SEO plugin by Yoast messing up my title/meta description
-
Hey guys,
I'm having some issues with my wordpress blog, and I believe SEO plugin by Yoast could be the one causing it.
I have set a title for my wordpress blog, and a tagline. This was set in dashboard > settings > general
Under "titles and metas" > home in the plugin it says, title: %%sitename%% %%page%% %%sep%% %%sitedesc%%, and meta description is blank.
The reports on seomoz says my title is title+meta description - making it to long (to many characters).
What could be the issue here?
Thanks in advance!
-
You too man!
-
That did the trick! Thanks for the support.
Have a great weekend.
-
In Google Chrome:
1. Right click on the page in question and select: View page source
2. Search for <title></em> to see your title</p> <p>3. Search for <em><span><meta </span><span>name</span><span>="</span><span>description</span><span>"</span></em> to see your description</p> <p>Shout if you get stuck!</p> <p>Cheers<br />Marcus </p></title>
-
Awesome, thanks Marcus!
Just one last thing, where can I in an easy way see what my title and meta description/title is? To see if it works.
-
If you are using the SEO plugin it allows various variables in the title templates. So, to use the page / post title and the site name you would use:
%%title%% | %%sitename%%
To use the title and the site description you would use:
%%title%% | %%sitedesc%%
If you wanted title, site name, site description
%%title%% | %%sitename%% | %%sitedesc%%
If you go to the help tag under the Titles & Meta's section you can get a full list of these variables you can get to customise your template titles.
But, the plugin also allows you to customise on a page by page basis in the page / post settings which is also really useful.
Hope that helps!
Marcus -
In the plugin this code is put in the title template box: %%sitename%% %%page%% %%sep%% %%sitedesc%%
Maybe this is the reason why title and tag line/meta description is put as title? The "%%sitedesc%%" should perhaps be put in the Meta description template beneath?
-
I tried disabling, and what I got now was an empty title. What does that tell me?
That's the problem, part of the title should be in the meta description (as it is put under "tag line" in wordpress settings > general.
Put the tagline is shown right after the title in the title.
-
Hey, page title looks fine, no meta description though by the look of things?
-
Marcus,
First of all, thanks for the reply!
I will try to disable the plugin and see what happens.
Where do need a link? Here is to the blog in question blogg.loveday.se (don't know if it is of any use though, as it is in swedish).
-
Hey Daniel
Hard to say without a link but the first thing I would do would be to disable the plugin and see if that puts things right. If that does not work, the plugin may have some incompatibilities with your theme or your theme may have some problems itself.
The Yoast plugin has some configuration that allows you to force the rewriting of the titles so you can check to see if that is enabled on the titles and metas page (and try turning it on / off).
Ultimately, this is likely a theme conflict and many themes have their own SEO settings that may need to be disabled or removed so I would look there firfst.
Can you post a link?
Marcus
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
-
Top 3 SEO Strategy/Research Practices
Hi Moz Community, I am launching a series of new e-commerce websites and wanted to know before I started the content writing what are the TOP 3 strategy/research practices and techniques I should be doing before building my website? Bonus points for those who can give me a Top 5! Thanks,
Technical SEO | | xlucax
Luca0 -
Unfamiliar Meta Description Tags
I'm working with a client who uses a CMS which loads meta tags into their site through its backend. On-page I see this in the source:
Technical SEO | | medtouch0 -
Google displaying different meta descriptions for the same URL but different keyword
Hi All, A quick question that may even have a quick answer: Why would Google display a different meta description for the same URL for a different keyword? For example I enter 2 of our similar keywords into Google: KEYWORD A | META DESCRIPTION A DISPLAYED | URL A KEYWORD B | META DESCRIPTION B DISPLAYED | URL A Thanks in advance
Technical SEO | | SO_UK0 -
Schema Wordpress plugins
Hi Can anyone recommend a good Schema plugin for wordpress sites, does anyone know if Yoast SEO plugin has schema features ? Cheers Dan
Technical SEO | | Dan-Lawrence0 -
Updating/chaning title tags & meta descriptions
Hi there, Can altering title tags and meta descriptions too often have a negative impact on page ranking? Thank you!
Technical SEO | | ZAG0 -
Duplicate content /index.php/ issues
I'm having some duplicate content issues with Google. I've already got my .htaccess file working just fine as far as I can tell. Rewriting works great, and by using the site you'd never end up on a page with /index.php. However I do notice that on ANY page of the site you could add /index.php and get the same page i.e.: www.mysite.com/category/article and www.mysite.com/index.php/category/article Would both return the same page. How can I 301 or something similar all /index.php pages to the non index.php version? I have no desire for any page on my site to have index.php in it, there is no use to it. Having quite the hard time figuring this out. Again this is basically just for the robots, the URL's the users see are perfect, never had an issue with that. Just SEOMOZ reporting duplicate content and I've verified that to be true.
Technical SEO | | b18turboef1 -
Block /tag/ or not?
I've asked this question in another area but now i want to ask it as a bigger question. Do we block /tag/ with robots.txt or not. Here's why I ask: My wordpress site does not block /tag/ and I have many /tag/ results in the top 10 results of Google. Have for months. The question is, does Google see /tag/ on WordPress as duplicate content? SEOMoz says it's duplicate content but it's a tag. It's not really content per say. I'm all for optimizing my site but Google is not penalizing me for /tag/ results. I don't want to block /tag/ if Google is not seeing it as duplicate content for only one reason and that's because I have many results in the top 10 on G. So, can someone who knows more about this weigh in on the subject for I really would like a accurate answer. Thanks in advance...
Technical SEO | | MyAllenMedia0 -
Meta Title Keywords and Company name
Currently our meta title says "Network Security Audit | Pivot Point Security" which is pretty broad considering how many services we offer. In trying to restructure our keywords, marketing and SEO focus, I came up with a new title. The problem I have is figuring out which keywords to use in the title, and with a company name with 3 words - I am running out of room. The new title idea is "Information Security Assessments - Penetration Testing | Pivot Point Security" So my questions are the following. Do I need to put the company name? Should I choose different keywords? I'm sort of at a stand still trying to figure out the best possible title since meta keywords or description won't really help ranking.
Technical SEO | | pivotpointsecurity0