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.
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
-
What do you do with product pages that are no longer used ? Delete/redirect to category/404 etc
We have a store with thousands of active items and thousands of sold items. Each product is unique so only one of each. All products are pinned and pushed online ... and then they sell and we have a product page for a sold item. All products are keyword researched and often can rank well for longtail keywords Would you :- 1. delete the page and let it 404 (we will get thousands) 2. See if the page has a decent PA, incoming links and traffic and if so redirect to a RELEVANT category page ? ~(again there will be thousands) 3. Re use the page for another product - for example a sold ruby ring gets replaces with ta new ruby ring and we use that same page /url for the new item. Gemma
Technical SEO | | acsilver0 -
Create Page Titles from H1 using Yoast?
I'm working on a site that has 280 blog posts that have either been migrated from an old CMS site or created on the Dev version of the new WordPress site. We've written 280 unique meta descriptions so they don't truncate but it there a quick way I can export the current H1s and then import them into Yoast so they are set as the Page Titles? I've written unique Page Titles and meta descriptions for all the Service and Products page and just want a way to speed up the blog posts as their H1s are really good and what I would use as Page Titles anyway. Any help, greatly appreciated!
Technical SEO | | Marketing_Today0 -
Bing webmaster tools incorrectly showing missing title and description tags
Hey all, Was wondering if anyone else has come across this issue. Bing is showing title and description tags missing in the head of my wordpress blog. I can't seem to find any documentation on this. Thanks, Roman
Technical SEO | | Dynata_panel_marketing0 -
Will Adding Publish Date at end of Page Title for Blog posts Hurt SEO?
I'd like to be able to easily track blog posts by month but in Google reports when you set a date range obviously older blog post still appear and with amount of blog posts we generate without seeing the date in the title it's not obvious what was published and when it was published. For example if a Blog Title was "/dangers-of-sharing-KM-knowledge-01-11-15 would it hurt SEO? The reason is I'd like to have a quick way to know how new posts do each month compared to older content
Technical SEO | | inhouseninja0 -
Phone Number In Meta Description
People are more likely to call us, than email us. However, if they're using a mobile device, there's a click to call button on that site. My question is this: google does not include our phone number in our meta description. I could try to get the description changed, but it doesn't seem like it would make that big of a deal for just the desktop site. Am I missing something about the importance of the phone number on a desktop site? Any experience with this situation? Thanks, Ruben
Technical SEO | | KempRugeLawGroup3 -
Error: Missing Meta Description Tag on pages I can't find in order to correct
This seems silly, but I have errors on blog URLs in our WordPress site that I don't know how to access because they are not in our Dashboard. We are using All in One SEO. The errors are for blog archive dates, authors and just simply 'blog'. Here are samples: http://www.fateyes.com/2012/10/
Technical SEO | | gfiedel
http://www.fateyes.com/author/gina-fiedel/
http://www.fateyes.com/blog/ Does anyone know how to input descriptions for pages like these?
Thanks!!0 -
WordPress - How to stop both http:// and https:// pages being indexed?
Just published a static page 2 days ago on WordPress site but noticed that Google has indexed both http:// and https:// url's. Usually I only get http:// indexed though. Could anyone please explain why this may have happened and how I can fix? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | Clicksjim1 -
What can I do about missing Meta Description for category pagest etc.?
On all my campaigns I'm returning high levels of 'Missing Meta Description Tags'. The problem with fixing this is they're all for category, tag and author pages. Is there a way to add a meta description to these pages (there are hundreds) or will it not really have any ranking effect?
Technical SEO | | SiliconBeachTraining0