Best SEO Plugins for WordPress: Rank the Highest in 2020

Are you using WordPress right now?

Congratulations, you're one of the millions enjoying one of the most customizable CRMs on the planet! But it doesn't stop there because now you need an SEO plugin.

Search engine optimization or SEO helps you determine the best ways to rank your content for visibility. If you want some piece of the action on the internet, do the best practices for SEO and you'll be good to go.

After all, why have the best website online if no one can find it?

Among all SEO plugins, All in one SEO vs Yoast stands as the usual comparison. Which one is the king of WordPress SEO plugins? Which one is better than the other?

Keep reading, this is a Yoast vs All in one SEO battle. We're about to find who would win as the best SEO plugin for WordPress.

Take a good look here:

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All In One SEO Pack Vs Yoast Quick Overview

Before we make the actual comparison, let's see the tale of the tape first.

Michael Torbert authored the All in One SEO pack in 2007 together with Steve Mortiboy. The plugin has become one of the most downloaded WordPress plugins of all time.

Since then, AIOSEO claims it downloaded 50 million times since its start. It became the pioneering best SEO plugin for WordPress, with Yoast as its rival.

Yoast WP SEO is the brainchild of Joost de Valk of the Netherlands in 2010. It has 5 million active users as of 2018 and is in more than 11% of the top 1 million websites on the internet. Many users praise the plugin as the most powerful WordPress plugin in the world.

Installation and Setup

The first thing we need to talk about is the installation process for All in One SEO Pack vs Yoast. For you to use SEO in your WordPress with any success, you need to install the plugins first. WordPress plugins management should be easy, even if you don't have any experience at all.

Do the out of the box experience for both stack up? Let's see.

All In One SEO Setup

Installation is generic for all plugins, but activation differs. For All in One SEO plugin, it will show up on the bottom of the dashboard right after activation. All the information you will need will be available on the first landing page.

The idea behind the single page layout is to reduce confusion among many users. It looks overwhelming, but all you need is step back a bit and do the settings little by little.

The AIOSEO page divides into different categories, depending on the type of setting. These can be anything from homepage settings to display settings. Every icon has a help section that guides beginners, giving you a general idea on what you can do.

Yoast SEO Setup

Yoast uses a multi-page setup wizard to help users on what to install. You can find this on the General tab of the plugin itself, whether it's Yoast SEO Free or Yoast SEO Premium.

The step by step wizard walks you through the entire process. It is common in a Yoast SEO review to talk about its ease of installation, and it is easy.

They explain everything in a very non-technical method. It does not overwhelm the user with jargon.

Yoast SEO can do many things, so you would need to invest a bit of time tweaking. After that, however, you'll be good to go.

Installation and Setup: Who Wins?

In the Yoast vs All In One SEO installation battle, they're almost break even.

The single page structure from All in One SEO is noteworthy, but Yoast has a slight edge in guiding the user on what to do. The systematic step by step process helps too.

Yoast wins it for ease of installation.

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SEO Content Analysis

SEO is a daily activity that never stops. Even when you're in number one, you need the best SEO plugin for WordPress to handle all your background SEO needs. You need to use whatever plugin you have to optimize your content.

All In One SEO Content Analysis

All in One SEO uses a meta information toolbar that lets you write the SEO title and your meta description. This allows you to pre-plan your page title for optimization purposes. It also sets your meta description for branding.

The notable service that All In One SEO has is the ability to custom canonicals and no index or no follow your post. You can even make a sitemap exclusion for it!

One handy extra we like about AIOSEO is the bulk edit feature. This is for the titles and meta descriptions on the All Posts window.

If you're not sure why this is valuable, there will be situations where you would need to do quick edits in bulk. With how slow the All Post screen refreshes, you'll be happy with this feature for sure.

Yoast SEO Content Analysis

The most notable feature that the average Yoast SEO review cares about is their Content Analysis tool. It's a powerful tool that teaches you how to help your content rank.

Yoast carries the same page title and meta description feature that All in One SEO uses. This is minus the canonicals and the nofollow/noindex options. What they have, however, is an extensive analysis tool that tells you if your content is SEO ready.

It checks on your sentence structure and focus keyword to name a few, and this is what makes it powerful.

Every criterion get a note with a color-coded score system. This teaches you where you can improve further. It's easy to love this due to its connection to Google's SEO ranking factors.

SEO Content Analysis: Who Wins?

When it comes to content analysis, All in One SEO pack vs Yoast is a landslide win for Yoast.

Their content tool is what defines Yoast and Yoast SEO Premium. Writing for a human audience is always the best answer for blogs. Knowing you're still visible on SERPs is where you want to be.

Social Media

Social media tools are among the most significant off-page SEO factors. It connects you to your audience.

Without social media, your digital marketing and SEO will not run. It's where your audience stays most of the time.

Which one is better with social media between Yoast vs All In One SEO? You'll get a good surprise.

All In One SEO Social Media

All in One SEO Pack is one of the best social media features on WordPress. It's the best SEO plugin for WordPress in this category.

Every social media information field, first of all, has a help configuration on it. Even without a tutorial, you're going to get the most out of this field.

The first part of this setup is the Social Settings on the meta box. It allows you to customize your post on Facebook and Twitter.

You'll also get to associate your profile with as many social media profiles you have. This exists together with Facebook's Open Graph.

Yoast SEO Social Media

Yoast Social is available on their Social Tab on the SEO menu on the dash. It integrates information from Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and Google+.

These, together with connecting to other social media, makes up most of Yoast's offerings.

The content analysis box has Facebook and Twitter meta settings. It allows you to customize as needed.

Social Media: Who Wins?

When it comes to social media battle of All in One SEO Pack vs Yoast, All in One SEO wins. This is at most due to its extra features.

Most of the general features are the same for both, AIOSEO edges, however, in the technical setup. Advanced social options like specific dimensions, object types and Twitter card types give All in One the edge.

If there were more All in One SEO's basic social media features, it would have won hands down.

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Freemium Services

Both Yoast vs All in One SEO use a freemium service model for their plugins. This means you will get the most functionality even with the free version. If we're paying good money for each, we need to get more value from each.

How do they stack up against each other?

All in One SEO Pro

All in One SEO Pro is available for $79, with promotional discounts every now and then that slashes a hefty cost. Their premium option allows us to add AIOSEO to unlimited websites.

The AIOSEO Pro adds powerful functionalities that are missing from the basic version. This includes:

• Robots.txt
• Front end .htaccess and robots.txt editing
• Full control of noindexing and nofollowing
• Category and tag optimization
• Custom post types

The Pro edition does not include customer support, which goes at around $10 a month extra. There's more that they add on every update, which is only available on the Pro version as well.

Yoast SEO Premium

With how awesome Yoast is, you'd think that Yoast SEO Premium at least doubles the functionality. It's unfortunate that this is not the case. Every Yoast SEO review feels this disappointment.

The premium option adds easy redirects and many focus keywords in its functionality. They also add a premium support service. That's it.

With how many functionalities the basic option has, here's good advice. We don't recommend getting the Yoast SEO premium.

Few people need a support service. The few who do will have the internet or a digital marketing expert by their side.

Also, Yoast SEO Premium is only usable for one site. You need to pay $799 for 100 sites. Yup, the comprehensive basic edition should be enough for your needs.

Freemium Services: Who Wins?

The battle of the premium versions between Yoast and All in One SEO, All in One SEO is the winner and it's not even close.

Everything depends on how you value Yoast's premium support. It is likely not much, the extra functionality that All in One SEO Pro wins this.

Extras and Add-Ons

Extras are what they are: extras. They don't determine the best SEO plugin for WordPress, instead, they sweeten the pot. Many of these add-ons are functionalities some people can't live without.

All in One SEO Pack vs Yoast, whom do you think has better extras and add-ons?

All in One SEO Extras

All in One SEO has several functionalities ready out of the box. All you need is to go to the Features Manager to activate them. These include:

• XML Sitemap
• Robots.txt Generator
• Open Graph Meta Tags
• Performance Manager
• Import and Export SEO Data
• Bad Bot Blocker

We like how All in One SEO Pack leaves these add-ons off by default. Not everyone needs them except for the XML sitemaps. Having these deactivated will prevent beginners from confusion.

Yoast SEO Add-Ons

Yoast SEO provides a near identical and robust set of extras out of the gate. These include:

• XML Sitemap Generator
• Breadcrumb Navigation Support
• Import/Export SEO Data
• Google Webmaster Tools Import Data
• Built-in robots.txt and .htaccess editor
• Open Graph Meta Tags

Their extra offerings are almost the same, with Google Webmaster Tools providing a minor edge if you are using the system.

Extras and Add-Ons: Who Wins?

Who wins in the battle of the extra features of Yoast vs All in One SEO Pack? It's a tie.

As we mentioned, these add-ons are good to have on the system. They're not something that everyone gets excited about, and it's understandable. Even among them, the XML Sitemap is the only feature that adds a ton of value to them.

The breadcrumbs navigation is a nice thing to have, but we see no obvious impact on the SEO side for it. With no clear advantage on either side, it's an even score between both of the best SEO plugin for WordPress.

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All In One SEO vs Yoast – The Winner is SEOPRESS!!

When we compare all In One SEO Pack vs Yoast, we see no clear winner.

Sure, Yoast, even without Yoast Premium SEO, is more comprehensive when it comes to content analysis. All in One SEO, however, provides a broader range of settings and tweaks. It makes a more straightforward, more manageable package that is useful for beginners.

In the All in One SEO vs Yoast comparison, it still depends on your needs. At the end of the day, you need a professional digital marketer by your side to help you with your SEO.

At Marketing by Kevin, for all of our websites including this website, we use SEOPress.  It seems like the normal chain of progression to first start with Yoast SEO simply because they are the most well know, and provide fantastic training throughout their blog similar to other good marketing brands.

The reason I originally switched from Yoast SEO and moved first to All in One SEO was that Yoast was simply becoming too bloated of a plugin for the purpose I need.  It's common to hear language similar to this which can sound cliche or even bias to another product, but it actually led to a vulnerability on a site of mine that caused it to get hacked.  I have full trust that Yoast patched up this vulnerability and there is no longer exposure, however, I wanted to mitigate my risk.

I was an avid fan of All in One SEO for years but started running into very similar issues, most importantly with their sitemaps and having my posts index correctly.  Nothing here is to imply that either All in One SEO or Yoast SEO are bad SEO Plugins to use.

It's important to stress that once I started using SEOPress, their clean and far easier simpler user interface positioned me to much higher rankings which is why I believe SEOPress is the best SEO plugin for WordPress.

If you need to make sure your SEO works, Marketing By Kevin is the right move. Consult us at Marketing by Kevin and find out what's the best custom SEO service for your niche. We'd love to hear from you today!