All in One SEO for WordPress: setup, TruSEO and plans

This guide is part of our "SEO tools explained" path. It's written for WordPress site owners who want their pages set up properly for search, such as a sweet shop, a clinic, a coaching centre or a D2C brand. It also suits freelancers and junior SEOs who find AIOSEO already installed on a client's site. You don't need to know any code.

By the end you'll be able to install the plugin and get through its setup wizard safely. Two mistakes hurt most: a wrong business name, and a live site left on Under Construction. You'll also write titles that override the templates, keep the right pages out of Google, and read the TruSEO score without chasing it. And you'll know which paid plan, if any, your site needs.

There are six chapters, about 34 minutes in all. Chapter 1 says what AIOSEO does and doesn't do. Chapters 2 to 5 follow the order you'd set up a site: install and wizard, titles and TruSEO, schema with local SEO and WooCommerce, then sitemaps, redirects, links and IndexNow. Chapter 6 covers Search Statistics, the AI tools, prices, switching from Yoast or Rank Math, and alternatives. Each chapter has step-by-step tasks and a check in one of our free tools. Prices were checked on AIOSEO's own pricing page on 18 October 2026.

WordPress doesn't give you a box for a meta description, and it doesn't know your business name for schema. An SEO plugin fills those gaps. All in One SEO is the oldest of the big three. It calls itself "the original WordPress SEO plugin, founded in 2007",^[1] and its WordPress.org listing dates from 30 March 2007. Yoast SEO came a little later (our Yoast SEO guide); on WordPress.org, its listing dates from October 2010^[2] and Rank Math's from November 2018 (our Rank Math guide).^[3]

AIOSEO's own pages say it's used by "3,000,000+ professionals".^[4] WordPress.org counts only the free plugin, so the two figures measure different things. For scale, the same directory shows Yoast at 10 million+^[2] and Rank Math at 4 million+.^[3] The plugin is made by the team behind WPForms, MonsterInsights and OptinMonster.^[1]

What it does, in plain words

AIOSEO works in two places. The settings screens set rules for the whole site. The AIOSEO Settings panel under every post sets them for one page.

• Titles and descriptions from templates built with "smart tags", which you can override on any page (chapter 3).
• Robots settings and canonicals: noindex, nofollow and the rest, site-wide or per page (chapter 3).
• TruSEO, a score out of 100 with checks on keywords, basics, spelling, readability and the headline (chapter 3).
• Schema: who runs the site (a person or an organization) for free, and a schema generator for products, FAQs and other types in paid plans (chapter 4).
• Sitemaps: an XML sitemap and an RSS sitemap free, plus video and news sitemaps in Pro (chapter 5).
• llms.txt, a file for AI tools, which the free plugin can generate once you switch it on (chapter 5).^[5]

The free plugin is called AIOSEO Lite. Paid plans are called AIOSEO Pro and come in four levels: Basic, Plus, Pro and Elite. AIOSEO's pricing FAQ puts the split simply: local SEO starts on Plus, Link Assistant and the deeper redirect tools start on Pro, and Search Statistics with keyword rank tracking are Elite-only.^[4] Chapter 6 has the prices.

Who it's for

AIOSEO suits WordPress site owners who want a guided setup and don't want to touch code. Think of a Kanpur sweet shop with 15 pages, a Delhi dental clinic with a blog, or a WooCommerce store selling kurtis. Its setup wizard is the most hand-holding of the three big plugins, and it has a checklist of tasks after that.

It also suits agencies that want one paid plugin with many features in one place: redirects, local schema, internal linking and Search Console data inside WordPress. The catch is that those sit in different paid levels, and the renewal price is double the first year.

When you don't need it

• Your site isn't on WordPress. AIOSEO's FAQ says you need a self-hosted WordPress site.^[4] Shopify, Wix and Squarespace have their own SEO settings.
• Yoast or Rank Math is already running and set up. Keep it. Two SEO plugins output two sets of titles and schema. Guide 1, chapter 7 says it plainly: switching plugins on a live site is more trouble than it's worth.
• You only want free redirects. AIOSEO's redirect manager is a paid feature from Basic up.^[6] Rank Math's free version includes one.

What it won't fix

A plugin controls the tags on your pages. It can't make a slow host fast, write good pages for you or get other sites to link to you. And for a shop or clinic, your Google Business Profile matters more than any plugin setting (our Business Profile guide).

So before you spend an afternoon on plugin settings, test the speed of your home page and one product or service page.

Next, install the plugin and run the setup wizard.

The plugin installs like any other. What matters is the wizard and the checks after it. They decide your schema, your home page title and which pages Google may index.

Install the free plugin (Lite)

1. Log in to WordPress as an administrator, go to Plugins and click Add Plugin.
2. Search for "All in One SEO".
3. Click Install Now, then Activate.

If another SEO plugin is active, import its data and then deactivate it (chapter 6). AIOSEO's own import guide says running two SEO plugins at once "can cause duplicate meta tags and other conflicts".^[7]

If you buy a paid plan later, you don't reinstall anything by hand. Go to All in One SEO, General Settings, paste the licence key from your receipt email, click Activate, then Connect and Install AIOSEO Pro. AIOSEO says all settings and data move from the free plugin to Pro, and the free plugin is deactivated.^[8]

The setup wizard, step by step

The wizard opens by itself the first time you activate the plugin. AIOSEO says it takes less than 10 minutes.^[9] Click Let's Get Started and you get five steps:

1. Site category. Pick the closest, such as Blog, Online Store or Small Offline Business. Then set the Home Page Title and Home Page Meta Description.
2. Additional site information. Choose Person or Organization, then the name, a description, phone number, logo, a default social share image and your social profile links.
3. SEO features. Toggles for sitemaps, the broken link checker, image SEO, schema and others. The recommended ones start switched on.
4. Search appearance. A live preview of your result, Under Construction or Live Site, and options for post types, multiple authors, attachment pages and email reports.
5. Google Search Console. Connect, or Skip this Step and do it later.

The last screen points you to the SEO Checklist. Everything the wizard sets can be changed later in the plugin's settings.^[9]

Three wizard choices that matter most

The home page title. The wizard fills it with tag buttons such as your site title and tagline. For a business, write it yourself: "Agarwal Mithai Bhandar, sweets and namkeen in Kanpur" says more than "Home - Just another WordPress site".

Person or organization. AIOSEO's advice is that most business and brand sites should choose Organization; pick Person for a personal blog, portfolio or freelancer site.^[9] This feeds the schema on every page. Later you'll find it again under Search Appearance, Global Settings, Knowledge Graph, where the logo must be at least 112 by 112 pixels.^[10] Use the exact name from your signboard and Business Profile, not a keyword version of it.

Under Construction or Live Site. AIOSEO says Under Construction keeps the site out of search results.^[9] That's right for a new build on a staging address. On a live site it's a disaster, so read this screen twice before you click on.

Five checks after the wizard

One more, if other people log in. AIOSEO's Access Control lets you choose which roles see which settings, but it's a paid feature. By default Editors can reach General Settings, Search Appearance and Social Networks.^[14] On the free plugin, keep Editor accounts for people you trust with those settings.

Search Console: connect, but verify by DNS too

The Google Search Console block under Webmaster Tools signs you in with Google and, once you click Complete Connection, adds and verifies the site and submits AIOSEO's XML sitemap.^[15] That's quick, and the pricing page lists it in every plan.^[4]

We'd still verify a Domain property through your DNS as well. It covers every version of the site (http, https, www and not) and survives a plugin change. Our Search Console guide shows how, and our Bing Webmaster Tools guide covers Bing. Connecting Search Console doesn't give you Search Statistics reports inside WordPress; those are Elite-only (chapter 6).

If the validator shows two Organization blocks, your theme or another plugin adds its own. Switch one off: Guide 3, chapter 7 explains why one plugin should own the schema.

Next, the templates that write every title, and the score you'll see under every post.

This is the chapter you'll use every week: the templates that write titles across the site, the per-page overrides, and the score under each post.

Title and description templates

Go to All in One SEO, Search Appearance, Content Types. Each type (posts, pages, products) has a preview, a title field and a meta description field. You build them from smart tags: click a tag above the field, or type # to see the list. Tags pull in things like the post title, the site name or the date.^[11] Taxonomies and Archives have their own tabs with the same fields.

Templates are a safety net, not the goal. AIOSEO's own help page warns that automatic titles and descriptions "can lead to poor quality titles and descriptions which will be ignored by search engines".^[11] We'd keep the post template as post title plus a short site name. Then hand-write the pages that earn money: the home page, service pages, top products and categories.

Writing one page's title and description

Edit the page and scroll below the content to AIOSEO Settings. You'll see a SERP Preview, a Title field and a Meta Description field. Whatever you write there overrides the template.^[16]

Don't expect Google to use them word for word. AIOSEO's help says search engines "don't have to use the SEO title and description you provide".^[16] Google says there's no length limit on either, but it truncates both to fit the screen,^[17] as its title link page also says,^[18] so put the words that matter first. Guide 2, chapter 7 has the rules we use.

Noindex and canonicals

In AIOSEO Settings, the Advanced tab has a Robots Setting toggle. Switch it to see No Index, No Follow, No Archive, No Snippet, Max Snippet and the other robots tags for that page.^[19] The same settings exist per content type under Search Appearance, and site-wide under Search Appearance, Advanced, Global Robots Meta. AIOSEO says these are "meant for advanced users".^[20] We agree. The only one most small sites need is No Index, for pages like a thank-you page, a login page or a campaign page that shouldn't appear in Google.

The same tab has a Canonical URL field. WordPress already outputs a canonical for every page. Use the field only when two pages carry the same content and you want Google to treat one as the main one.^[21] Guide 3, chapter 4 explains when to use noindex, a canonical or a redirect.

What TruSEO measures

TruSEO sits on the Optimization tab of AIOSEO Settings. It gives an overall score out of 100 and splits its checks into five tabs: Keywords, Basics, Spelling, Readability and Headline. AIOSEO counts 80 or more as good, 50 to 79 as okay and under 50 as needing work.^[22] The checks are sorted into Improvements and Good, and the scores update as you type. On paid plans, from version 5.0.1, it also scores category and tag pages, switched on by default for WooCommerce product categories.^[23]

The free plugin gives you one focus keyword. Extra keywords are a paid feature, up to ten more per post.^[24] For most pages one is enough. AIOSEO's own advice is that one main keyword "plus a couple of close variations is enough for most posts".^[25]

AIOSEO is honest about what the score is. Its help page says following the recommendations "doesn't guarantee you'll rank for your keywords", and that you don't have to follow every one if it costs you writing quality.^[22] Treat it as a checklist.

Which checks to act on and which to ignore

A page at 65 that answers the question beats a page at 95 that repeats the keyword 30 times. If the six checks in the Do list are green, we'd stop there.

To check a page's words from outside WordPress, use our Word Counter and Keyword Density Checker. It counts words and shows how often a phrase repeats, so a page that says the same thing too often stands out.

Next: schema, local SEO and WooCommerce, where AIOSEO's paid plans start to differ from the free one.

Schema is code that tells search engines what a page is about: who runs the site, what a product costs, when a clinic opens. AIOSEO writes it for you in JSON-LD. How much it writes depends on your plan.

What you get free, and what needs a plan

The Organization settings live under Search Appearance, Global Settings, Knowledge Graph: name, description, email, phone, founding date, number of employees and a logo of at least 112 by 112 pixels. Type the phone number as you'd normally write it; AIOSEO writes it into the schema in international format, with +91 in front.^[10]

The schema generator (Basic and up)

On a paid plan, Search Appearance, Content Types has a Schema Markup tab for each type. Posts usually get Article, pages Web Page.^[10] On a single page, open AIOSEO Settings, the Schema tab, and click Generate Schema. You can add more than one type, then edit or delete each.^[29] The list includes Article, Course, Event, FAQ, How To, Job Posting, Person, Product, Recipe, Service, Software Application and Video, among others.^[10]

Two warnings. First, schema must describe what's visible on the page. AIOSEO's own product schema help notes that what you fill in appears only in the source code, not on the page.^[32] So if you add a price or a rating in the schema box, the same price or rating has to be on the page for visitors too. Second, think before adding FAQ schema. Google stopped showing FAQ rich results on 7 May 2026.^[33] The markup is still valid, but don't expect it to change how your result looks.

Our Rich Results Test guide shows how to test a page and read Google's errors, and Guide 2, chapter 8 explains which schema types matter for a small business.

Local SEO (Plus and up)

Go to All in One SEO, Local SEO, and click Activate Local SEO if asked. For one branch, fill in Business Info: name, an image, the business type, address, contact details, tax ID if you have one, price range, currencies and payment methods accepted, and the areas you serve. Opening Hours has its own tab, with 24-hour and closed options per day. Placing the pin on the map needs a Google Maps API key.^[30] For a chain of clinics or coaching branches, switch on Multiple Locations and add each one as its own location.^[34]

Note where it goes. AIOSEO outputs Local Business schema and opening hours schema "ONLY" in the home page code.^[30] And it can only describe your business; it doesn't touch Google Maps rankings. Those come from your Business Profile, reviews and listings (Guide 2, chapter 10 and our Business Profile guide).

WooCommerce (Basic and up)

With WooCommerce SEO on a paid plan, AIOSEO adds product schema with price, availability and reviews, shipping and return details, title templates that can use product attributes, and SEO settings for product categories, tags and attributes.^[35] For a D2C brand selling 200 kurtis, the useful parts are the category templates and the product schema; set them once and every new product inherits them.

Two things to check on a store. Make sure the theme or WooCommerce itself isn't printing a second Product block. And keep the price in the schema the same as the price on the page and in Merchant Center, so all three tell Google the same thing. Our Rich Results Test guide covers the product fields Google asks for.

Next: sitemaps, llms.txt, redirects, 404s, internal links and IndexNow.

These are the features that work in the background once they're set. Most need checking once, then again after a big change to the site.

The four sitemaps

Sitemaps lists all four under its own menu: General Sitemap, Video Sitemap, News Sitemap and RSS Sitemap, next to an HTML Sitemap tab (a page for visitors) and the LLMs.txt tab. Each has an Enable Sitemap switch and an Open Sitemap button. On AIOSEO's own site, which runs the plugin, robots.txt lists them at /sitemap.xml, /video-sitemap.xml, /news-sitemap.xml and /sitemap.rss.^[36]

Anything you set to noindex or hide from search under Search Appearance stays out of the XML sitemap,^[13] which is how it should be.

Two settings you can leave alone. AIOSEO lets you set priority and frequency for each section, but Google says it ignores both values.^[40] And AIOSEO's help says it notifies Google when content changes.^[13] Google retired its sitemap "ping" in 2023 and says such pings no longer do "anything useful".^[41] So submit the sitemap yourself in Search Console's Sitemaps report and in Bing Webmaster Tools; that's what counts.

llms.txt: off until you switch it on

AIOSEO can create an llms.txt file; switch it on or off under Sitemaps, the LLMs.txt tab. The same screen offers an llms-full.txt file and Markdown versions of posts (both on paid plans),^[5] a title and description, and which post types and terms to include.^[42] AIOSEO's docs say it's on by default,^[42] but in the free plugin's code it starts off,^[43] so open the tab and check the switch.

AIOSEO's plugin page says the file helps AI engines like Google AI Overviews "discover your content".^[1] Google says the opposite for its own search: it ignores llms.txt, and the file "will neither harm nor help" your visibility in Google Search.^[44] Having it on costs nothing. Just don't count it as AI optimisation. Guide 5, chapter 7 has the evidence, and our AI Crawler Checker shows whether AI crawlers can reach your pages at all, which matters far more.

Redirects (Basic) and 404 logs (Pro)

The Redirection Manager is a paid feature from Basic.^[45] It has three habits worth knowing:

• Slug changes. When you change a published post's slug, AIOSEO shows a notice with an Add Redirect to Improve SEO button, with the old and new URLs filled in. Pick 301 Moved Permanently for a permanent change.^[45]
• Deleted posts. With Monitor Trashed & Deleted Posts on, AIOSEO creates a redirect to the home page, switched off. You change the target to a better page, then turn it on.^[46] Always change that target.
• Method. PHP needs no server setup; Web Server is faster but means editing Apache, NGINX or LiteSpeed files, and then AIOSEO can't count hits or show logs.^[47] Stay on PHP unless your developer says otherwise.

404 logging (Redirects, Settings, Log 404 Errors) is a Pro-plan feature. The log shows each missing URL, its hits and when it was last visited, with an Add Redirect link beside it.^[6] Check it monthly and redirect the URLs that real people or other sites still use.

Pro also has Advanced 404 Settings that redirect every 404 to the home page or to a parent page. AIOSEO itself warns that redirecting 404s "may negatively impact your SEO and confuse your visitors" and suggests a custom 404 page instead.^[48] We'd leave those switches off. Redirect each old URL to its closest real replacement, or let it return a 404.

Pro also adds Full Site Redirect, for moving to a new domain, site aliases, and forcing HTTPS or www. Make sure HTTPS works before you force it.^[49] For a whole-site move, follow Guide 3, chapter 6, not a single switch.

Link Assistant (Pro)

Link Assistant crawls your posts and shows internal, external and affiliate link counts, orphaned posts (no internal links pointing in) and suggested links you can add with one click. AIOSEO says it works best with English content and the block editor.^[50] The orphaned posts filter is the useful part: a post nobody links to is hard for Google and visitors to find. Read each suggestion before you add it; an automatic anchor text isn't always one a person would write. Guide 2, chapter 8 covers how to link by hand, which is free.

IndexNow (Basic)

IndexNow tells Bing, Yandex and the other engines that use it that a URL has changed. Google isn't one of them.^[51] In AIOSEO it's included from Basic up.^[4] To turn it on, open the plugin's Feature Manager^[52] and activate IndexNow. AIOSEO then pings IndexNow whenever you publish or update. To check it, copy the key from General Settings, Webmaster Tools, IndexNow, and open yourdomain.com/your-key.txt; you should see the key.^[53] Our Bing Webmaster Tools guide shows how to confirm Bing receives the pings.

Next: Search Statistics, the AI tools, prices, and how to switch from Yoast or Rank Math.

Search Statistics (Elite only)

Search Statistics puts Google Search Console data inside WordPress: impressions, clicks, average CTR and average position, keyword rankings with winners and losers, content performance, index status and content decay. It's on the Elite plan only, and it connects under Search Statistics, Settings, Connect.^[54] AIOSEO says it reads only the Performance report from your Search Console account.^[55]

It's the same data you get free in Search Console, presented next to your posts. That's handy for a team that never opens Search Console. For a single site, we'd use Search Console directly and save the Elite price. Our Search Console guide shows the reports, and Guide 2, chapter 6 shows how to find decaying pages there for free.

The AI tools

• AI content. Titles, meta descriptions, FAQs, social posts and images, from the AI Copilot tab in AIOSEO Settings. They run on AI credits.^[56] Free users get trial credits^[57] and can buy pay-as-you-go credits; paid plans include them.^[58] The pricing page lists 10,000 credits with Basic, 25,000 with Plus, 50,000 with Pro and 200,000 with Elite.^[4]
• Writing Assistant. Compares your post with the top-ranking pages for a keyword in a chosen region and language, and suggests terms to use. It runs on SEOBoost, a separate service you have to connect.^[59] AIOSEO's pricing page says it needs a paid SEOBoost subscription. SEOBoost's cheapest plan, Essential, showed $30 a month (an introductory price; normally $75), or $22.50 a month billed yearly.^[60]
• AI Insights. A beta report that shows which brands ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, DeepSeek and Perplexity name for a keyword, for Pro customers.^[61]
• MCP server. Lets AI agents such as Claude connect to your site and read or update its SEO data.^[1] Only switch this on if you know exactly which agent gets access and what it may change.

Whatever the AI writes, read it before you save. Google says it's "critical to manually factcheck and review all AI-generated content", and that includes titles and meta descriptions.^[62] An AI title that says "Best dentist in Delhi" for a clinic that can't prove it is a problem you created.

All in One SEO prices, checked 18 October 2026

AIOSEO's pricing page showed us rupee prices from India. All plans are billed yearly; the lower price is the first year, and "all renewals are at full price".^[4] The prices were the same when we read them on 16 October.

From the pricing page and its FAQ.^[4] A few terms worth knowing before you pay:

• The FAQ gives the US price: Basic renews at $99 a year against $49.50 in the first year.
• There's a 14-day money-back guarantee, but renewals are non-refundable.
• The terms say fees and refunds are "issued in USD", and that you pay any currency exchange costs. So your card statement may differ a little from the rupee figure.
• Client sites are allowed: buy a plan with enough sites, or a licence per client.

For a Kanpur sweet shop or a Delhi clinic with 20 pages, we don't think you need a paid plan. The free plugin, Search Console and a little care with redirects cover it. If you change URLs often, Basic at ₹3,000 for the first year buys the redirect manager. Just budget ₹6,000 for every year after.

The alternatives showed us other currencies, read on 16 October 2026 for our other guides and again on 18 October. Yoast SEO Premium was $118.80 a year for one site (about ₹11,400 at ₹96 = US$1).^[63] Rank Math PRO was €7.99 a month billed yearly (renewing at €8.99), for unlimited sites you own.^[64] SEOBoost's $30 is about ₹2,900 a month at the same rate.

Switching from Yoast or Rank Math

AIOSEO imports from Yoast SEO, Rank Math and SEOPress under All in One SEO, Tools, Import/Export, Import Settings From Other Plugins. For Yoast and Rank Math it brings over titles, meta descriptions, schema settings and social meta. The old plugin must still be installed (it can be inactive) for the importer to see it.^[7] Redirects come in separately, under Redirects, Import / Export, from the Redirection plugin and a few others,^[65] or from a CSV file in AIOSEO's sample format.^[66] Yoast and Rank Math aren't in the redirect importer's list on the plugin page,^[1] so plan to move their redirects by CSV.

Moving away from AIOSEO works the same way in reverse: Rank Math's importer lists All In One SEO, as our Rank Math guide shows. Our Yoast vs Rank Math guide compares the other two side by side.

Pros and cons

Alternatives, and which one when

Start with tools that check what the plugin actually outputs, whichever plugin you use. Our Meta Tag Analyzer shows the title, description, canonical and Open Graph tags with a Google and social preview for up to 10 URLs. The Schema Markup Validator checks the JSON-LD. The HTTP Status Checker follows every redirect hop. The Free Website Audit runs 50+ checks across 25 pages, and a free sign-in ranks the fixes by the points they add.

If you'd rather have someone set this up and keep it right, our SEO service does it for WordPress sites, and our web development team handles speed. For a price, get a quote.

Next, try the quiz below, then run the setup wizard on your own site with chapter 2 open.

Test yourself

Ten questions on the whole guide. Pick an answer, check it, and see your score at the end.

Frequently asked questions

Sources