Are you looking for the best WordPress SEO plugin? If you are, then you have likely narrowed your choice down to the two most popular WordPress SEO plugins: Yoast SEO and All in One SEO Pack. At WPBeginner, we’re often asked which one is better? In this article, we will compare Yoast SEO vs All in One SEO Pack to find out which one is the best WordPress SEO plugin.
About Our Contenders
Both All in One SEO Pack and Yoast SEO plugins have devout userbase, and they are among the most popular and most used WordPress plugins of all time.
All in One SEO Pack was created in 2007 by Michael Torbert and Steve Mortiboy. Since then it has earned a massive user base and has become one of the most downloaded WordPress plugins of all time.
Yoast SEO, started out as WordPress SEO by Yoast in 2010. It was created by Joost de Valk. With persistent and continuous improvements in the plugin, it soon became the major rival of All in One SEO. .
These are both excellent plugins and offer all the must have features you need to get maximum SEO benefits on your WordPress site.
Having said that, let’s compare Yoast SEO vs All in One SEO to find out which one of them is the best WordPress SEO plugin.
Installation and Setup
It takes a lot of training and practice to understand and successfully implement the concepts of SEO into websites. A WordPress SEO plugin should make it easy for beginners to setup SEO best practices without any special skills.
Let’s see how these two plugins stack up when it comes to installing and setting up basic SEO settings on WordPress websites.
Yoast SEO
First thing you need to do is install and activate the Yoast SEO plugin. For more details, see our step by step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.
Yoast SEO is a powerful plugin, and it has a lot of options that you need to go through one by one. We have made this easy for you, take a look at our guide on how to install and setup Yoast SEO plugin in WordPress.
Upon activation, Yoast SEO shows a prompt to start the tour. This tour walks user through different settings available in Yoast SEO.
The settings section of Yoast SEO is neatly divided into pages where each page has different tabs for respective settings.
This makes it easy for users to locate an option in the settings.
On screen help is available on all pages of Yoast SEO settings. Just click the purple Help button on the top, and it will expand to show video or text about the options on the page.
Neatly organized settings, tour for beginners, and on screen help options make it super easy for beginners to setup Yoast SEO on their WordPress site.
All in On SEO Pack
First, you need to install and activate All in One SEO Pack plugin. For more details, see our step by step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.
Upon activation, you will find the All in One SEO menu item just below the Dashboard. Clicking on it will take you to plugin’s settings page.
All in One SEO Pack, has all the settings on a single page. This makes it look a bit overwhelming, but some users may find this approach easier and faster than the multi-page settings of Yoast SEO.
The settings page is divided into different sections. Each section deals with the settings of a particular area or feature, for example: homepage settings, title settings, display settings, etc.
There is a help icon next to each option. Clicking on the icon shows a short description and sometimes a link to additional documentation. This makes it easy for beginners to understand what they are doing.
Here is our user’s guide for All in One SEO Pack, which will help you properly setup the plugin.
Once you have carefully gone through general settings, you are ready to use All in One SEO on your WordPress site.
Conclusion:
Both Yoast SEO and All in One SEO has a lot of options. This makes the setup look a bit intimidating. Both plugins try their best to simplify things and make it easier for users to setup their SEO settings. We feel that Yoast SEO does a slightly better job than All in One SEO with their multi-page and tabbed settings.
Winner: Yoast SEO
Day to Day SEO Tasks
SEO is an ongoing process, and each new post or page you add to your website has its own SEO score. This means, you will be using your SEO plugin to optimize your content for search engines as you add it. See our guide on how to optimize your WordPress blog posts for SEO.
Let’s see how our contenders stack up when it comes to performing day to day SEO tasks on your WordPress site.
Yoast SEO
Yoast SEO comes with a powerful content analysis tool that helps you optimize every single post or page on your website.
Just below the post editor, you will find Yoast SEO metabox with a snippet preview, focus keyword field, and content analysis.
The snippet preview shows how your site’s title and description will look in search engines. Yoast SEO automatically uses your post title as title and excerpt as description, but we recommend you to change it by clicking on the edit snippet button.
Entering focus keyword in Yoast SEO will allow the plugin to analyze your content for that particular keyword.
The analysis is shown in the content analysis area, where Yoast SEO will make suggestions on how you can improve your posts SEO score.
The Yoast SEO meta box has two more sections. You can click on the gear icon to switch to the advanced view.
The advanced view is something that most beginners should never use unless you know what you are doing. It allows you to stop search engines from following or indexing the post/page.
Second, is the social icon that displays the social settings for your post.
This is where you can set an article image for Facebook and Twitter. You can leave description and title bank because Yoast SEO will use your main title and description in the open graph meta tags.
All in One SEO Pack
All in One SEO comes with a similar metabox to edit SEO settings on a post by post basis. Simply edit a post and below the post editor you will find the All in One SEO meta box.
Unlike Yoast SEO, this meta box is very simple. You can edit the title and description, but there is no content analysis or SEO scoring.
All in One SEO does offer advanced tools for each post which allow you to control indexing and following by search engines. It even has an option that turns off All in One SEO for that particular post or page.
For social features, you will need to enable Social Meta addon by visiting All in One SEO » Features Manager page.
Enabling this addon will add a Social Settings tab in All in One SEO meta box below post editor. This addon allows you to set custom images and descriptions to be used by Facebook and Twitter.
Conclusion
Both plugins make it easy to edit SEO settings on a post by post basis. All in One SEO Pack takes a lean and clean approach allowing users to add additional fields if they want to.
Yoast on the other hand goes with decisions over options approach and add the features they believe is essential for all sites.
However, we feel that content analysis, focus keyword, and SEO scoring gives Yoast SEO a big advantage.
Winner: Yoast SEO
Additional Tools and Features
On page SEO is a comprehensive process that’s why both of these plugins come with additional tools and features aside from just meta tags.
These features are there to eliminate the need to install several other SEO plugins and give you a true all-in-one solution.
Yoast SEO
Yoast SEO comes with a comprehensive set of features that cover most aspects of on-site optimization. Some of these tools are:
- XML Sitemaps
- Breadcrumb Navigation
- Open Graph Meta Tags
- Importing Data from Google Webmaster Tools
- Built-in robots.txt and .htaccess editor
- Import/Export SEO data
All in One SEO Pack
All in One SEO also comes with tons of features but some of them are not activated by default. You will need to visit All in One SEO » Features Manager to activate them.
- XML Sitemap
- Robots.txt
- File Editor
- Bad Bot Blocker
- Open Graph Meta Tags
- Import and Export SEO Data
- Performance Manager
Conclusion
Both plugins offer nearly the same set of tools and features. All in One SEO does not have breadcrumbs navigation and importing data from Google Search Console features. However, not having these two features wouldn’t have any drastic impact on your site’s SEO.
We also like how All in One SEO allows you to activate functionality only when needed.
Winner: Tie
Support and Addons
Even though both plugins are fairly easy to use and come with extensive free documentation, your free support options are very limited.
Let’s see how both plugins handle professional support and addons.
Yoast SEO
The basic free Yoast SEO plugin comes with no support, and you use it at your own risk. While you can ask questions at WordPress.org support forums and find help from other users, you are not guaranteed an official response from team Yoast.
For professional support, you will need to buy Yoast SEO premium. Pricing for a single site license is $69, and it goes up as you add more sites.
The premium license also comes with some additional features like multiple focus keywords, and a redirect manager.
Yoast SEO also offers some paid addon plugins available for niche sites with specific SEO needs. These addon plugins are:
- Video SEO
- Local SEO
- News SEO
All in One SEO Pack
The free version of All in One SEO comes with no support. The All in One SEO Pack Pro version comes with one year of professional support.
License for the pro version costs $79 per year for unlimited sites. WPBeginner users can get $20 OFF using our All in One SEO Pro Coupon.
The pro version of All in One SEO is usually one major version ahead of the free plugin. It also comes with extra features like support for WooCommerce products, category SEO options, video XML sitemap, etc.
Conclusion
Yoast SEO license is cheaper if you need it for just one site. However, prices go up as you add more sites. On the other hand, a single license of All in One SEO can be used on unlimited sites.
Winner: All in One SEO Pack
Our Verdict
All in One SEO and Yoast SEO are both great plugins so any comparison between the two plugins has to be very close.
We personally use Yoast SEO on all of our websites and find it to be the best WordPress SEO plugin. It has more features to offer like importing data from webmaster tools, breadcrumb navigation, Your Info section, social features, etc.
But the best feature is content analysis which we think helps a lot of beginners understand how they should write post titles, descriptions, and use keywords in their content.
We hope this comparison of Yoast SEO vs All in One SEO Pack helped find the best WordPress SEO plugin for your site. You may also want to see our list of 9 best WordPress SEO plugins and tools that you should use.
