Hello!
Our Transport extension automatically removes old metadata from other plugins. If you used different means of transporting, you might need to remove the metadata manually. The other plugins should be able to provide you with guidance on removing the metadata and options.
Still, it seems you have leftover pages from the other plugin. Could you tell me how you created these and what their purposes were?
I’m not sure how you created a custom 404 page. If you could provide me a link to the plugin you used, I can look into it.
And lastly, yes, you could submit the new sitemap to Google — they will automatically spot it though. Still, you should remove the old one from Google Search Console, so they will stop sending you warnings.
Thread Starter
Efs
(@stevendigital)
Hello, @cybr
To answer your question below:
I have used the Transport extension and some metadata were removed as you said. The previous SEO plugin was Yoast.
Could you tell me how you created these and what their purposes were?
Most of the metadata had default settings and were mostly for categories, so no real purpose here, just the default settings.
I’m not sure how you created a custom 404 page. If you could provide me with a link to the plugin you used, I can look into it.
It is prebuilt on the premium theme that I use and I can just choose a page as a 404 page that replaces the default one. I don’t know if it is ok with WordPress to refer to the theme’s name here as it is paid only. Let me know and I will provide you with the name/link.
Thank you also for the Google sitemap clarification/suggestions.
Best Regards
Howdy!
If there’s any leftover data from Yoast SEO, it’d probably be their “Indexables” database table and some options. See https://yoast.com/help/how-can-i-uninstall-my-plugin/ and scroll down to “Complete data removal.” Their guides sometimes contain outdated information, but this one’s accurate nonetheless.
If the default settings pages/categories are useless, you should delete them. If you still need them, but they aren’t particularly useful (on their own) to your visitors, then you should apply “noindex” to them. You can exclude posts/pages from on-site search results and archives via The SEO Framework’s post-meta settings.
It would be best if you inquired with the support of the premium theme about the 404 page: It should send not a page but a 404 response; the theme can still determine its contents. For the developer: Sending a proper 404 response via WordPress WP_Query set_404() should be done early, right after the template is determined, i.e., late into template_redirect (use a large priority number). Via template_include, an appropriate template can be set; via 404_template_hierarchy it can be directed more cleanly.
I hope this helps!
