All in One SEO Pack is among the most popular WordPress plugins for website optimization. It offers Free and Pro versions. In this review, we’ll break down the features of both versions and help you decide whether it is worth upgrading to the paid version.
Search engine optimization for Google is the essence of attracting visitors. However, SEO is a process that covers many little things all-around your website, including content, links, technical stuff, and even more. Creating an all-around search engine-friendly environment can be hard. Here is where WordPress plugins like All in One SEO Pack step in.
No matter whether you are interested in a free or paid All in One SEO Pack, or if you are looking for a simple comparison with Yoast, this review is for you.
All in One SEO Free Review
This SEO plugin for WordPress has been launched in 2007 and has been downloaded over 48 million times since then. However, currently, it cannot praise itself for being the most popular SEO plugin as it has about 3 million active installations. For example, the top-notch plugin Yoast has 5+ million installations.
The plugin can be installed like any other WP plugin. Of course, you should not forget to disable any SEO plugins you’ve previously used. Of course, you can import your previous SEO settings to AIO easily.
Now, let’s go through the checklist of preparations for better SEO using the described plugin.
All in One SEO Settings
In the General Settings, you can manage the All in One SEO pack plugin options. Firstly, it allows you to choose whether you want to enable Canonical URLs, disable pagination for them, enable custom Canonical URLs, use Original Title, Schema.org markup and log important events.
One of the first things we noticed and loved is that you can click on little question marks next to each option and get a short explanation of what the exact setting does. Besides, you can read more by clicking on links pointing to full documentation about that particular setting.
Next, you can alter Home Page Settings by adding Home Title and Description. If you wish, you can enable the option to use a static front page.
The next panel allows customizing Title Settings, giving you a chance to alter Title Formats for different pages, posts, archives, and so on.
Next, you can decide to choose content types you want to optimize, alter display settings, verify your site with Google Search Console. Bing Webmaster Tools and Pinterest.
Then you can customize settings for Google, Noindex, some advanced settings and enable or disable the usage of Meta Keywords.
The Feature Manager
All in One SEO Pack has a Feature Manager which allows enabling or disabling certain functions according to your needs. When enabled, these will appear under the plugin’s settings in the WordPress menu. Below, you can see a list of features available in the manager:
- XML Sitemaps. Allows creating, managing, and submitting XMLs to popular search engines – Google, Bing, Yahoo, Ask.com.
- Social Meta. Eases the customization of Social Metadata, including settings for Images and Facebook/Twitter.
- Robots.txt. Helps to easily add allow/disallow rules to guide search engine robots on how to crawl your website.
- File Editor. Simplifies the editing of the .htaccess file.
- Importer & Exporter. Allows transferring settings from All in One SEO pack easily.
- Bad Bot Blocker. Stops bots from slowing down the performance of the site. For instance, you can block bots and referrals using HTTP or set up custom blocklists.
- Performance. Allows raising memory limit, changing execution time, and forcing rewrites.
Search engine result preview and Open Graph settings
All in One SEO settings for single posts and pages are rather disappointing. In Main Settings, you can add Title, Meta description, NoIndex/NoFollow Meta tags and choose not to apply SEO on this post.
In the Social settings tab, you can specify Open Graph Title, Description, choose or upload the image, specify its dimensions, add a custom video link, and alter some Facebook/Twitter settings.
WooCommerce support
The AIOSP Free works with WooCommerce, helping to optimize online stores and their products. However, it still only allows adding Title, Meta description, and NoIndex/NoFollow tags.
All in One SEO Pack Pro Review
Pricing
The regular annual cost of the All in One SEO Pack Pro plugin version is $136, however, during a current promotion you can get it for $68. However, the price applies for the first year only. The Business license costs $236 (first year $118), and Agency $1118 (first year $559).
We can see that the regular price is higher than Yoast’s for sure. Let’s see what features are offered in the premium version. Is it worth the hype?
Installation
- To install All in One SEO Pack Pro, open the download link you received via email after completing your order.
- Now, go to WordPress Plugins > Installed Plugins. Here, delete the free version of the plugin.
- Now go to Plugins > Add New > Upload Plugin.
- Upload the file you downloaded via the link you received after your purchase. Make sure you upload the zipped version.
- Now go to Plugins > Installed Plugins. Here, find the new plugin and click Activate. Now you will need to enter your license key, which is also provided in the confirmation email.
Common problems. You might run into one of the following error messages:
- Cannot redeclare class;
- All in One SEO Pack Pro detected a conflict; please deactivate the plugin.
If you run into one of these messages, please go to Installed Plugins and deactivate the Free version of the AIO plugin before you try to activate the Pro version.
Premium Settings
In addition to General, Settings described previously, All in One SEO Pack Pro allows taxonomy optimization. This allows you to optimize categories, tags, and other taxonomies.
If you activate optimization on these, you’ll be allowed to add Titles, Meta descriptions for them and also choose whether search engines can index them or/and follow links included.
The plugin also allows optimization of WooCommerce product taxonomies. However, is this worth paying for? We do not think so.
Video Sitemap
The Pro version allows creating and submitting XML Sitemaps for videos. With this feature, you can scan posts for videos. Other than that, you can choose only to include posts with videos in such a sitemap. The last option allows restricting access to these sitemaps to WP admins and search engines only.
Access to Premium Support Forums and Video Tutorials
Finally, by paying the subscription price you get access to pro support forums that are more responsive. While users of the All in One SEO Pack Free version can post their questions in WordPress Plugin Directory, Pro subscribers can get responses more quickly.
The final extra feature is access to Video Tutorials database.