devnihil

@saznajmo Whereas Google typically uses the title and meta description from the page’s metadata for indexing, this is not always the case. Google will sometimes modify or ignore the title and meta description when it sees fit, as well as sometimes adding the brand or site name to the end of your title.

This behavior is not due to the plugin not functioning as expected, but rather is due to Google using another value for the title and meta description that it indexes, as it’s algorithm has concluded that there is a better version to index. We have additional information on this topic available at the following links: Google Shows Different Titles For My Site and Google Shows The Wrong Meta Description For My Site.

If Google is ignoring the title or meta description you have created for a page and creating it’s own based off the page’s content, we would recommend creating new ones that reflect the page’s content. Please refer to the aforementioned articles as they include recommendations for crafting a page title which will help increase the likelihood that Google will use the title and meta description that you specified, instead of it’s modified version. 

Additionally, we have a guide on how to write clean and meaningful meta description for your pages and posts by following the steps it outlines: How To Create The Right Meta Description.

@nikhlede We can’t really offer SEO advice as to whether it’s safe to ignore the keyphrase warning in this case, as to be able to say so would require an in-depth review of the site. However, the answer really would depend on the metrics of what users are searching when they access the page. Is it always the brand/product name, and for all language variations? That could be the case, but also seems unlikely. If you aren’t sure, we’d recommend performing some keyword research to find out. Also, the following article has some additional recommendations for best practices with multilingual SEO: https://yoast.com/seo-copywriting-multilingual-multiregional-sites/

@rickyprice We’re sorry to hear you are experiencing these issues on your site.

Regarding the database errors you received, we have seen unexpected issues where the previously optimized data is invalid or incomplete. To resolve this we’d recommend to start with a reset of the optimization to ensure we’ve removed any invalid data. Let’s cover a few important things to be aware of beforehand.

First, we would understand if you are hesitant to reset the optimized data, but we can assure you that none of your work or settings will be lost as the default WordPress tables also contain the SEO data. This process will only reset the custom Yoast tables with the combined data pulled from those default tables.

Second, we recommend creating regular backups of your site and database for your site’s health and safety. Backups are especially important before making substantial changes to your website. It provides you with a safety net if something were to go wrong. Learn more about the benefits of regular backups.

Thirdly, we highly recommend using a staging or testing site to reduce the impact on your live site. Some popular web hosts offer quick setups for a staging site, so please contact your web host for assistance. They will probably be able to help you out. If your web host does not offer staging sites, the WordPress plugin repository offers staging plugins, or you can create your own staging site.

Now, back to the issue at hand. We know that resetting the data may sound intimidating, but our How to reset the Yoast indexables guide will walk you through the process step by step. We’ve also summarized the steps below.

1. Install & activate the Yoast Test Helper plugin
2. Go to Tools > Yoast Test
3. Locate the Yoast SEO section and click on the ‘Reset indexables tables & migrations‘, ‘Reset Prominent words calculation‘, and ‘Reset Internal link counter‘ buttons. After each click, the page will reload to confirm that the specific reset was successful.
4. Go to SEO > Tools, and under SEO data, click the “Start SEO data optimization” button to allow Yoast to rescan your content.

Please let us know if the reported issue remains after resetting the optimized data.

As for the 500 errors on the page and post sitemaps, this is typically caused by that the resources required to generate the sitemap are not available or the request is timing out due to the resource restrictions of the server environment. We would first recommend ensuring that the PHP settings for both max_execution_time and memory_limit are set to a high enough value in the PHP environment. This setting is typically controlled by editing the values in a php.ini file such as in the following example:

max_execution_time = 300
memory_limit = 256M

If you aren’t sure how to change these settings in php.ini, we would recommend contacting your hosting provider for additional assistance.

If you are still receiving a 500 error after increasing the PHP memory and execution time, the issue may be caused by that the PHP script run time restriction on the server is being reached.

In order to reduce the amount of time necessary for the script to generate the sitemap, you can reduce the number of entries in the sitemap. By default, the number of entries in the sitemap is set to 1000 but by decreasing this value it will decrease the amount of resources required to generate the sitemap. To decrease the number of sitemap entries you can use the filter wpseo_sitemap_entries_per_page. We have more information on using this developer filter at the following link: Limit the number of sitemap entries.

Can you please try the aforementioned suggestions and let us know whether this resolves your issue?

@urbanheather We’re sorry to hear you are experiencing this issue on your site.

Looking at the error details, we observe that a class that is no longer available in the plugin, although “YoastSEO_Vendor\Symfony\Component\DependencyInjection\Container” is still being referenced. This usually happens when the plugin files are cached and some old files are still used after updating the plugin. On occasions, this causes temporary errors that resolve themselves once the cache has been cleared.

If the problem doesn’t resolve for you automatically, can you please try clearing the cache from your theme, plugin, server and CDN (e.g. CloudFlare) before and after updating Yoast SEO? If you are not sure how to clear the cache from a theme or plugin please speak to those authors. If you want to clear cache from the server, please speak to your host provider.

Also, can you please confirm whether the installation of WordPress meets all of the plugin requirements listed here?: https://yoast.com/help/plugin-requirements/

@christopherrosenberg We apologize for the delay in responding.

Regarding your issue,

We checked on the page here and did confirm that Yoast is outputting the following for the title and meta description:

<title>Superyachts and Curated Luxury Experiences by ROSENBERG</title>
<meta name="description" content="The curated ROSENBERG Collection offer you the most impressive yachts available for charter, combined with outstanding lifestyle experiences." />

However, we do see that this is not the exact title and meta description that Google is indexing in a search here.

​Whereas Google typically uses the meta description from the metadata for indexing, this is not always the case. Google will sometimes modify or ignore the meta description when it sees fit. This is not due to the plugin not functioning as expected, but rather is due to Google using another value for the meta description it indexes as it’s algorithm has concluded that there is a better version to index.

We have additional information on this here: https://yoast.com/help/my-meta-descriptions-arent-showing-up-in-the-search-result-pages/ and here: https://yoast.com/help/my-seo-title-isnt-displayed-as-i-have-entered-it/.

If Google is ignoring the title or meta description you have created for a page and creating it’s own description based off the page’s content, we would recommend creating a new meta description that reflect’s the page’s content. We have an article on how to write clean and meaningful meta description for your pages and posts by following the steps given in this guide. https://yoast.com/meta-descriptions/.

@matador9 We’re sorry to hear you are experiencing this issue on your site.

We understand you are getting the “failed to open stream: No such file or directory in” error message after a plugin update. This issue occurs when the plugin installation or update couldn’t complete correctly. The fatal error is telling you that the plugin couldn’t find one of the core Yoast SEO plugin files. In this case, could you please reinstall it manually to see if this resolves the issue?

You can learn more about how to update manually using FTP here: How to manually update a Yoast plugin using FTP. You will need an FTP program such as FileZilla and your FTP details, which can be obtained from your host provider.

@jwyrick You would want Google to be using a single, preferred version of your site’s URL. This warning in Google Search Console is definitely something you would want to resolve. When you receive it, it typically indicates an issue with duplicate content.

As for the configuration for which version of the URL is used, in WordPress this setting is controlled by the WordPress Address (URL) and Site Address (URL) values which are located in Settings>General. You would need to make sure that both of these are set to use your preferred version (http/https and www/non-www). If you are still not seeing the correct version of the URL reflected on the live site after updating these settings, we would recommend checking with your host for more information on how to force the site to use the preferred version of your domain as this can vary depending on the hosting provider.

To resolve the warning, Google recommends the following:

1. Go to Coverage – Duplicate, Google chose different canonical than user and use the URL Inspection tool to find out which URL was chosen by Google as the canonical instead.
2. If Google ignored a self-referencing canonical, then you need to make the page’s content more unique and add more incoming internal links.
3. If Google ignored a canonical pointing to another URL, you have several options:a) make the content more similar so Google is more likely to adhere to your canonical.b) update the canonical to point to a more relevant URL. Perhaps Google was right, and you should just take the URL they chose and use that as the canonical URL.c) implement a redirect in case your site is available through both HTTP and HTTPS or with and without the www subdomain.