All in One SEO vs Yoast – The Ultimate Comparison

Anybody who’s been tasked with optimizing a website has heard that they should keep a keen eye on search engine optimization, and if you use wordpress then you know how plugins can help your rankings, which is why I have created this all in one seo vs. yoast plugins comparison article.

A quick note on SEO for beginners: Why is it so important?

Any expert in Search engine optimization will tell you that it’s because when users search for something, they’ll generally only go down the first page for results before trying something else; if your company results are beyond that top ten, you’re not getting the traffic you could be getting. In this day and age, everyone has begun to trust Google over any other search engine, which means working with Google’s algorithms will give you the best results.

Since Google will not publicly release its algorithms, it can be a very tough series of trial and error to find the solution that best works for the company. On top of that, it is important to have the correct relevant keywords and a niche that works optimally for your needs. In other words, chances are you don’t have the time to sit there and figure it all out.

Fortunately, there are other avenues to take; in particular, two WordPress plugins–All in One SEO and Yoast–have dominated the market due to their reliable means of simplifying the use ofSEO techniques to help bolster your page rank on the Google search engine. This article will compare the two and answer the burning question of All in One SEO vs Yoast — which is better?

All in One SEO vs Yoast Comparison: All in One SEO

All in One SEO is one of the most popular and most downloaded WordPress plugins designed to increase successful search engine optimization techniques; even if you haven’t built your company blog on WordPress, chances are good that you’ve heard of it at some point because it really is an amazing tool, and you can check how helpful it is for my blog on a post I recently wrote about seo post writing tips

In an industry where there are countless theories of the algorithms Google employs and just as many scammers trying to make a quick buck off your need for expertise, having a simple plugin to use is a ray of sunshine in the dark.

Setting up this plugin is as simple as any other plugin you may have installed on your WordPress blog; all you need to do is put it into your blog’s plugins folder and activate it in the admin panel. It’s as simple as simple gets.

Once it’s up and running, you’ll need to configure it to your needs; in the comparison of All in One SEO vs Yoast, the former takes the win for easiest configuration. In the settings, you’ll be able to set the title and description that will appear when users find your website in Google, and you can also set the keywords that you want people to use to find the site. Other options include fine-tuning methods for your individual needs, such as preventing Google from crawling your archives and categories pages.

Individual posts will need attention as well, but this is just as easy as configuring the main site, giving it another boost in the All in One SEO vs Yoast contest. When you create a new post to publish to your blog, you’ll be able to set the individual post title that appears in the title bar along with the description that appears in the Google search results should someone come across it in their search. Similar to the main page, you must set the keywords that you want others to use to come across the specific post.

As an added bonus to this entry in the All in One SEO vs Yoast contest, whatever you set as the SEO title won’t override what you posted for the actual post title; it merely sets the title of the search engine result. Whatever you made the post title will still appear as the post title when clicking to the page.

It’s true that search engine optimization often gets a bad rap for how difficult it can be and for how many scammers there are trying to make money on people who need a genuine service. However, plugins like All in One SEO make it much easier to get a successful formula down, which is a welcome convenience.

All in One SEO vs Yoast Comparison: Yoast

Yoast is another plugin that you most likely have heard of if you have a WordPress company blog or website. Famous for the WordPress SEO plugin, this is one search engine optimization solution that has given it an interested position in the comparison of All in One SEO vs Yoast.

For one, Yoast is a plugin that isn’t quite as intuitive as its competitor, but it’s one that does seem to have a number of additional features attached that can work well if you’re an advanced user. When it comes to the All in One SEO vs Yoast comparison, the two are pretty even as far as post titles and meta descriptions are concerned. However, Yoast will take it a step further and even offer benefits like XML sitemaps, which go a long way to helping Google figure out what relevant pages exist on your website.

Also featured in this WordPress plugin is the Yoast breadcrumbs feature, which is the ease of going backwards in navigation. For example, if you’ve clicked a post in the “Music” category, the breadcrumbs would enable you to click “Music” to go back and review all posts under the same category without having to find the page on your own.

Other features that advanced users would find useful include access to the .htaccess file and the robots.txt file. The former is useful for setting permalinks and permissions while the latter is useful for providing descriptions for Google to display when users search for your website or service.

Perhaps one of the more interesting features that Yoast provides, which gives it its own edge in the All in One SEO vs Yoast battle, is the ability to clean up the header section. If you have ever attempted to add any kind of coding to your WordPress header, you know just as well as anybody how messy and overstuffed it seems to be; it would be another job on its own to try and find the relevant coding within the header. However, Yoast cleans this up and replaces it with more compact, clean code, making it far easier to figure out what has been added before and what should be left alone.

It is also possible to put a certain level of precise control over permalinks as well as employing canonical and indexation control. If you have always wanted to put your permalinks in a certain format but were unable to due to the canonical conflicts that WordPress makes, you no longer need to worry when installing WordPress SEO by Yoast. This is a very welcome additional feature that gives this plugin a true edge.

Finally, Yoast introduces a number of internal security features for administrators. For example, you have the option of forbidding editors and authors from redirecting one post to another URL, which is one ability that you have as the administrator to do with any given post. Enabling this feature also stops editors and authors from hitting the “no index” option, which is an option that would cause Google to overlook whatever you’ve put on that page. In other words, if you do not have total trust in your editors and authors, this is a feature you should opt for.

All in One SEO vs Yoast: Who Wins?

While the two plugins essentially do the same thing at its core, it is difficult to compare the two evenly. This is because All in One SEO is the perfect plugin that comes right out of the box and can be used by anybody with beginner knowledge. There are no real kinks to work out, making it very readily accessible to any user.

On the other hand, Yoast is a plugin that offers far more features, but it is near impossible to control without any real knowledge on the subject; it is very much an advanced user’s plugin. As long as you have the right level of

knowledge, however, you have a level of precision that is unmatched by any other plugin — even paid ones.

“Don’t just do the bare minimum.”- Michael Torbert, Semper Fi Web Design

As the owner of the company who developed All in One SEO, it’s important to take this to heart. If you’re new to the idea of 
search engine optimization, then you should look into All in One SEO to help you get started as you learn more about what it takes to get your website to a high page rank. If you’re knowledgeable, don’t do the bare minimum; get your hands into Yoast and make all efforts to get the page rank you want for your company website — be number one above all the rest.

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Sources for images: Flickr-All in SEO-YOAST