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
-
Meta Description for ALL my Posts is Being Overwritten!
Every single one of my posts meta descriptions are being overritten with the same meta description! I use Yoast and have proper meta descriptions in my posts, but something seems to be overriding them. https://ibb.co/rcgWNXb Any idea what could be causing this? Thank you!!! Mike
Technical SEO | | naturalsociety1 -
Breadcrumbs on Mobile How important are they for SEO?
Due to Poor unsightly look of breadcrumbs and the space it takes up above the fold we only employ breadcrumbs on our desktop version. Breadcrumbs are hidden from view on mobile version. However as mobile first indexing is now in play what technical SEO impacts will this have? one thing that comes to mind is crawling deeper pages where breadcrumbs made them accessible in less than 3 link clicks? But i am unsure now of the impacts of not having breadcrumbs visible for mobile version of our site.
Technical SEO | | oceanstorm0 -
Hiding h1 tags in Magento
Hi Moz Community, I know that hiding h1 tags isn't a good practice for SEO and google, but we have banners that look much nicer than the stock text Magento uses for its titles. The banners have the same text and the h1 is in the source code, just not visible on front end. The option Magento gives is "hide title on the page." So I'm not sure if this is actually the bad way to hide it or if it's fine for search engines. Thanks,
Technical SEO | | IceIcebaby
-Reed0 -
Question on noscript tags and indexing
If I have a <noscript>tag on every page of my website with the same sentence over and over saying something to the effect of "Sorry our site uses Javascript, please enable javascript for the full site experience.", Webmaster Tools will tell me that one of the most common words on my site is "Javascript".</p> <p>Is this something to be concerned about from an SEO perspective? My site is obviously not about Javascript and I don't want to dilute my page's topic or authority by repeating words that are not relevant to the topic of my site.</p> <p>Thanks!</p></noscript>
Technical SEO | | IrvCo_Interactive0 -
Wordpress Pods and Wordpress SEO by Yoast
Hi I am optimising a new site that has been built in Wordpress using Pods. The Yoast Wordpress SEO plugin is not recognising any content on the site - has anyone any ideas on how to get around this - does it matter - is it the plugin that is at fault rahter than the set up of the site?
Technical SEO | | Highlandgael1 -
Special Characters in Title Tags & Meta Descriptions
Do special characters, such as the "&" symbol or a "," in title tags and meta descriptions negatively affect your ranking in search engines? Any feedback is much appreciated. Thank you!
Technical SEO | | ZAG1 -
SEO for User Authenticated Content
Hi Everyone - I have a potential client who is seeking SEO for a site that contains about 95% of content only accessible through user authentication . Does anyone have tips for getting this indexed without having to open it up to the public? I was considering adding "snippets" into the robots.txt or creating an additional page with snippets linking to the login page. I'd appreciate any thoughts! Thanks!
Technical SEO | | manutx0 -
Img before or after h1 tag?
I like images to align right at top of content page. img tag before h1 tag looks better on page, but wondering if h1 tag before img tag is preferred by spider. Irrelevant? or possibly matters? thanks for any thoughts.
Technical SEO | | jotham2
All about Stuff or All about Stuff or even
All about Stuff0