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When it comes to choosing the best search engine optimization plugin for WordPress, All in One SEO is hard to beat.
But with free and paid versions available, is it worth upgrading to the premium version of All in One SEO?
That’s the question we’ll help you answer in this SEO plugin comparison. For this All in One SEO (Free) vs All in One SEO Premium guide, we installed both versions of the plugin on our test sites to truly understand what these tools can do.
Unlike some other comparisons of the free and premium versions of All in One SEO, we’ve actually used both versions of this plugin to give you the full story.
This means that by the end of our comparison, you’ll be able to make an informed decision as to whether the free version is good enough for your website or if it’s worth paying to go premium.
Let’s begin…
About All in One SEO for WordPress
The All in One SEO plugin has been created to help you optimize your WordPress website and its content for search engines. The purpose of this is to increase the chances of your website being found when people are searching for terms you’ve written about. Provided your website covers topics people are actually searching for, good SEO can help grow your audience.
Effective search engine optimization can help people find your website and increase visitor numbers.
Although WordPress is considered to be search engine friendly out of the box, a plugin like All in One SEO can make it even more so.
In this All in One SEO review and comparison, we’ll look at exactly how the plugin achieves this and whether the free version does enough, or if you should consider upgrading to the premium version.
First, we’ll check out the free version, before looking at the premium option. Then we’ll cover the main differences between the free and paid versions of All in One SEO.
All in One SEO Free
The free version of All in One SEO has been downloaded over 48 million times since its launch in 2007 and is currently active on over 3 million WordPress websites. While not the most widely used WordPress SEO plugin anymore, it’s comfortably in second place behind the Yoast SEO plugin with its 5 million-plus active users (you can read our All in One SEO vs. Yoast SEO plugin comparison here).
The free version of All in One SEO is available via the official WordPress Plugin directory.
As the free version of All in One SEO is available from the official WordPress Plugin directory, it can be installed on your website in just a few clicks.
You can install the free version of All in One SEO from inside your WordPress Dashboard.
If you’ve been using another search engine optimization plugin, such as Yoast SEO, you can use the All in One SEO import tool to migrate the data and settings from the old plugin to the new one.
All in One SEO makes it easy to import settings from a selection of themes and plugins.
All in One SEO General Settings
Once the plugin is up and running on your website, you can start optimizing your site through the general settings.
You can quickly enter the SEO title and description of your website through the general settings.
Even with the free version, all of the settings are accompanied by a tooltip that provides information on their purpose. Often links are displayed that will take you to the relevant page in the All in One SEO online documentation for more detailed information. This is all very helpful as there are lots of settings, and with some of them, it’s not immediately obvious what they do.
The free version of All in One SEO allows you to optimize custom post types including WooCommerce products.
The free version of All in One SEO works with custom post types as well as the standard WordPress blog posts and pages. However, you also have the option of disabling the plugin for some or all of your custom post types. Thanks to this, if you’re creating your own custom post types, or you’re using a plugin that creates its own, such as WooCommerce, All in One SEO will help you make them more search engine friendly.
All in One SEO WordPress Post and Page Optimization
While the general settings are something you’ll probably only interact with once, or maybe after making big changes to your website, the All in One SEO fields that are displayed on the WordPress post and page screens are where you’ll use this plugin the most.
All in One SEO adds a custom panel with fields to the WordPress post and page editor screens.
The information you add to these fields is used by search engines like Google to determine the topic of your content. The contents of the title and description fields are also used by search engines when they list your website in their results pages.
The preview snippet section of the All in One SEO panel shows how your content might look when it’s displayed in the search engine results. A descriptive and enticing piece of text can increase the chances of search engine users clicking through to your website.
Search engines like Google often use the contents of the title and description fields of All in One SEO in their results pages.
Although you can’t control exactly how your website is presented in search engine results, using a plugin like All in One SEO with the ability to fill in these fields each time you publish a new post or page gives you a good chance of determining how the entry for your site is displayed.
If you’re publishing a post or page you don’t want to be included in the search engine indexes, you can use the extra settings.
The other options on the All in One SEO panel allow you to ask search engines not to include this post or page in their index and results, ask search engines not to follow any links in the post or page, and disable the plugin features for this post or page. You can also disable the Google Analytics integration for the current post or page as well.
All in One SEO WooCommerce Support
Unlike some other WordPress SEO plugins, the free version of All in One SEO works with WooCommerce to help you optimize your online store and its products for search engines.
The free version of All in One SEO works with WooCommerce to help you optimize your products for search engines.
As part of its support for the WooCommerce plugin, All in One SEO gives you the option of displaying its fields on the product page.
You can unlock more WooCommerce-related features by upgrading to the paid version of All in One SEO, but if you want to optimize your WooCommerce-powered ecommerce store for free, All in One SEO can certainly help.
All in One SEO Integration Features
You can also use the free version of All in One SEO to integrate your WordPress website with Google Analytics, Google Plus, Google Webmaster Tools, Bing Webmaster Center, and Pinterest. These features give you a quick and easy way to verify your site with some services that could help with your search engine optimization and social media marketing efforts. They can also save you from having to install additional plugins that provide this functionality, potentially helping to keep your site running smoothly.
As part of the integration features of All in One SEO, you can use the plugin to create and submit an XML sitemap to services like Google and Bing. As sitemaps are used by search engines to understand how your site is organized, as well as find all of your published content, this feature can ensure that all of your posts and pages are indexed in search engine databases.
The free version of All in One SEO also has the ability to submit a sitemap for your images, to help with getting this type of content indexed too. Furthermore, each time your site is updated, the plugin will notify Google and Bing to encourage them to crawl your site and index the new content. We’ll cover this in more detail shortly, but upgrading to the paid version unlocks support for creating XML sitemaps for your video content as well.
As you can see, the free version of All in One SEO will help you optimize your website and each piece of content you publish. The plugin also has some good integration features for connecting your site to useful third-party services as well as optimizing WooCommerce product listings.
So with lots to offer, is it worth going premium? Let’s find out by exploring the features of the paid version in the next section of our All in One SEO free vs premium comparison.
All in One SEO Premium
With prices starting from $68 at the time of writing, the paid version of All in SEO isn’t the most expensive premium plugin available for WordPress. However, with such a feature-packed free version is it worth spending the money to upgrade to the premium version? Let’s find out…
All in One SEO Premium Installation and Upgrade Process
Before we explore the features of the paid version of All in One SEO, here’s a quick overview of the upgrade process.
Thankfully, when moving from the free version of All in One SEO to the paid version, nothing is lost. As all of your settings and content are stored in your WordPress database, even if you uninstall the free version before installing the premium plugin, you can pick up exactly where you left off.
After purchasing the plugin from the All in One SEO website, you can download the files before uploading them to your WordPress website. Once the plugin has been activated, you can enter your license key to enable updates. The plugin should now be ready to use.
All in SEO Premium General Settings
If you are upgrading from the free option to the paid version, the main difference you’ll notice between the two All in One SEO plugins on the general settings page is the ability is to enable optimization of the taxonomies on your site, such as categories and tags, or any custom taxonomies that might be active.
All in One SEO Pro can be used to optimize the categories, tags, and other taxonomies on your WordPress website.
If you choose to enable this premium setting, you’ll be able to add search engine friendly meta titles and descriptions to any of the taxonomies on your site in the same way that you would for posts and pages. You can also use the options to ask search engines not to index the category and tag pages and to not follow any links.
If enabled, you can add SEO meta titles and descriptions to the taxonomies on your site through the plugin panel.
So if you’d like to try and get your WordPress taxonomies indexed and ranked in search engines, this premium feature should be of interest. Also, if you’re using WooCommerce on your site, you can use this premium feature to optimize your ecommerce product-related taxonomies and attempt to drive more traffic to your store.
All in One SEO Premium Video Sitemap Module
If you’re publishing videos on your WordPress website, the video sitemap module in All in One SEO Pro will help search engines index and rank those videos.
The All in One SEO Premium video sitemap feature could help your videos show up in the video search engines.
When enabled, this feature will scan your site for videos, and then include them in the XML sitemap. Search engines will then hopefully display rich snippet information about your videos in their results.
Access to Premium Support Forums and Tutorial Videos
Another benefit of upgrading from the free version to the paid All in One SEO plugin is access to the Pro support forums. Although users of the free plugin can submit questions to the forum on the WordPress Plugin Directory, if your website serves an important purpose, you might prefer having access to the more responsive premium support forums in case something ever goes wrong.
All in One SEO Premium users get access to the Pro support forums.
Premium users also get access to video tutorials covering the main features of the plugin. If you’d like to ensure you’re getting the most out of All in One SEO and optimizing your WordPress website correctly, these videos could help make it worth going premium.
Upgrading to All in One SEO Premium grants you access to the narrated video tutorials.
Main Differences Between the All in One SEO Free and Premium Versions
The previous section of this All in One SEO comparison details the main features found in the Premium version that aren’t available to users of the free plugin. But for a quick overview, here are the main differences between the two versions:
- Access to the Pro tutorial videos.
- Advanced support for WooCommerce.
- Ability to create an XML sitemap for video content.
- Ability to add SEO meta titles and descriptions for tags, categories, and other taxonomies.
- Access to the Premium support forums and knowledge center.
Another benefit of upgrading to the paid version of All in One SEO is the removal of the prominent messages prompting you to upgrade the plugin and the removal of adverts for other tools and services that are displayed in your WordPress dashboard.
If any of that sounds like it could be of benefit to your WordPress website, the next section of our All in One SEO free vs premium comparison covers the pricing information for this plugin.
All in One SEO Premium Pricing Information
The premium version of All in One SEO is available on three pricing plans and at the time of writing, the prices have been reduced by 50 percent to:
- Individual: $68 for use on one website.
- Business: $118 for use on ten websites.
- Agency: $559 for use on an unlimited number of websites.
All three options include one year of access to support and plugin updates. After the annual license has expired you have the option of renewing or using the plugin unsupported and without access to updates.
As the prices of All in SEO Premium are currently reduced by 50 percent, when it comes to renewing your license, you may have to pay the full price, so bear that in mind when considering the ongoing costs of using this plugin.
Final Thoughts
As SEO is sometimes more of an art than a science, your results from using this or any other plugin will vary. However, both versions of All in One SEO definitely seem like capable plugins for optimizing your WordPress website for search engines like Google and Bing, as well as integrating your site with useful services like Google Analytics and Webmaster tools. So should you upgrade?
If you’re publishing videos on your WordPress website and you’d like that content to be displayed in the video search engines, then upgrading to the paid version to unlock the video XML sitemap feature could make this a good investment.
Another reason to upgrade is access to the video tutorials. If you’re not sure about SEO and would like some assistance with trying to make your WordPress website more search engine friendly by using the features of this plugin, these videos will help. However, there are other WordPress tutorial videos for different SEO plugins out there.
Finally, as the paid version includes access to the premium support forums, you’ll have somewhere to turn if anything goes with your site and its search engine optimization. As SEO is vital for most websites, it could be worth the upgrade price alone for access to a premium support channel in case you start experiencing problems.
As the free version of All in One SEO has a great set of features, most users won’t have a need to upgrade. But if any of the points mentioned above will benefit your website, All in One SEO Premium comes recommended.
Will you upgrade to All in One SEO Premium or will the free version suffice?
