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?
