WordPress SEO vs All in One SEO Pack: Which Is The Best SEO Plugin?

WordPress SEO vs All in One SEO Pack: Which Is The Best SEO Plugin?

The core version of WordPress offers basic SEO functionality such as pretty permalink structures, the ability to change the post slug and the ability to change your website title and description. Our themes come with some great SEO Settings in ePanel, however, we also made sure that our themes are compatible with some of the most popular WordPress SEO plugins as well.

Additional search engine optimization can be added by installing an SEO WordPress plugin. There are hundreds of search engine related plugins in the official WordPress plugin directory.

Two of the most common plugins used on WordPress websites are All in One SEO Pack(seventeen million downloads) and WordPress SEO by Yoast (nine million downloads).

Today I would like to give you an insight into how these plugins work and what they can do for your website. Specifically, I would like to show you how these plugins handle search engine optimization differently.

Navigating the Plugins

WordPress SEO offers much more functionality than All in One SEO Pack. This becomes apparent when you compare the main menu for each plugin.

WordPress SEO splits settings into twelve pages.

It is worth noting that the plugins do handle menus a little differently. All in One SEO Pack places the majority of its settings in its General Settings page, whereas WordPress SEO separates everything into different pages and tabs.

Configuring SEO For Posts and Pages

Both plugins allow you to configure titles and meta information for your posts, pages, and custom post types.

WordPress SEO

WordPress SEO splits this section into five different parts. The general tab lets you force rewriting of titles and add additional meta tags to your page such as meta, noodp (DMOZ), and noydir (Yahoo). It will pull your website title and description from your main WordPress settings area; however these can be modified using the home tab.

Less important meta information can be enabled if you wish.

The plugin lets you change the default output for page titles and descriptions. You can also disable Noindex, rel=”author”, snippet dates, and the WordPress SEO meta box underneath posts and pages.

You can customize all of this information for posts, pages, media, categories, author archives, and more (fields are split between the post types ,taxonomies and other tabs).

The settings area is where you define the default settings for titles and descriptions.

The plugin adds a “WordPress SEO by Yoast” box underneath the post editor for all your posts, pages, and post types. The general tab is where you define your focus keyword, SEO title, and meta description. The preview shows in real time what your article will look like on a search engine results page.

Define your SEO title and meta description.

The Page Analysis tab gives you feedback on how your article performs against suggested search engine optimization settings. For example, it will warn you if you do not have <h2> tags in your header or if your article is too short.

Page Analysis helps you construct an article that is search engine friendly.

The advanced tab contains multiple robots options such as excluding the post from indexing or excluding from directories like DMOZ and Yahoo. Authorship and sitemap settings for the article can also be controlled here.

You can block search engines from indexing your article.

The final tab allows you to define the Facebook description, Facebook image, and Google+ description. If these fields are not completed, the plugin will use the meta description you defined in the general tab.

Most website owners simply use the meta description for social media services they entered in the general tab.

All in One SEO Pack

Whereas WordPress SEO splits title settings into five tabs, All in One SEO Pack places all settings on one page. From this page you can configure your home page meta information, exclude pages, verify Webmaster Tools, connect with Google Analytics, and more.

Ten different settings options can be found on the main All in One SEO Pack options page.

The default title settings for all post types and taxonomies are displayed in the one area. I found this to be a quick and practical way of quickly adjusting title settings.

Title Settings can be adjusted easily in one area.

All in One SEO Pack also displays a meta box underneath the post editor. It works in a similar way to WordPress SEO.

At the top of the main settings tab are fields for defining the article title, description, and main keywords. Various settings are underneath such as excluding the page from being indexed, excluding it from your sitemap, and disabling it from Google Analytics.

All in One SEO Pack handles post titles and descriptions in a similar way to WordPress SEO.

Social media settings can be added through the second tab. You can define the social media title, description, image, and image size.

The width and height of the image can be defined.

Social Meta Details

Social meta information relates to the way your posts and pages are displayed when someone shares one of your pages on a social media service.

WordPress SEO

WordPress SEO has good social media integration options. You can add Facebook Open Graph meta data, Twitter card meta data, and Google+ specific post meta data.

WordPress SEO has great social media integration

All in One SEO Pack

All in One SEO Pack has Facebook Open Graph meta data too. In comparison to WordPress SEO, it offers more customisation options. This is good news if you want more control with how your posts and pages are shown on Facebook updates, though I believe most people would prefer the simpler way that WordPress SEO handles things.

The plugin also has support for Google+, but the options for this are not displayed in the social meta page. Instead, they are located in the Google Settings area of the General Settings page.

All in One SEO Pack offers more customisation options for Facebook Open Graph settings; however it does not currently have support for Twitter.

XML Sitemaps

WordPress plugins such as Google XML Sitemaps can be installed on your website in order to generate an XML sitemap and help search engines find your content more easily. This is not necessarily if you use WordPress SEO or All in One SEO Pack as they include an XML sitemap generator.

WordPress SEO

WordPress SEO allows you to exclude specific post types and taxonomies from your XML sitemap. Additional sitemap options, such as priority, can be controlled via the SEO box underneath the post editor.

WordPress SEO can create an XML Sitemap for your website in seconds.

All in One SEO Pack

Just like WordPress SEO, All in One SEO Pack can set up your XML sitemap instantly; however it offers a lot more settings for those of you who do want to customize your sitemap.

In addition to excluding post types and taxonomies, All in One SEO Pack also allows you to include date archives and author pages. The filename of your sitemap can be changed too.

All in One SEO Pack gives you more control over how your sitemap is created.

Pages that were not created by WordPress can be manually added to your sitemap in All in One SEO Pack. All you have to do is specify the page URL, priority, and update frequency.

The priority and update frequency of your home page, posts, and taxonomies, can also be adjusted. Categories can be excluded too.

Important pages can be given a high priority.

Other Features

WordPress SEO

As I noted earlier, WordPress SEO offers more functionality than All in One SEO Pack. This is clear when you start looking at the additional features that it offers:

• Permalinks – Miscellaneous permalink settings such as removing stop words from page slugs and removing the ?replytocom variables from URLs.
• Internal Links – Enables breadcrumbs on your website for better usability and improved on-site SEO.
• RSS – Place content before and after your posts in your RSS feed. Links are automatically added underneath posts to deter scrapers and help search engines detect your website as the original source.
• Import and Export – Export your WordPress SEO settings to another website. It also allows you to import settings from plugins such as All in One SEO Pack usingSEO Data Transporter.
• Bulk Title Editor – Edit multiple post titles on one page.
• Bulk Description Editor – Edit multiple post descriptions on one page.
• File Editor – Edit your Robots.txt and .htaccess file directly through the admin area.

The bulk description editor is useful for going back and adding meta descriptions to old posts.

All in One SEO Pack

Sadly, All in One SEO Pack does not currently offer any of the features noted above. However, what it does have is a performance page that lets you change the memory limit and execution time that is used by the plugin.

The system status box on this page gives information about your server and a list of active plugins and inactive plugins.

All in One SEO Pack gives you control over how the plugin is managed by your host.

Premium Options

Premium options exist for both plugins. WordPress SEO Premium retails at $89 for a single website for a year. It costs $169 for up to five websites and $329 for up to twenty websites.

In addition to receiving premium support and upgrades for a year, WordPress SEO Premium features a redirection manager for redirecting old URLs. It also integrates with Google Webmaster Tools and allows crawl errors to be pulled to your website and then fixed immediately through the redirect manager.

All in One SEO Pack Pro is more affordable. At the moment the premium plugin retails at $39 (though it normally sells for $79). Premium support is available for $49 per year.

The premium version of All in One SEO Pack features a Robots.txt generator and validator, a file editor for editing Robots.txt and .htaccess, an import and export option, and much more.

WordPress SEO vs All in One SEO Pack: Which is Best?

Asking which of these plugins is best is a bit of a loaded question. The reality is that they are both capable plugins that will help you improve your search engine presence.

Without doubt, the free version of WordPress SEO offers more options than the free version of All in One SEO Pack; but does this make it better?

I am not so sure.

I personally use WordPress SEO on my websites, however I can see why others prefer the simpler approach that All in One SEO Pack adopts in many areas. That is why I recommend trying out both of these plugins and seeing which is best for you.

If you enjoyed this article, I encourage you to subscribe to the Elegant Themes blog so that you get notified of our latest news and tutorials 

By Kevin Muldoon

Kevin is our resident tutorial master. He has years of experience with WordPress, and is a professional blogger with a special interest in social media, internet marketing and web design.

Why Your Website Needs An Email Newsletter - Wordpress Themes

Why Your Website Needs An Email Newsletter - Wordpress Themes

Why do you think websites are always asking for your email? Surely they know that social media is the big thing right now, right?

It seems that website owners will do anything to get you to “Sign Up”. You need to enter your email whenever you download an eBook, create an account, or buy something online.

Many websites allow you to sign up using a social media service such as Facebook or Twitter. What a lot of people do not realise is that the website owner is doing this to make it easier to get your email address. When you sign up through a service such as Facebook, the Facebook API passes your name and email to them. Allowing you to sign up via Facebook just makes the process of giving them your email address easier.

If you want to talk about numbers, email is the biggest social network online. Do you know anyone who uses the internet who does not use email? Neither do I. And while your social media tastes may change over the years, you will probably continue to use the same email address for many years. This is why email marketing is such a powerful tool for website owners.

Today I would like to talk about the importance of email and explain why your website needs to have an email newsletter.

People Check Their Emails

Despite the odd complaint about spam, most of us check our email every week.

This seems like a small point, but it is actually quite significant. When someone logs onto Facebook, they may only see five to ten per cent of the updates from pages they subscribe too. The situation on Twitter is no different. Even if you use Twitter frequently, when you login to check your home page feed, you will probably only see Tweets from the last hour or so.

Email is different.

There is a risk of your email not getting opened if your headline is boring and there is a small risk of being placed in the spam folder too; however you can be guaranteed that your email message will be sent. And if someone has been on holiday for a week, your email will still be there for them to read when they return. That illustrates how powerful email marketing can be.

Most people check their emails every day.

You Can Connect with Your Readers & Customers

The secret to making money online is to develop relationships with people. Blogs build relationships with their readers. Online stores build relationships with customers. A good relationship can lead to more sales. On the other hand, a bad relationship could lose you a customer forever.

Experienced marketers understand the need to connect to their target audience. They know the success of their campaigns depend on it.

By emailing readers and customers on a regular basis, you can connect with them on a level that you could never reach with one hundred and forty characters on Twitter. This helps you develop trust and loyalty.

Email Marketing will help you grow your business.

It Offers Targeted Customer Communication

Email marketing services and applications allow you to send emails to a select group of people from your list. You can customise emails so that an email is only sent to those who clicked on a link in your last email, or target people from a specific region. This gives you a huge amount of control over who sees your messages and who does not.

Surveys can also be sent to your email list to learn more about who they are and what they do. For me, one of the best things about sending out an email to subscribers is that it happens in real time. I can send an email to thousands of people and see my website traffic increase immediately.

You can learn a lot about your readership by analysing your email list’s demographics.

You Can Analyze Everything

John Wanamaker, widely considered to be the father of modern marketing, famously noted:

Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half.

Email Marketing is not something you need to do blind. If there is something you would like to know about your audience, you can track it.

You can track important metrics such as clicks, emails open rates, subscription rates, unsubscribe rates, return on investment (ROI), social media shares, and more. You can also do split testing within your group to see what email subject lines get the most opens.

Analyzing the performance of your campaigns is a big part of Email Marketing.

Email Marketing is Cost Effective

The average price of email marketing services for each subscriber is between half a cent and one cent (rates get cheaper as you gain more subscribers). For example, Aweber charges $149 for up to 25,000 subscribers; and the plan allows you to email subscribers as many times as you wish.

When compared to other advertising mediums, email marketing is not only the most effective way of targeting customers, it is also one of the cheapest.

MailChimp is a popular choice for many people as they do not charge you until you reach 2,000 subscribers.

How to Get Started

Top bloggers and marketers use professional email marketing services to send email newsletters. Over the last few years I have used Aweber, MailChimp, and GetResponse. There is little difference in price between them. Each service has their pros and cons, therefore it is important to test a service and see if it does what you need.

Alternatively, you can send emails directly through WordPress. Free email WordPress plugins include Subscribe2, SendPress Newsletters, and Sendit Newsletter. MyMail ($39) is another great option.

Emails sent from your own server will probably have a much lower delivery rate than emails send by a professional email marketing company. However, you can use one of the WordPress plugins above with a service such as MailJet to ensure emails are not send to the junk folder. Their prices are based on the number of emails that are sent; with prices starting from only 0.10 cent per email.

Aweber allow you to try their service for a month for just one dollar.

Be sure to display your newsletter sign up form prominently in your website design. I currently display my newsletter sign up form in my header, sidebar, and underneath posts and pages. I also promote it on a dedicated newsletter page that gives information about subscribing.

Once you have set everything up, I encourage you to email your subscribers at least once a week so that they do not forget you. Most email marketing services and plugins allow you to send emails to subscribers directly through your phone, so you can send an email to your followers wherever you are.

If you enjoyed this article, I encourage you to follow Elegant Themes to stay up to date with our latest news and events.

By Kevin Muldoon

Kevin is our resident tutorial master. He has years of experience with WordPress, and is a professional blogger with a special interest in social media, internet marketing and web design.

From Design Scaredy-Pants to Fearless Launcher Wordpress themes

From Design Scaredy-Pants to Fearless Launcher Wordpress themes

his post is part of our Customer Spotlight series. If you have an interesting story to tell and would like to share your experience with WordPress and Elegant Themes on our blog, please contact us!

Fearless Launching was my very first online program. When I launched it for the first time back in Spring 2012, I didn’t have the resources or time to build a beautiful site for it.

It lived in the shadows on my main site AnneSamoilov.com. A simple text sales page that did bring in sales (surprisingly enough!).

My membership area lived on a simple page too for that first round.

Looking back now – I see that I make bare bones sound glamorous!  But part of my thinking was always – do what you can and CBB (could be better) and just get out your minimum viable product.

That was it.

However, over time my MVP became my signature offering.  So – I’ve made loads of improvements to the content, the structure of the course, and even how it’s delivered to the community. The work has expanded so much… while still maintaining it’s simple quality.

My Half Baked Attempt To Go Pro

By the end of the first year offering the program I started to make additional changes to the sales site.  I turned my plain wp page into an Optimize Press based sales site.

Can you say shaded boxes and bullet lists?

I still am no designer, no one to take the brand or the site where I wanted it to…but I did my best in that time.

I continued making small tweaks to this same page throughout 2013…and though 2 more launches went by that did make sales, I could feel my own excitement waning a bit.  I knew I needed to update the site – get a clear makeover.

Making The Decision To Change

I’ve got a history of dragging my feet when changing anything to do with design and look. In addition to that, I’m always asking, does this really need to be changed?

I already had my sensors up that I wanted the site’s visual style to change… meaning: I wanted a visual style!

I knew that the course deserved attention.  I needed to bring the visual quality up in everything I delivered.  I knew that my graphic-lacking, no-personal-style sales site would have to go.

Honestly – I didn’t know what I was looking for.  And at that point I even thought I was going to pick a theme that got me most of the way there design wise and do the rest myself.

I discovered lots of buzz about Divi and decided to try it out myself.

I started to set up the pages for my sales site… and I could see the skeleton of something greater…but that’s where it ended.

I needed a professional on the job.

When discussing the new sales site, we never intended to use Divi, but we discovered that it really did give us all the functionality we wanted…and my designer/developer was happy.  This is a big deal when you’re working with someone.

Even half way through the design process, I knew that Divi was going to stick.

So easy to use, so elegant and honestly – that’s all I ask for.  If you give me those things, I’m in for life!

But That’s Not Where The Fun Ended

Customers and friends and colleagues shared their feedback for the new site and I was thrilled that it was going over so well.

I let the excitement for the site fuel me to update my members area. We brought some of the visual style right inside the program…and though we’re not using the same theme in there, we’re using the style we established with the Divi site.

Divi fueled me to start making micro changes to every aspect of the Fearless Launching brand.

Fearless Launching is about putting your big ideas forward into the world.  And I really feel like finally with the new site on Divi helped us leapfrog the bigger idea we’re trying to spread.  Finally I have a site that not only feels more like me, but now I am looking for ways to bring those elements into the rest of my biz.

Stay tuned for another chapter in this story…

By Anne Samoilov

Anne is an Elegant Themes customer that used Divi to update her Fearless Launching program for her recent online launch. Going from design-aphobe to ready to give a visual makeover to everything in just a few short months.

Free Premium WordPress Themes download Silver Mag

Free Premium WordPress Themes download Silver Mag

Silver Mag is a minimalistic yet Advanced Responsive Magazine Style WordPress Theme. Silver Mag is Premium WordPress theme,  still it is once again released free of cost  for all Themepacific WordPress users.

It is a multi-purpose free WordPress theme. This theme  can be used for News/Editorial sites, Technology Magazine blogs etc.

Silver Mag comes with 3 columns, unlimited homepage Magazine style Widgetized sections. Theme has come with WP Nav menus, Widgetized sidebars and Popular Widgets including stylish social Icons widget.

You can use this theme with 4 different styles.

1.  Magazine with traditional Blog style
2.  Magazine style only
3.  Traditional Blog Style only
4.  Grid Blog Style only

Features

Fully Responsive

Dress up once, look Best Everywhere. Yes!  BresponZive Mag is the fully responsive design that will make your content universal in all devices like iPad, iPhone, Android and all smartphones and Laptops and even HD Tv’s.

Custom Widgets

BresponZive Mag Comes with many  Superb Widgets that include Recent Post With Thumbnails, Category Post With Thumbnails, Popular Posts With Thumbnails, Flickr Photo Stream Widget.

SEO Optimized

BresponZive Mag is the created with the best SEO Practices in mind. That will allows the search engines to crawl your with a breeze.

Free, as in Beer

This Theme is completely free for Personal and commercial use. Check out the license for more details.

Fully Responsive Design

Wear one shirt and look same at any screen or Device. No need separate Mobile Theme. Google Recommended.

Custom Widgets

Theme has many Unique Custom Widgets. Experience Fresh look in our Widgets.

200% SEO Optimized

Install our Theme, Rank first in Google for your Targetted Keywords.

Mutiple Languages

Translate theme to your Local language with .po and .mo language files.

Cross Browser Compatible

100% compatible with All browsers and operating systems in this World!

The Best Team With You:)

Friendly and Dedicated experienced Support Team to help and Troubleshoot your Problems.