Yoast SEO (free version) and BeTheme (Muffin Builder)

@claudiop58 Thanks for your message, we’ve identified several concerns in your message and responded to each below:

Now the free Yoast SEO plugin does not seem to “understand” the text. I got “red” lights everywhere! Is this because the text is “wrapped” inside Muffin Builder?

Yes, that is correct. A cause for the SEO analysis to be unable to recognize the content of your page is when you are using a page builder to create content. The SEO and readability analysis features can sometimes not work correctly if you are using some kind of visual page builder, as they can cause the page’s content to not be accessible to the plugin due to it being created outside the functions of the standard WordPress page editor.

Another thing that I do not understand, is that the Muffin Builder (or the Theme) seems to have a SEO section, every page has at the bottom, before the Yoast Section, four input fields, named SEO / Title, SEO / Description, SEO / Keywords and Open Graph Image (e.g. Facebook share image). Now I am confused about the relationship between these “Theme-Fields” and the Yoast fields (Keyprhase, meta-description…).

Would you please be able to provide us with a screenshot of what you are seeing for the theme?

It’s likely that your theme also has it’s own features for SEO for outputting the Title, Meta Description, and Open Graph image for social previews. If this is the case we’d recommend either use the Yoast SEO features, or theme’s, but not both simultaneously.

Using both can result in issues such as outputting the Title/Description or Open Graph image twice. When Google or Facebook read a page that has duplicate tags output, it views those as a conflict so will typically ignore both in that case. We’d recommend disabling the SEO/Open Graph output of your theme if possible to avoid this from occurring.

Hi @devnihil thanks for your clear and exhaustive answer!

since I do not see here any way of attaching an image, I uploaded two screenshots of what I mean…

here they are:
first (upper):
https://abload.de/image.php?img=bildschirmfoto2021-03gfksn.png

and then scrolling down and reaching the SEO section of the Theme (I do think it is the theme):
https://abload.de/image.php?img=bildschirmfoto2021-035jklq.png

If the images are readable, the second one shows also a part of the Yoast menus.

As you can see in this example (the home page) I did type something in BOTH fields, I understand from your answer I should blank the theme SEO input fields and use only the Yoast one, right?

Best regards & thanks again!
Claudio

• This reply was modified 3 years, 8 months ago by Claudio P..

@claudiop58 Thanks for your reply and for providing the images.

Yes, the additional fields that you showed in your image (meaning besides Yoast SEO) do appear to be additional SEO fields that your theme providers. We would recommend disabling these features if possible to prevent any type of duplicate metadata from being output. Whether just leaving them blank will prevent this issue isn’t certain, but you could test this by leaving it blank and then reviewing the source code for the page in question.

I also checked on the source code of your home page and was able to confirm that this issue is occurring, as I am seeing two meta description tags being output. One of which is from Yoast SEO, and the second likely coming from your theme. See image here.

Hi @devnihil thanks a lot.
I appreciate this support you are providing, after all I only have the free version of the plugin!
Now, I do have a problem here, apparently.
I emptied the fields, and I also set the SEO option of the theme to OFF as you recommended (I wasn’t aware of it!). I did remember to press “save changes” everywhere. Then I started a private browser page (Safari), deleted the cache, and looked at the page code (thanks for the hint!). It does not seem to change at all! This I really cannot understand.

SEO-Options

Empty-Theme-Fields

Page Code

Interestingly, in the page “who am I”, where I never typed those SEO-fields of the theme at all, the problem does not exist, as can be seen here.

Yoast Version: 15.9.1
WordPress Version: 5.6.2

Do you have any suggestions? Maybe I’m missing something, I am really a newbie!

Best regards, thanks, Claudio

• This reply was modified 3 years, 8 months ago by Claudio P..

Hi, for some unknown reasons, now I looked again and the problem seems solved. The two meta description tags have disappeared and it remains only one. I cannot understand why now, and not three hours ago.

I would have one last question though, if you are so kind.

I noticed that now also the tag meta name=”keywords” is not there anymore (you can see it was there in your previously posted image, immediately under the first meta name “description”). Is that because the Yoast-SEO Plugin does not provide that? shouldn’t it be the place for the “Keyphrase” (that of course I have).

Thanks again,
Regards
Claudio

@claudiop58

Focus keyphrases don’t show up in the page source like meta keywords.

The meta keywords feature has been removed since Yoast SEO for WordPress v6.3. Meta keywords haven’t had any use for ages. As the web became more commercial, people started spamming this keywords element and search engines began ignoring it.

Read why we don’t use meta keywords and why you shouldn’t either for further information on the topic.

Hi @suascat_wp , that’s very interesting and yes, there are people like me that are in the “business” ?? since two weeks and have no idea! Newbie as I said.
It makes sense, though I wonder why a (probably) well known theme like the BeTheme family does have this input (you can see the input field here).
Well, let’s hope that the meta-tag “description” does not end being ignored too for similar reasons.
Anyway, hey, this is a really good support I have received, I have learned a lot and be very thankful, to both of you ( @suascat_wp and @devnihil ). I will mark the problem as solved now.
Best regards and thanks
Claudio