Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Yoast SEO Plugin and Theme Conflict - Meta Tags
-
I have installed yoast seo plugin and a theme that I purchased.
I have added site title and meta description for the index page through yoast seo plugin see here http://screencast.com/t/AdjMynym8Tmhowever this does not work as can be seen on the test site
http://importingtips.com/test/does anyone have any advice?
Thanks
-
Thanks Paul, that is a great help.
Appreciate the assistance
-
Hah - spotted the problem, viva. You actually have two meta-descriptions coded on the page.
The Yoast code is correct, but on line 11 of the page's code is another
name="description" content="">
That one's empty and must be the one SEOQuake was picking up. Unfortunately, the search engines will probably grab the first (empty) one too, so you need to get it out of there. I'm suspecting it's coming from the theme's SEO settings themselves. You'll need to dig around or Google "using mythemename with Yoast WordPress SEO plugin".
P.
P.S. There's an author metatag there you'll probably want to get rid of too - use Yoast's plugin's authorship markup instead.
-
Thanks Paul,
The confusion was I checked the code and it looked good but the seo quake showed no results for the meta description, and I thought seo quake looks directly at the page code rather than any cache when you look at the page info option.
Thanks for all your help
-
Hmmm that SEOQuake report is incorrect, Arthur - not sure if maybe it's pulling an old version of a cache?
The place to check is by actually viewing the source code of your page. Here's what I see for your /test page:
<title>hello</title>
As you can see, all the meta-data is now correctly displayed. (Before I was seeing all of the above except the title tag, which is now there.) So looks like checking Rewrite Title has done the trick.
As far as I can see, you're good to go!
Paul
P.S. To check the source, view the page in your browser, then in Firefox, Right click and select View Source - in Chrome, just click CTRL-U
-
Hi Paul,
Thanks for the reply.
I have followed your advice and still have the issue with the meta description. For some reason it is not been picked up. Take a look at the screen shot below.
http://screencast.com/t/3PjUtUDMeCaq
Do you have any other thoughts?
Thanks
Arthur -
The plugin is working on your site and is handling all of the meta-data except the page title, Arthur.
Many themes aren't coded to handle meta-titles in the standard way so plugins can control them. There's a setting in Yoast's plugin that can be used to force the rewrite of the titles.
If you go to the plugin's settings and click on the Title and Meta page, there's a check-box at the very top of the General tab called Force Rewrite Titles. If that's not selected, try putting a check-mark in the box. Then clear the WordPress cache if you;re using one, and clear your browser cache before reloading the test page.
Let us know if that works?
Paul
PS this assumes you've also turned off the SEO settings in the theme, which it looks like you have as Yoast's plugin is already setting the other metadata.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Is Removing Breadcrumbs Detrimental for SEO?
We have full navigational breadcrumbs on our site for the menu and the brand menu. i.e. Home > Clothing > Jackets Brand > Brand Name > Brand Jackets There's been talk of removing this and having it like Chico's does, where on item pages they just have a link at the top to previous category (i.e. you're on a shirt product page and at the top it says "Back to Tops" instead of listing Home > Clothing > Tops) Is doing something like this detrimental to SEO? From what I've read Breadcrumbs are for user experience but I just want to be sure.
Technical SEO | | AliMac260 -
Do Meta Keywords matter?
I am a firm believer in the fundamentals of SEO but is there any data to support its impact positively or negatively towards a sites rank?
Technical SEO | | Brandonp0 -
SEO value of InDesign pages?
Hi there, my company is exploring creating an online magazine built with Adobe's InDesign toolset. If we proceeded with this, could we make these pages "as spiderable" as normal html/css webpages? Or are we limited to them being less spiderable, or not at all spiderable?
Technical SEO | | TheaterMania1 -
Use of title tags on divs for SEO purposes
Hello community, I recently was asked by a client to analyze a website of a competitor. I did was he asked me to do but when I looked at the source code of the website I found this code: I changed the exact words into something for privacy reasons, but I never looked at a code like this.
Technical SEO | | JarnoNijzing
Using a div for an anchor I get but adding a title tag to the div? I never seen that before. Title tags on anchors, yes, using images in divs as background and then adding a title??? Does anyone have any experience with a code like this and if you do how does this impact rankings? Does it impact rankings at all and does anybody know of any correlation between the two? Looking forward for your responses. Regards Jarno0 -
Auto generated meta description tag in Drupal
Was having issues on Drupal not autogenerating a meta description tag, but I think I have figured it out. Just to verify, would this piece of code be the meta description tag (reason I ask is b/c it looks a little different than the usual tag I have seen):
Technical SEO | | kevgrand0 -
Tags showing up in Google
Yesterday a user pointed out to me that Tags were being indexed in Google search results and that was not a good idea. I went into my Yoast settings and checked the "nofollow, index" in my Taxanomies, but when checking the source code for no follow, I found nothing. So instead, I went into the robot.txt and disallowed /tag/ Is that ok? or is that a bad idea? The site is The Tech Block for anyone interested in looking.
Technical SEO | | ttb0 -
Does Bitly hurt your SEO?
I often use bit.ly or Google URL shortener in links when other websites post my articles so I can track clicks. However, I am thinking this may HURT my SEO given that it is taking away a back link to my website. Is that logic correct ? If so, what is a good way to be able to track clicks if a website posts your article without jeopardizing the SEO value?
Technical SEO | | StreetwiseReports1 -
Use of Meta Tag - MSSmartTagsPreventParsing
We've inherited some sites from another developer that had the following tag: All references I can find to it are from 2004. What is the purpose and is it worth including in pages/sites we build?
Technical SEO | | wcksmith0