Feb 15 2010

All in One SEO Pack and Headspace2 WP Plugins: Head-to-Head Comparison

Two most popular and widely discussed SEO plugins for WordPress are All in One SEO Pack and Headspace2.

Both are smart, free and usable.

For my own blogs I may use either; I haven’t really thought much how different they are. However many of my clients and friends often ask which one I recommend and why.

There’s no article I was able to find which would clearly outline the difference between the two plugins, so I decided to create one listing almost all features of either of them and comparing them head-to-head:

Area to edit	HeadSpace2	All in one SEO pack *
Global Settings (applied to everything unless otherwise specified)	Yes	No
Home page	Yes	Yes
Archives	Yes	Yes
Categories	Yes	Yes
Posts and pages	Yes	Yes
Author pages	Yes	No
Search pages	Yes	Yes
404 pages	Yes	Yes
Tag pages	Yes	Yes
Paged format	Yes	Yes
Unique title tags (categories and tags)	Yes	No
Use noindex for Categories / Use noindex for Archives / Use noindex for Tag Archives:	No	Yes
Auto-generate Descriptions:	No	Yes
Capitalize titles	No	Yes

(* I am reviewing the free/basic version of All In One SEO Pack here)

Special tags / Macros

The range of macros and their types define the ability to customize (and vary) the system of meta tags and titles:

Explanation	HeadSpace2	All in one SEO pack
Replaced with the date of the post/page	%%date%%	%date%
Replaced with the title of the post/page	%%title%%	%post_title% / %page_title% / %blog_title% / %category_title% /
Replaced with the post/page excerpt	%%excerpt%%	-
Replaced with the post categories (comma separated)	%%category%%	-
Replaced with the post (main) category	-	%category_title% / %category%
Replaced with the category description	%%category_description%%	%category_description%
Replaced with the post/page modified time	%%modified%%	-
Replaced with the post/page ID	%%id%%	-
Replaced with the post/page author’s ‘nicename’	%%name%%	%post_author_nicename%
Replaced with the post/page author’s first and last names	-	%post_author_firstname%/ %post_author_lastname%
Replaced with the post/page author’s ‘nicename’	%%name%%	%post_author_nicename%
Replaced with the post/page author’s userid	%%userid%%	-
Replaced with the current search phrase	%%searchphrase%%	%request_words% / %search%
Replaced with the current time	%%currenttime%%	-
Replaced with the current date	%%currentdate%%	%date%
Replaced with the current page number (i.e. page 2 of 4)	%%page%%	%page%

(Again, only free features of All in One SEO Pack are taken into account)

Conclusion:

Feature	HeadSpace2	All in one SEO pack
Ease of modification for a non-tech user	Takes some time	Easy and quick
Customization	Highly customizable and flexible	Quite limited
Compatibility	Conflict problems with other plugins	Compatible with most WP plugins

Now, your time to speak up: which one do you use and why?

Written By:

Ann Smarty | @seosmarty

Ann Smarty is the Director of Media at BlueGlass where she serves as the Editor of Search Engine Journal. Ann's expertise in blogging and tools serve as a base for her writing, tutorials and her guest blogging project, MyGuestBlog.

More Posts By Ann Smarty

Lorna Li Social SEO

THANK YOU for doing this Ann - I have been wracking my brains for quite some time around these 2 plugins. For me, the ability to noindex tag archives is a biggie.

Question for you. If I switch from Headspace 2 to All In One SEO, do I have to repopulate all my custom title tags & meta descriptions from one into the other : (

If I'm stuck with Headspace 2, how do you recommend I noindex the tag archives?

Thanks in advance!
Tim

It took me and All In One SEO some time together to get my site close to where it needs to be. It took Headspace less than a week to get it flagged by Google. It took another week before I even found out about the flagging.

Others may like Headspace but you better watch out for it. It could be hard at work right now tearing down all your hard work.
Dharak Sandeep

Nice Explanation in brief about two popular Wordpress SEO Plug-ins. i am using "ALL IN ONE SEO PACK". it's easier than Headspace and as i am SEO, from SEO point of view, it's really very good plugins.

Again, Thanks for writing nicely about two popular WP SEO Plugins.
Lucien

Noindex for Categories, Archives or Tags is possible with HeadSpace2:

HeadSpace Settings > Page Modules > Then Activate "Meta Robots" (move it to "Simple"
Bob

The only people still using All in One are the people who have their heads stuck in the sand and haven't realized that Platinum SEO took over a long time ago.
adamSEO

Headspace all the way, it's much easier to integrate with the Thesis theme in comparison to AIO SEO pack.
Chotrul SEO

Many thanks for pulling this information together in this easy to compare format. I use All in One SEO Pack as it does all that I need it to do and as you say, it's very straight forward.

I must admit the 'conflict with other plugins' rings some alarm bells - All in One SEO Pack for me!
Bharath Reddy

Good Initiative Ann...Thanks for the detailed difference between two popular plugins. It's an obvious answer from most of the people "All in One SEO Pack". I feel comfortable using this...It got all the things which I need..That's it!!

Thanks for the post Ann!!

Bharath Reddy
Bob Hays (@purplehayz)

I use All in One SEO - its dead simple and fast to set up; it does have global settings that override per-page settings (depending on what you mean by global settings).

Thanks, nice article and format! - Bob
Bartjan

I mostly use Platinum SEO Pack (http://techblissonline.com/platinum-seo-pack/), but I haven't compared it to other plugins for quite some time since it does all I need.
Maybe you could review it and compare it to the above two plugins?
Joe Schaefer

Hi Ann,

I'm curious as to why you have a 'no' under the 'unique title tags' category when describing the All in One SEO Pack.

Perhaps I'm reading your review incorrectly, but I am able to absolutely control each page title tag and modify it in any way I want when using the plug-in.

Additionally, I can set global settings unless otherwise specified - this can be done in the plug-in settings.

I might be misinterpreting the post, so my apologies if this is the case.

I am glad to see a post about the All-in-one SEO PAck -- it's a powerful plug-in (free version and all).
Ann Smarty

Oh and edited the table a bit to make it clearer.
Ann Smarty

Hey Joe, sorry, had to unspam your comment (those damn filters:)).

Thanks a lot for your comment. To your questions:

1. What I meant was category pages. Does All-In-One-SEO pack allow unique title tags for categories?

2. I mean global settings across the board, I don't think I see this option in All-In-One-SEO pack settings?
Joe Schaefer

Hi Ann,

No prob on the spam filter.

My only immediate workaround for modifying category titles would be to add your custom category title to your category description and then in the general settings change Category Title to:

%category_description% | %blog_title%

You could drop the %blog_title% too, if you found it necessary (to then only to have your category description showing).

And as for global settings - I think you already found the section with the most functionality for changing global settings (as best as you can), by changing the macros listed above (as well as chekcin and un-checking functionality)...limited, I know.

As a reader reminder, they're under Settings > All in One SEO Pack (on the left hand side - this by the way would also be where you modify homepage title/meta as well).

Thanks for getting back to me! Best to you.