to it with my plugin. This, by default, also removes it from the XML sitemap.
The fact that you can edit the breadcrumbs from within the advanced settings of my meta box is pretty important too: you have full control over what appears in the breadcrumb, which is especially important if you have a hierarchy in pages and the individual pages have longer title.
SEO is not a big set of single actions, it’s the integration of all the different small things that matter, that’s why I made a plugin that does it all.
Firstly, I am so glad to see you comment on my post and thank you for writing such a wonderful plugin for us. I totally fell in love with the tour and over all better user experience that YWSEO offers.
I totally agree that the plugins, which come with Yoast’s WordPress SEO are very useful and make things a lot easier for website administrator. You are right that this is probably better in many cases. For those, who are using AIOSEOP, I had to mention that if they want to use AIOSEOP they can still have the additional functionality by adding more plugins. I agree that the integration of all small things make big difference in the optimization.
I couldn’t agree more with Joost (creator of the Yoast plugin and all around nice guy).
I never leave home without Yoast:-)!
I use it on all my WordPress projects except for one where Yoast wouldn’t work and I ended up using All in One SEO instead and if I have anything to say about it, never again! Yoast is superiour by far in my opinion.
There’s no contest for me. WordPress SEO is one of just two plugins that I install on every single site. It combines so many plugins into a single plugin and works so well, that I still can’t believe it’s free sometimes. AIOSEOP just doesn’t cut it any more for me.
That seems to be the opinion of most people – I use All in One on WPLift but thinking of switching over – will probably save for the redesign.
Yep, Im buiilding it myself – aiming for beginning of March as Im hoping to launch ThemeFurnace in Feb.
Lots on!
I think most people use AISEOP because they are using it for a long time and feel more comfortable with it. It still offers functionality and is still popular.
I wish plugin authors would do something about improving user experience to provide better competition to Yoast’s plugin. Competition is good for everyone :)
I agree that AIOSEOP is in widespread usage more because it once was the go-to plugin for SEO, but times have changed and people haven’t changed with it unfortunately. I agree that competition is good, but in the Open Source world, when something is already so good and in my opinion, flawless, why try and redo it? If it ain’t broke…
I agree that Yoast is great. All in one seo was a plugin that was bought from the real developer … so I think that’s why is missing the polish …
Interesting – so someone took the project over?
What about Platinum SEO???
Do you use it? Any good?
Yes, I use Platinum SEO and my opinion that he better than All in SEO.
Nice article, Noumaan! I, too, think Yoast is really great.
I am with you on the crude “All In One…” warning. I think these come from developers who have been asked 1 too many times for basic help, and they like writing software, not doing support, so they “yell” that way. :-) “All In One…” also nags about upgrading in an irritating.
I think it lags behind several SEO plugins now, such as SEO Ultimate, which is my fave – it is techie, but will give you an education in SEO if you read carefully, and is not hard to use for me.
Quite frankly, I think the main reason “All In One” is still popular is because people just look at the number of downloads & don’t search any further, just like with the bug-laden WP Ecommerce.
Thank you David. There is no doubt that in many categories there are plugins far better than the popular plugins in that category. Finding the perfect plugin in such abundance is really tricky and becoming more difficult each day. As you mentioned, many plugin authors do not care to provide support, or promote their plugins in an efficient manner that provides the plugin more visibility and recognition from the community. One thing that is common in all popular plugins is that their authors take interest in how their plugin is used, provide support, write documentation and answer questions. I know this sounds like a lot of work, but I think it pays off to the plugin author in many ways.
I have set quite a few custom titles with All in One – does anyone know if these will be kept when switching to Yoast’s ?
Hi Noumaan, Kevin Stacey here..
First off, this post is extremely thorough! I don’t see too many
bloggers going into detail like you have…that’s the mark of a blogger
who knows their SEO plugin. For optimization, free plugins like All in
One SEO Pack are really great as it lays down the basic SEO foundation
for a WordPress site, but every blog is different and nothing works best
for everyone.
I always suggest looking at a side-by-side comparison of the best seo
plugins for WordPress in order to make an informed decision of what the
best plugin is for that blogger and their website’s specific needs.
Here’s my most recent write-up on the subject:
SEO Pressor vs Easy WP SEO vs Scribe SEO
https://www.bestseopluginforwordpress.com/wordpress-seo/the-best-seo-plugin-for-wordpress/
Check it out and let me know what you think.
Great article btw…I’ll be referencing this post on my main blog
Nice post Noumaan, personally I use Yoast, if for no other reason than it came highly recommended. On page analysis and relatively user friendly are winners for me. Yes it has extensive options available for the hardcore SEO pro, but for me it is a winner of AIOSEO.
Having said that you cannot discount AIOSEO, one of my old sites was using it and it was very good indeed, slightly more simplistic compared to Yoast’s. Whilst some would argue that AIOSEO has less features so it can’t be as good etc.
For me it is a case of assessing your own needs, do you want granular control over every single element to do with SEO? = Yoast
Do you want an easy to use SEO plugin that will the jobs just as well to a degree with less functionality? = AIOSEO
Again great post Noumaan, just tweeting it now!
Thanks for the comprehensive comparision between the plugins. Thinking about switching from All i one plugin to wordpress SEO by yoast. Wondering whether my traffic could initially drop because of this
I moved back to “All in One SEO”. I found it better. So many bugs
Sorry my bad english
I’m currently using WordPress SEO by Yoast. Should I change to All in one SEO? I already learned to use the SEO by Yoast though and it seems to work nice.
Yoast rocks. It have some extra features that is not present in AIO-SEO.
I use yoast seo plugin… best SEO plugin