The below is my original review of Yoast vs All In one, written in 2014. If you have stumbled on this somehow and are looking for an updated and current comparison please go here.
I saved this for anyone curious in how these plugins stacked up in 2014.
-Dan
I’m Really Worried
I don’t want to be one of “those people”. You know those people, who get looks like this;
It disturbs me when other people make blind recommendations based upon heresy and not direct experience. But yesterday, I found myself asking “am I one of those people?!”
Did You Know The All In One SEO Plugin Was Updated?
I didn’t. I should have. Here’s what happened.
I was helping some folks out on Twitter with WordPress questions. Someone was having trouble deciding between All In One and Yoast SEO. She pointed out that All In One SEO has been updated.
My old music blog is still on All In One, so I quickly took a look at All In One’s new features. Damn. A lot of things have been added. Uh oh. I AM one of those people. Am I now wrong to be recommending Yoast?
I had to find out.
First stop, Google. I couldn’t find ANY recent comparisons of Yoast and All In One. Rohit’s was pretty good (and I borrowed an observation or two, thanks Rohit!). But I didn’t see any comparison I could confidently hand to someone that was particularly convincing.
So here we are. My two goals of putting this post together are;
- To come away knowing without a doubt, which plugin I should be recommending.
- To have a resource I can share with others who are having trouble deciding which plugin to use – and to educate a little in the process.
What Is Good WordPress SEO?
Hold the phone. Most people don’t even know what good SEO is. Some might say title tags, some would say G+ Authorship, some would say it’s using (gasp!) tag archives.
At the most fundamental level, good on-site SEO in order of importance (in my opinion) is four things;
1. Indexation
- Pages that should be indexed are.
- Pages that should not be indexed, are not.
2. Crawling, Accessibility & Structure
- Engines can find and crawl the content you want crawled.
- Excess crawling should be prevented at all costs.
- URL structures are logical to engines and users.
- Internal linking is sound.
Just like you don’t want a franken-car, your don’t want a franken-site either;
Good structure prevents you drivin around looking like that.
3. Appearance In Search Engines
- Titles appear as they should.
- Descriptions appear as they should.
- Use appropriate rich snippets whenever possible using things such as schema.org or rel = author.
NOTE: I am not just making those three criteria up. Google’s own documentation always refers to SEO as crawl, index, serve (display). I’ve also heard many “Googlers” refer to this as “crawl, index and rank” – essentially all the same concepts.
4. Appearance In Social Media
When people refer to “SEO” that tends to imply social media to some extent. Especially because of the overlap with things like Google Plus and Google search becoming more integrated. In my opinion the required elements of good social media connection with your website is;
- Correct title & description displays when shared.
- Image appears when possible when shared.
- Ability to “connect” or verify social profiles with your website.
People make things complicated. Even the above list is a little much. But that’s it. All strong on-site SEO should focus on those basics. Nail those and everything else is easier.
What Is The Purpose Of An SEO Plugin?
There’s some confusion about this. A plugin is NOT supposed to just “SEO a site” just by installing it and checking a few boxes. It’s not a magic SEO wand.
Just like SEO should be invisible so should your SEO plugin.
A plugin IS supposed to allow you to do things that you would otherwise have to code or customize. Yes, a plugin should primarily make your life easier by doing things – the right things well – so you don’t have to code them.
The doesn’t mean just because you use a plugin, you can exchange that for lack of even basic knowledge.
For example, the option to “remove the /category/ base” from the URL is available in the Yoast plugin. But should you use it? Should you use a feature just because someone decided to put it in a tool? No, of course not. You should use it, because you may have thought about doing so anyway.
And if someone is putting features in a tool, that aren’t really that important, does that make them a bad plugin creator? Very possibly yes.
This would be doing things backwards. You don’t go “oh, what’s this shiny button in this plugin?” It’s there – I must need it! No. That’s a solution looking for a problem.
Onto the next point…
What Makes A Good WordPress SEO Plugin?
This is simple;
- The plugin nails the basics of SEO (see above if you already forget).
- It makes up for the limitations in the core WordPress CMS.
- It doesn’t have extra things that aren’t important, that distract from that matters, especially if they detract from the fundamentals.
- Finally, I believe plugin developer(s) need to have an intimate understanding of advanced SEO, and the platform. And they need to be on top of the fast paced changes in SEO.
A good WordPress SEO plugin – does what it should, and doesn’t do what it shouldn’t.
Review Methodology
First, I Made A Big List Of Features
First I started by going through each tool, making a master list of their features. I made a column for Yoast and a column for AIO and marked Yes or No;
I made sure to list every single possible function and categorized them. The categorizations are as follows;
- Indexation
- Accessibility
- URL Structure
- Titles / Descriptions
- Meta tags
- Images
- Social Media
- Additional Features
Then I Assigned An “Importance” Score To Each Feature
Next, once those were all listed and organized, I assigned an “importance” score to each function. Four is the most important, one the least important.
Then I Decided Which Features Were Important Enough For This Post
The point is NOT to have this post include every bell and whistle found in each tool. It was to determine what really matters for WordPress SEO and create a thorough examination of each plugin based upon that criteria.
I looked through every SEO function that each plugin offers and decided if I should include it in this post or not. I did this based upon the importance score as well as my experience working with WordPress and SEO.
So let’s see what I found.
1. Indexation
Noindex Subpages – Winner: Yoast
This one is HUGE. When you blogroll and archives start to get big, you end up with /page/2/ etc – this is one of the single biggest causes of WordPress errors thrown in tools such as Moz or Screaming Frog. As I point out in my post on Moz about setting up WordPress this leads to many extra pages and duplicate titles and descriptions potentially;
Yoast offers the ability to check this one box and it’s solved.
All In One does not do this at all. Here’s how you do this in Yoast;
Control Individual Tags/Categories For Indexation – Winner: Yoast
With Yoast, you can total control over every individual tag and category archive (not just all or nothing). This is especially useful if you want to noindex your tag archives (like I teach here) but maybe some tag archives are getting traffic so you want to keep a few indexed.
All In One does not do this at all.
Set Custom Canonical URLs On Individual Posts/Pages – Winner: Yoast
This is really useful if you are duplicating someone else’s content (obviously with their consent) but you want to NOT index your copy and instead give them SEO credit. You would add their URL in here.
All In One does not do this at all.
2. Accessibility
Redirect Image URLs to Parent Posts – Winner: Yoast
This is HUGE. Here’s the thing. Every image you upload, depending on your setting, can link to a unique URL just for that image. This is an entirely separate page. It can get crawled. It can get indexed.
It’s incredibly not useful at all to have these unique image URLs indexed.
Yoast offers an easy solution. Check this box to 301 redirect attachment URLs back to their post.
All In One does not do this at all.
Breadcrumbs – Winner: Yoast
Breadcrumbs can be extremely useful for navigation, showing hierarchy and for internal linking. Yoast allows you to add breadcrumbs to your site.
All In One does not do this at all.
Individually 301 Redirect Posts/Pages
Suppose you have a page on your site and you want to just 301 redirect that to another page. Maybe there’s a newer version at a new URL. You can just add the URL you want to redirect to here.
All In One does not do this at all.
3. URL Structure / Permalinks
Strip Category Base – Winner: Yoast
Most WordPress sites for category archives will default to something like;
www.evolvingseo.com/blog/category/analytics/
But having /category/ in the structure can sometimes be unnecessary. Yoast knows this and gives the option to remove it.
All In One does not do this at all.
Remove “replytocom” From Comment URLs
As you can see in the screenshot above, this is also a key feature Yoast offers. It’s not so important for smaller sites, but for large sites it can make a big improvement in your crawl efficiency.
All In One does not have the ability to do that.
4. Titles & Descriptions
Amount Of Variables Available For Titles & Descriptions – Winner: Yoast
The ability to set up custom title and description templates is available in both Yoast and All In One. This is an exceptionally valuable feature in both plugins.
However, one distinction is that Yoast offers more options across all page types.
All In One offers the ability to set templates, but there seems to be less options. Granted, I only ever use about 20% of them, I could see some advanced situations where the other 80% may be needed.
Ability To Edit Titles/Descriptions In List View – Winner: All In One Update: Tie
Note – this is a “nice to have”. It’s a UX feature. It doesn’t make your site’s SEO better, but it is a really handy feature that I wish you could do in Yoast. Yoast has since added this feature – you can now do this in both plugins.
Instead of going through every post one by one, you could edit all the titles in one screen.
Yoast does not do this at all.
Automatically Capitalize Titles – Winner: All In One
Again, although All In One is the “winner” this is also a “nice to have” feature, but won’t make or break your SEO at all. Your titles will look nicer though, which can help with click throughs.
Yoast does not have this at all.
5. Image URL Settings
Winner – Yoast
Yoast gives you the ability – if you choose to make an image URL accessible for some reason (maybe it’s an infographic), you can control the various elements of them.
All In One gives you no control over images like this.
6. Meta Tags
By this I am referring to meta keywords, NOOP etc. In my opinion none of these types of things are important enough to be a deciding factor for an SEO plugin. Most of these are easy enough to drop into your header.php file.
7. Social Media
Facebook Open Graph Tags – Winner: Tie
This one was tough! Yoast certainly covers the basics needed to get your open graph tags on your site. I like that you can add multiple admins.
All In One really went all out on their open graph features though. You can really do a lot, and I’m honestly not even sure was some of these options are. Part of it is because it seems like every time I look, facebook has changed something again about their tags.
One VERY cool thing is that All In One gives us the option of what object type to use.
Ultimately, I’m calling this a tie because in 90% of cases, just getting the basics done is all you need. And I am sure there are other plugins or methods to do what All In One is doing.
Twitter Cards – Winner: Yoast
Super easy with Yoast. Just plug in your Twitter handle and you’re off.
All In One does not do this at all.
Google Authorship – Winner: Yoast
I’m calling yoast the winner on this, simply because it allows the option to turn it OFF for the homepage (as well as other fine tuning on the post/page themselves).
I’m always reminding clients that rel author is for articles only (something one person has authored). This makes it easy to accomplish.
All In One has authorship available, but not the fine tunings available in Yoast.
Rel = Publisher – Winner: Yoast
Very important. Google emphasizes right in their docs that this can help them understand your site better. It can create a good brand connection. Granted, this is not hard to set up manually, but Yoast makes it easier.
More importantly, Yoast is putting an important up to date SEO task front and center. Gives us what is important.
All In One does not do this.
8. Other Functions
Edit Robots.txt & .htaccess – Winner: Yoast
This is honestly a “nice to have”. It’s convenient. You don’t have to fiddle around with FTP’s and text files.
I believe you can do this in the paid version of All In One but not the free version.
Customize RSS Feed – Winner: Yoast
This would fall into “how your content appears around the web”. What’s cool here is that people are going to scrape your content. They’re going to do this via your RSS feed. So why not plant some a link back to your post in the feed?
Yoast will do this for you, and in fact it’s set up that way by default.
All In One does not have this feature.
Control User Access – Winner: Yoast
A nice to have. Prevents your editors, writers etc from breaking stuff.
SEO Tools – Choose And Assign Keyword Focus – Winner: Yoast
Admittedly I don’t use this much. But man, is it SUPER useful. You can figure out your content’s target keyword right in there, and get instant feedback based upon what you select. All In One does not have such a tool.
Actionable SEO Tips Based Upon Assigned Keyword – Winner: Yoast
If you DO have a focus keyword chosen, hit “page analysis” and Yoast will give you a bunch of actionable recommendations. I was just checking them out and found them to be very helpful.
It’s NOT About The Plugin Doing Everything
Remember, the best plugin will really nail the most important stuff. The best plugin doesn’t just have the most features. It has the right features in the right places and draws the line at features that really aren’t important.
I left many things out that All In One does in fact do. But are they as important? I didn’t think so.
The Results
My conclusion? Yoast by far outperforms All In One for the features that really matter. Does All In One do some extra stuff that Yoast doesn’t? Sure. But when it comes to the core of fundamentally great SEO, Yoast wins.
Indexation
Yoast: 3
All In One: 0
Crawling / Accessibility
Yoast: 5
All In One: 0
Display In Search
Yoast: 1
All In One: 2
Social Media Display
Yoast: 4
All In One: 1
Don’t Know How To Switch To Yoast?
You’re in luck! I made this video where I talk through the steps for migrating to Yoast. Step by step instructions are in the description of the video.
Then you can go to this post I wrote all about setting up WordPress for SEO success.
More WordPress SEO Resources
- Setting Up WordPress For SEO Success – I take you from the ground up for best practices.
- WordPress SEO – Justin Briggs, one of the most talented SEO’s I know
- WordPress Webinar on Moz – I answer some of the most asked questions about WordPress SEO
- Post vs Pages – How to decide which to use
- Clean Sweep Your Tag Archives – How to safely de-index and remove tag archives
- How To Speed Up WordPress – best guide I’ve ever seen on the topic
Need More Help?
My main job is to consult for clients, but I’m considering trying some online workshops and providing exclusive help to folks who want to join the Evolving SEO list. Sign up and I’ll let you know!
PS – Curious In The Complete Data?
It’s not scientific at all, but if you want to see my entire spreadsheet un-edited of features and scores, here you go!