Errors Facebook debugger

Hello,

Thanks for reaching out.

First, kindly update to Yoast SEO 16.4 from Yoast SEO plugin v16.2 that you currently have.

Next, we noticed that your homepage, https://shedoesitcoaching.com/ is not using a self-referencing canonical URL which is Yoast’s default setting but another page entirely. Is this intentional?

<link rel="canonical" href="https://shedoesitcoaching.com/home-work-life-coaching-for-women/" />

On visiting https://shedoesitcoaching.com/home-work-life-coaching-for-women/, there is a 301 redirect back to the homepage. Facebook notes this in the debugger:

Circular Redirect. We could not resolve the canonical URL because the redirect path contained a cycle.

If setting that canonical URL is not intentional, please go to the advanced tab of the Yoast SEO metabox under the default WordPress content editor. If there is something filled in the canonical URL field, please leave the field blank.

Hi Maybellyne,

Thank you for your quick reply.
I’ve updated the plugin.

I’m not sure what a ‘canonical URL’ is. Could you please explain that to me. So yes, it is not intentional.

Unfortunately I can’t find the advanced tab of the YOAST SEO metabox.I only see general, search appearance, social, tools and premium.

Looking forward to hearing from you.

Hello,

A canonical URL tells search engines which URL is the master copy when the content can be found on mulitple URLs or websites. It prevents duplicate content. You can learn more at https://yoast.com/help/canonical-urls-in-wordpress-seo/

In the case of your homepage, it shows another page, https://shedoesitcoaching.com/home-work-life-coaching-for-women as the canonical URL. By default, Yoast sets your canonical to be the URL of the page and not another page.

To edit the canonical URL for your homepage, you have to edit the page. Then scroll down to the advanced tab of the Yoast SEO metabox under the default WordPress content editor. And ensure that the canonical URL field is blank/empty.

Hi!

Thanks for the additional information. The canonical URL field is empty.

The field ‘slug’ has information:
home-work-life-coaching-for-women

Could that be the problem?

Hello,

We usually recommend writing a good slug for your page or post as this can positively affect your SEO. However, it’s best to optimize the slug before publishing your post. If you think of a better slug after publishing your post, it may be tempting to change it. But be aware that doing this means changing the URL and to avoid 404 errors, you’ll need a redirect. You can learn more about slugs at https://yoast.com/slug/

Can you share a screenshot of what you have entered into the social tab of the Yoast SEO meta box for the homepage?

yes of course how can I share a screenshot here?

You can use any image-sharing service like https://pasteboard.co/, https://snag.gy/, https://imgur.com/, https://snipboard.io/, or even upload the screenshot to your own website. Once you upload it to an image sharing service, please share the link to the image here.

Thanks. Here is the link to the social tab of the Yoast SEO meta box of my homepage
https://pasteboard.co/K5xITZb.png

Hi @eefkejansen

We tried sharing your website URL in Facebook’s Sharing Debugger Tool here and scraped it again, and it seems to be picking up the expected open graph image, title, and description.

Could you check from your end if this is resolved as well?

As for the issue where the canonical URL is appearing as a different post or page for your homepage, that is definitely strange. If you have set your frontpage as a static page (under WP admin dashboard > Settings (sidebar) > Reading), even if that page has its own slug, once it is set as a frontpage, we would expect that the canonical URL would be the root URL. You mentioned that the canonical URL field for that page is blank, so it definitely should self-reference to https://shedoesitcoaching.com and not https://shedoesitcoaching.com/home-work-life-coaching-for-women. We might need to investigate further but we are unable to do so over these forums. You might be interested in a subscription of Yoast SEO Premium, as it comes with 1 year of updates and support to our team, and we might be able to take a further look at it.

Otherwise, we recommend investigating this further by performing a conflict check, to ensure it isn’t being caused by a conflicting plugin or theme.

Hi Michael,

Yes it looks like the URL picks up the right information now. That’s great. Although the graph image is shown a bit too big. Any suggestions on the rights sizes?

I still don’t understand what the problem is with the canonical URL? If I check under WP admin dashboard > Settings (sidebar) > Reading the setting is:

Your homepage displays: your latest post

Should I change that to: a static page?

You identified multiple queries that you want us to address and we’ll address them in order:

Image size on Facebook
You can find the recommended image size when sharing a link on Facebook in the following:

• https://developers.facebook.com/docs/sharing/webmasters/images/
• https://developers.facebook.com/docs/sharing/best-practices/

Canonical URL
If the current setting shows that you are using the latest post as the front page of your website, that explains why the canonical URL is https://shedoesitcoaching.com/home-work-life-coaching-for-women/ rather than https://shedoesitcoaching.com/.

The current setting shows all the available blog posts archive page as the front page of your website yet, your website is showing a single static page only that’s odd.

It is recommended that you select a static page from the WordPress reading settings and select the desired page that you want to see as the front page of your website. Once you have the correct settings, we expect the canonical URL to be updated automatically.

Thank you very much for your reply. Really helpful!

I’ll have a look at the picture size.

I’ve adjusted the setting of my website to static page. How can I check if this has resolved the canonical URL problem?

Hello!

We checked again the source code of your site, https://shedoesitcoaching.com/, and it now shows a self-referencing canonical. See image here: https://snipboard.io/BuCqzJ.jpg

Yes great it’s solved.
Many thanks for all your help! Highly appreciated.