When it comes to WordPress Search Engine Optimization (SEO), two names tower over the competition: the enormously popular Yoast SEO and All In One SEO Pack. Finding out which one is the best fit for you can be difficult, to say the least, since they're both beloved by their users.
Both plugins offer a great set of features to handle your SEO, but they're not entirely equal. To make a fair assessment, we need to dig deep and see how they handle specific aspects of SEO.
Coming right up, we'll talk a bit about both plugins and their key features, then we'll compare how they handle three specific SEO settings. Let's get cracking!
The 2 Most Popular WordPress SEO Plugins Introduced
To kick things off, we're going to give you an overview of both plugins’ key features. Consider this an appetizer before we dive into our full comparison.
Yoast SEO
The Yoast SEO plugin is a full-fledged SEO solution for WordPress users. Not only does it handle all the normal SEO settings including titles, meta descriptions, and permalinks; it also includes robust keyword and readability analysis tools. Both of these provide you with in-depth analysis and advice to improve your articles' SEO and overall quality.
Key Features:
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Supports all the most important SEO settings.
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Comes with thorough documentation for each setting, which guides you through the process of setting them up.
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Includes a setup wizard if you're in a hurry.
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Offers powerful keyword and readability analysis and feedback tools.
All in One SEO Pack
In many ways, All in ONE SEO Pack is very similar to its main rival. They both offer all-in-one solutions to SEO for WordPress users, and newbies can adapt to them quickly. As far as we're concerned, the main difference between both plugins is the fact that All in One SEO also includes several functions not directly related to SEO. For example, the plugin packs a few WordPress performance fixes under its belt, as well as Google AMP support.
Furthermore, it supports WooCommerce out of the box for free, which Yoast SEO does not. If you're looking for an e-commerce SEO solution on a budget, this might just be it.
Key Features:
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Includes support for the essential WordPress SEO settings.
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Integrates with WooCommerce.
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Comes with several non-SEO related functions.
Yoast SEO and All in One SEO Pack Compared
We already met the two most popular WordPress SEO plugins; now it's time to see how they measure up against each other. Since we have dozens of settings at play across both plugins, we decided to settle on what we’d consider the three most important SEO aspects only. For each of them, we'll see how both plugins fare, and what advantages they offer over each other.
Titles and Metas
From an SEO standpoint, titles are the headlines that search engines recognize when they pick up specific pages and posts. Meta descriptions are the summaries that accompany these titles. In all likelihood, you come across dozens or even hundreds of them each day.
Yoast SEO features several title and meta settings sections. These include options for modifying your separators…
...to altering your homepage and post title and meta-templates:
Every one of these sections is well categorized and documented. If you're floundering, all you have to do is scroll up and check the documentation for each setting, included at the top of the page:
All in One SEO features all these same settings on a single page, so you don't have to look around too much while altering them. The plugin also includes its own tutorials using links at the top of each section, but they're not as in depth as Yoast SEO’s.
All in all, Yoast SEO offers a simpler experience, but no additional features over All in One SEO.
Social Media Settings
Both plugins enable you to 'tell' search engines about the social media profiles associated with your site, for SEO purposes. Yoast SEO supports all the major social media platforms available at the moment and also includes additional settings for Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and Google+:
All in One SEO’s free version, on the other hand, only includes support for two social media platforms – Google+ and Pinterest. The plugin’s full version enables you to preview how your posts will look like on Facebook, Twitter, and a couple other social media platforms.
It's hard to overstate the importance of social media for websites and SEO these days, and overall, Yoast SEO takes the cake, since it includes several extra options.
Keywords
Keywords are arguably the most important factor when it comes to effective SEO, which is why we paid particular attention to how both plugins handle them.
First on the line, Yoast SEO provides us with a highly actionable keyword optimization tool. This is arguably one of the main reasons behind the plugin's popularity, since it features an extensive list of advice for every keyword you implement. If you're not sure where to start with keyword optimization, it's hard to go wrong with Yoast SEO's color grading system.
All in One SEO also provides us with a keyword setting for posts and pages, but no actionable advice concerning their implementation. From a functional standpoint, it does the same job as Yoast SEO, but newbies to SEO might have a hard time figuring out if they've made a mistake.
On the upside, All in One SEO does include an option to generate keywords automatically for your posts and pages, depending on their content. Naturally, this option is seldom as effective as manual keyword optimization, but it's there in case you're ever in a hurry.
Conclusion
Despite putting up a good fight, All In One SEO is (in our opinion) outmatched by Yoast SEO. The latter beats it handily when it comes to design, usability, and most importantly, keyword optimization. That last fact alone is enough for us to recommend Yoast SEO to any users that take keywords seriously.
Still, All In One SEO is not without its upsides. For one, its free version offers full support for WooCommerce, and it has a few performance optimization tricks up its sleeve. All in all, it's not a bad alternative for users on a budget that don't need much handholding.
We featured the two most popular WordPress SEO plugins in this article, but they're not the only options available. Click here if you're looking for a new WordPress Hosting provider where you can use and try each of these plugins.
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