PageSpeeds For All in One SEO vs Yoast vs Rank Math vs No SEO Plugin

I have received a few PM's lately from members, to do with Page Speed, and whether to choose the All in One SEO WordPress plugin, the Yoast SEO WordPress plugin, the Rank Math SEO WordPress plugin, or to install No SEO plugin at all for their WordPress website.

This post will look purely at the Page Speed as per Google's PageSpeed Insights tool, to help dismiss any myths out there, as to which plugin is the fastest, or whether a particular SEO plugin will slow your website down.

The Baseline

To make these tests as fair as possible, I created four (4) brand new websites, using the Wealthy Affiliate SiteRubix Hosting Platform.

All of the websites are running WordPress version 5.5.3.

I then installed the GeneratePress free WordPress Theme, and deleted all of the pre-installed themes, except for the default TwentyTwenty WordPress Theme.

I also deactivated and deleted all of the pre-installed plugins, including the Classic Editor WordPress Plugin, and the Kraken WordPress Plugin.

Once the themes and plugins had been deleted, I then proceeded to install and activate the appropriate WordPress SEO Plugin for each of the test websites.

After the WordPress websites were configured with their themes and plugins, I then created a New WordPress Post with identical Titles and Content. The content used is the typical Lorem Ipsum text, and I created a post containing 1000 words over 11 paragraphs.

There was no further configuration done of the core WordPress settings, the theme customisation settings, the plugin settings, and no images were added to the website or post.

I logged out of all four (4) websites, then headed to the Wealthy Affiliate SiteManager, and to the SitePlus+ settings, so that I could clear the server cache.

Once the server cache was cleared, I visited each of the websites home pages, followed by pressing the Ctrl + F5 keys to force a refresh of the page. I then did the same process for the test posts that were created.

The Testing

Now that the websites are created, I visited the Google PageSpeed Insights website, and performed a test on the new post containing the 1000 words.

I took a screenshot of the results, then proceeded to perform the test for a second time, where I also took a screenshot.

The four (4) websites being tested, should you want to perform your own tests on them, are as follows:

• Test Site Using No SEO - noseotestsite.siterubix.com
  
• Test Site Using All in One SEO - aioseotestsite.siterubix.com
  
• Test Site Using Rank Math - rankmathtestsite.siterubix.com
  
• Test Site Using Yoast - yoasttestsite.siterubix.com
  

I'm well aware of the SPAM is a NO NO Rules, and this is NOT Self Promotion, and is provided to you for testing purposes ONLY. There is no other content or links on these brand new websites, and no reference back to myself at all.

The Results

Test Site Using No SEO - Test 1

Test Site Using No SEO - Test 2

Test Site Using All in One SEO - Test 1

Test Site Using All in One SEO - Test 2

Test Site Using Rank Math - Test 1

Test Site Using Rank Math - Test 2

Test Site Using Yoast - Test 1

Test Site Using Yoast - Test 2

Test Summary

If the images are hard to see the results, here is a text breakdown of the results.

No SEO Plugin - Test 1

• Mobile Score - 92
• First Contentful Paint - 2.5s
• Speed Index - 2.6s
• Largest Contentful Paint - 2.5s
• Time to Interactive - 2.5s
• Total Blocking Time - 310ms
• Cumulative Layout Shift - 0

No SEO Plugin - Test 2

• Mobile Score - 99
• First Contentful Paint - 1.7s
• Speed Index - 2.2s
• Largest Contentful Paint - 1.9s
• Time to Interactive - 1.7s
• Total Blocking Time - 0ms
• Cumulative Layout Shift - 0

All in One SEO Plugin - Test 1

• Mobile Score - 75
• First Contentful Paint - 1.5s
• Speed Index - 2.1s
• Largest Contentful Paint - 1.6s
• Time to Interactive - 3.3s
• Total Blocking Time - 1550ms
• Cumulative Layout Shift - 0

All in One SEO Plugin - Test 2

• Mobile Score - 99
• First Contentful Paint - 1.7s
• Speed Index - 2.3s
• Largest Contentful Paint - 1.9s
• Time to Interactive - 1.7s
• Total Blocking Time - 0ms
• Cumulative Layout Shift - 0

Rank Math SEO Plugin - Test 1

• Mobile Score - 96
• First Contentful Paint - 2.0s
• Speed Index - 4.0s
• Largest Contentful Paint - 2.0s
• Time to Interactive - 2.0s
• Total Blocking Time - 120ms
• Cumulative Layout Shift - 0

Rank Math SEO Plugin - Test 2

• Mobile Score - 99
• First Contentful Paint - 1.7s
• Speed Index - 2.2s
• Largest Contentful Paint - 1.7s
• Time to Interactive - 1.7s
• Total Blocking Time - 0ms
• Cumulative Layout Shift - 0

Yoast SEO Plugin - Test 1

• Mobile Score - 99
• First Contentful Paint - 1.5s
• Speed Index - 2.5s
• Largest Contentful Paint - 1.6s
• Time to Interactive - 2.1s
• Total Blocking Time - 180ms
• Cumulative Layout Shift - 0

Yoast SEO Plugin - Test 2

• Mobile Score - 99
• First Contentful Paint - 1.7s
• Speed Index - 2.2s
• Largest Contentful Paint - 1.9s
• Time to Interactive - 1.7s
• Total Blocking Time - 0ms
• Cumulative Layout Shift - 0

Test Conclusion

If you base the results purely on the Page Speed results that you see above, and only looking at the second test of each website, it is very clear that none of these three most popular WordPress SEO Plugins will slow your website down.

However, looking at the first test for each website, the Yoast plugin performs better, and the All in One SEO plugin is rather slow, in comparison, due to the blocking time.

It's obviously not advisable to have no SEO plugin at all, and this was only included so that you could clearly see the differences.

The No SEO Plugin test contains no plugins at all, and only the two WordPress themes, but it does contain an average sized post of 1000 words. This is a good baseline test to show that even with no additional plugins etc, that the results still differ between test 1 and test 2.

The choice of plugin is, therefore, down to personal preference, and you don't need to worry about the speed or the impact that it will have on your website.

I hope this analysis post was useful and helps you with your decision-making process. But please bear in mind, that these results were only focusing on the speed and performance impact of your WordPress website. I have not covered the usability, features or benefits of each plugin.

If you have been following me for a while now, you will know what my preference is, but I would love to hear from you about your thoughts and findings with these three (3) WordPress SEO Plugins.

Feel free to share these below in the comments section.