All in One SEO vs Yoast – which plugin wins?
April 19. 2022
Since old-school approaches like keyword stuffing and unethical link building led to search engine dominance, SEO has very much evolved. Even if SEO methods have become more complex, one has remained constant. That is that all of your SEO efforts should be built on a rock-solid foundation of proper on-site optimization. Given that WordPress is the best platform for SEO, chances are you’re using it. If so, the easiest way to ensure your website is properly optimized is to use one of the two most popular SEO plugins. To help you decide between All in One SEO vs Yoast, we’ve done a thorough comparison and you’ll be able to read all about it further in this article.
A little about All in One SEO and Yoast plugins
Before we start our All in One SEO vs Yoast comparison, we’d like to mention that both of these plugins have large user bases and are among the most popular and widely used WordPress plugins ever. All in One SEO for WordPress started in 2007. It has since gathered a massive user base. In fact, it managed to become one of the most popular WordPress plugins of all time. Yoast SEO began in 2010 and with consistent and ongoing enhancements to the plugin, it quickly surpassed All in One SEO as a major competitor.
Both of these plugins are great options as they provide all of the essential functionality you’ll need to get the most out of your website’s SEO. However, keep in mind that, no matter which plugin you decide to use, you’ll need to make sure it’s always up to date and working at its full potential. It’s an essential part of WordPress website maintenance. Why not then let professionals from the WP Full Care team take care of your website for you? Your website will run smoothly while you can focus on growing your business.
All in One SEO vs Yoast – which is better?
As both of these plugins are great, it can be really difficult to decide which one to go for. To help you, we’ve decided to compare them based on the following criteria:
- Installing and setting up SEO settings
- Performing day-to-day SEO tasks
- Additional SEO features and tools
Installing and setting up SEO settings
The WordPress SEO plugin you choose should make it easier for complete beginners to implement basic SEO concepts with minimal effort. Thus, let’s first these two plugins when it comes to installing and configuring basic SEO settings on WordPress sites.
When it comes to All-in-one SEO, installation is pretty straightforward. You’ll be ready for your day-to-day tasks as soon as you complete the wizard. Once you go to the settings page, there are several areas on the General Settings page. Then, on the left column, there are numerous pages for various features under the General Settings menu such as Search Appearance, Sitemaps, Redirects, and more.
Each choice has a help icon next to it and when you click on it, a brief description of the functionality appears. There’s also a help icon at the top of the page which you can use to get further information. This makes the All in One SEO plugin very beginner-friendly.
On the other hand, the Yoast SEO plugin must first be installed and activated to access the configuration wizard that will guide you through the setup procedure step by step. This is especially useful for newcomers.
Yoast SEO has numerous settings that you must go over one by one. But on all pages of the settings, there is on-screen help. Anyone can easily set up Yoast SEO on their WordPress site because of organized settings, beginner-friendly configuration wizard, and on-screen help options.
Performing day-to-day SEO tasks
Each new article or page you upload has its own SEO score, thus SEO optimization is a continuous effort. Therefore, you’ll be using the SEO plugin you choose to optimize your content for search engines on a regular basis. So the next comparison we’re going to make is based on which plugin makes your day-to-day SEO tasks easier.
Yoast SEO also includes a content analysis tool. This tool will assist you in optimizing each post or page on your website. It will appear when you hover your mouse over the plugin symbol in the top right corner.
This plugin also comes with a meta box with a snippet preview, target keyword field, and content analysis located just below the post editor. When you enter the focus term in Yoast SEO, the plugin will scan your content for that keyword and present results in the content analysis section. There, Yoast SEO will even offer ideas on how to enhance the SEO score of your post.
Unlike Yoast SEO, the All in One SEO plugin gives your content a real score – the TruSEO score. Thus it provides a more actionable method for optimizing your content. This means that each of your emphasis keywords will have a score assigned to it. By clicking on a keyword, you’ll expand it, and you’ll be able to see what activities you may take to boost your score.
Each content type’s AIO SEO settings are located below the post editor. Your focus key, title, and description can all be added here. Dynamic Tags is one of the most useful features that you can use to provide dynamic elements to your SEO title and descriptions (for example, year, month, and more) which can help you acquire more traffic and enhance your SEO ranks.
Additional SEO features and tools
On-page SEO is a multi-step procedure. That’s why, in addition to meta tags, each of these plugins has extra tools and capabilities available to use. These features exist to provide you with a real all-in-one solution, removing the need to install multiple SEO plugins.
Yoast SEO has a long list of tools and features that cover almost every element of on-site optimization. Some of them are Breadcrumb Navigation, Open Graph Meta Tags, Import/Export SEO data, Importing Data from Google Webmaster Tools, Redirects Manager, and Built-in robots.txt and .htaccess editor.
On the other hand, All in One SEO has the same set of features but potentially offers a slightly better user experience.
And the winner of the All in One SEO vs Yoast battle is…
And now it’s time to declare the winner in the All in One SEO vs Yoast battle. Let’s start with the first category – both plugins include a lot of features, and they strive to make things as simple as possible for users to get started. However, All in One SEO does a little better job than Yoast SEO with their setup wizard. When it comes to handling day-to-day SEO tasks, we’ll again need to vote for All in One SEO. It offers a more actionable plan with a TruSEO score and Focus Keyphrase score. Plus, dynamic tags in the title and description also give it an advantage over Yoast SEO. Lastly, as both plugins provide a similar set of extra tools and functionality, the third category is a tie.
So, based on the three categories we’ve compared, All in One SEO is the clear winner. However, there are plenty of other categories to keep in mind so we recommend testing both plugins before making your final call. Or, perhaps you should leave that to the professionals. To help you make the most of your website, make sure to reach out to the experienced WP Full Care team. They’ll take care of your website for you while you can sit back and enjoy looking at the number of visitors going up.