meta -title & description missing on homepage

Hi @lsphoto ,

We are sorry to hear about all these errors you are getting. To better help you, can you please provide us with the site in concern?

Looking forward to your response.

Hi @jerparx ,
Thanks for your support !!

I’ve a lot of warnings and some errors shown by Ryte. I’ve tried to solve a lot by myself, but it’s not finished.. The site is : laurentsmet-photographe.com.

Thanks again !

Hi,

You identified several issues. We have responded to them below.

1. Indeed, when I look in dashboard at the pages, the colums of these data about the homepage are empty (empty for the meta-title, and with a “_” in the meta-description colum). The request colum is ok.
We see your homepage is outputting a meta description. What you describe is a bug that affects only the backend. Thank you for bringing this issue to our attention. We apologize for the trouble you are experiencing with our plugin. An issue report is currently open with our development team for this issue.

In the meantime, we suggest signing up for our newsletter as that is where we will announce product changes and updates. You can sign-up for it here https://yoast.com/newsletter/.

2. Other problem, Ryte says I don’t have a sitemap… But I do have the Yoast created sitemap, known by google… Or is it only the “xml.gz” version the issue ?? Wich tool do you use to create it ? Thanks again !!
Yoast outputs the sitemap here: https://laurentsmet-photographe.com/sitemap_index.xml. Ryte is probably looking for the sitemap at a different location. We suggest contacting Ryte for more information. You can contact Ryte?by sending them a support ticket here:?https://support.ryte.com/hc/en-us/requests/new.

3. A last one for this message, Ryte tells me I should have a redirect of the http version to https. But I’ve this done by my security plugin, an optimisation plugin etc… I do hesitate to make one more redirect by a specialised plugin as it says it will change important things on the server side.. And again, it should already be all right ???
We went to https://laurentsmet-photographe.com/ and we are not seeing a redirect to the https version. We suggest contacting the plugin author responsible for making the https version on your site and asking them for more information about why the redirect is failing to happen.

Hi @pcosta88 , thank you for your support !!

First, I’ve already subscribed to your newsletter ??

1) I understand it could only be a bug. Indeed, I can see these data on google search.
What I don’t understand is why does Ryte not see them ???

2) I know where to find Yoast sitemap ( https://ibb.co/R3052Ls ). I think I remember Ryte was looking for it into robots.txt (not 100% sure !) ; does Yoast put a “zipped” sitemap in these files ? It was also question about compressed sitemap (.gz I suppose?). How can I create one, or does Yoast create it too ?
I’ll write to Ryte, thanks for the link !

3) I didn’t made a redirect ! That because, iThemes security ask if we want to force the redirect, what I did ; also wp-optimize make a similar job (and I forgot the third plugin wich does it too).. That’s why I did NOT a redirect by myself.
I’ll ask to their support forum too.

Thank you very much for your help ! I think I’ll need to come back later with other question about this Ryte report (are Yoast and Ryte related ??)

Thanks again !

Hi,

You identified several issues. We have responded to them below.

1. What I don’t understand is why does Ryte not see them ???
We are not sure why Ryte is failing to find the meta description. We only know that Yoast is outputting it correctly. See image: https://pasteboard.co/JfmhN0x.png.

We suggest contacting Ryte for more information.

2. does Yoast put a “zipped” sitemap in these files ? It was also question about compressed sitemap (.gz I suppose?). How can I create one, or does Yoast create it too ?
No, Yoast does not automatically add a zipped sitemap anywhere on your site. We are not sure how to create a zipped sitemap either. Is there a particular reason you want a compressed sitemap? We ask as using the Yoast plugin we would not expect you to need it.

With adding a sitemap link to your robots.txt it is OK to do that if you want to. This guide explains more about how to edit your robots file: https://yoast.com/help/how-to-edit-robots-txt-through-yoast-seo/

3 are Yoast and Ryte related ?
No, we are two different companies. We use Ryte to provide a limited courtesy SEO check on your site. This guide explains more: https://yoast.com/yoast-seo-ryte/

Thanks again !!

1) I’ll for sure take contact with Ryte, but to be sure about what to say, I must ask you further : there are 2 things I don’t understand yet :

A- you show me your screenshot where meta-title and meta-description do appear. BUT, I know it’s the same domain/URL, but this is also my site-title and description (in WP general settings), Ryte told me ‘only’ about my homepage ! (even then, why should the description also be written ‘with/in’ title too, so 2 times ??). Could it be a difference between site title and description VS meta -title & -description (yes I do see the “meta” tags on your screenshot).
I ask this, because Ryte DID found the same title and description, but still said “meta-title/description” are missing”, as in my backend ?? ( https://ibb.co/MnC7Xr5 )

B- Could it be possible it comes out because Ryte found (with W3C validator) a “malformed head”?? ( https://ibb.co/PzPSRKp )

2) in te same (last) screenshot, they talk about the “missing” sitemap in robots.txt. And they show me the results of W3C validator (wich also said I have “broken xml files”). It’s also into W3C errors and warnings that I was told I must add a “xml.gz” sitemap, that’s why I asked you !

Once more I want to thank you for your support, and for the interresting links I’ll read asap.

• This reply was modified 4 years, 5 months ago by lsphoto.
• This reply was modified 4 years, 5 months ago by lsphoto.

Hello,

We’re not sure how Ryte processes its information for the title and meta description, but we do know that for your homepage, there is only a singular title and meta description and it seems to match with what the Ryte analysis is showing. It’s just that the Ryte analysis is advising you that the title might be too long.

We’re not sure about the malformed head if this could be causing issues with the sitemap. However, we do know that your sitemap generated with the Yoast SEO plugin (https://laurentsmet-photographe.com/sitemap_index.xml) is working as expected. Perhaps the WC3 validator is checking a different sitemap URL generated by another plugin.

Hi,

I just discovered today that my problem about this topic are worst today… Could you help please ?

@mikes41720 I’m sorry, my English is bad and it’s difficult for me to explain.
But I must disagree with what you say : in my previous post I said : “(even then, why should the description also be written ‘with/in’ title too, so 2 times ??)”..
What I meant was : why does the description ALSO appear in the meta-title ???
So when you say “there is only a singular title and meta description and it seems to match with what the Ryte analysis is showing”, this is not true.. My site title (in Yoast, and in wp settings) is (was !!, see below) : “Photographe dordogne 24 France | Laurent Smet Photographies”.
When you say “it’s what Ryte is showing”, it WAS true, but Ryte only said my “title was too long, 517px instead of maximum 512px”, so yesterday I’ve got rid of the word “France” and it was ok. That is what you can see in my previous post screenshot !
And it is ALSO what you can see in @pcosta88 screenshot, the word “France” has disappeard, BUT the meta-description IS ALSO in meta-title !!! That was my question !!

But as I said my problems got worst today, I went on my site domain URL and found… an empty page !!
I found my hompage back when I added the auto slug ! I could eventually solve that issue.
But as of now, this meta-description DOES indeed stay into the meta-title (on google search) !!! Wich is really bad of course !! (now it is very very long, too bad and not friendly title) (please see : https://ibb.co/Sx8bcSf )
But in the same time, it is NOT what’s showed in Yoast settings !!! ( https://ibb.co/M7pbC82 )

So, NOW, I really have a too long title!!! How and why it came out, I don’t know… Did you at Yoast do something about it ???
As it is not in Yoast settings nor in WP settings nor in my theme settings, how could this happen and more important : how to get rid of this part ???

I also discovered a big change in Yoast settings (wich I did NOT do !!) : today’s screenshot : https://ibb.co/VNx4Dqy . But since I’ve installed Yoast, my settings about pages were : https://ibb.co/w6kytd6
How could this have changed alone??? And what now, I suppose that’s the reason of my “new” site title (?). But if I change it back, it will change all of my pages’s name, true or not ?? (see EDIT #2)
I can’t get back to yesterday changes, of all of the wp revisions, I can only come back on 20200628, nothing after…

Please could you please give me advice soon, I’d be very greatfull !!!

NB : for the sitemap, I only have the Yoast one. I didn’t show all the screenshots of Ryte, but the problem with it was a “compressed sitemap missing” and that it “is not in robots.txt”.
But for now, it’s really not my emergency issue…

Thanks a lot for your help and support… Do you think I should try to deactivate yoast to see what happens, or will it be worst?

Thank you very much again…

EDIT : one more thing : some days ago I was told by Yoast I had indexations problems and I’d test with Ryte, what I did. Then this problem had dissapeard, and Yoast said in “health status check” all was ok (yesterday).
But I just checked my site “health status” to see again that yoast tells me I again have indexation issues that I should check with Ryte (what I can’t do with a free account)… Really worst… I suppose it’s that “title problem”…
EDIT #2 : I did the change (and cleaned up cache plugin, browsers’s caches etc), nothing changes, site title still with description added… I’m lost, don’t know how to get rid of that part..

Again thank you !

• This reply was modified 4 years, 5 months ago by lsphoto.
• This reply was modified 4 years, 5 months ago by lsphoto.

So, I’m well in a bit of catastrophic situation, don’t know if/how it’s related with Yoast but…
I’ve searched all afternoon to understand what happens. Couldn’t find anything (I don’t know code etc..).

So I “did back” all my previous settings, in WP and Yoast. Again purged/cleaned up caches etc with same results.
When I look at the code, especially the <head> one, I now don’t find anymore the description (=slogan) with(in) the (meta-)title. But what I did find is that code into <head> seems not too bad.
Only one part is completly, all “words” full of red, and that is : <script type=”application/ld+json” class=”YOAST-schema-graph”> !! Here, every single letter, all is red..! There is for sure an issue with Yoast..

I then went to my neighbour and tried on his computer where it was never searched for my site. I opened an incognito tab and wrote “Laurent Smet Photographies” (name of my brand). (Attention, the first site poping up first page 1 is my old domain !!!)
And my actual site/domain is now found page 9 of google search, with a brand new name : “Laurent Smet Photographies: Photographe dordogne 24”, wich does NOT correspond with nothing I wrote… (it should be : “Photographe Dordogne 24 | Laurent Smet Photographies”)
I suppose google decided by its own ??

So I have lost lots of places with SEO : 2 days ago, on google insight I had 69 (mobile)/ 96 (computer) and I could be found at top of page 3 of google search. Today, whith that f$ù!k bad name, I’m page on 11 of google search, google insight score me at 42/86…

How could this all happens only trying to optimise my SEO with Yoast ?? Should I not have listen to Yoast warning ? Did I something wrong, or is it another bug with Yoast ?
In every case, at least part of these problems appeared with this plugin…

Hello,

No more support when your users are in trouble ??
Could you please at least tell why the only code part 100% red is about Yoast plugin ? (into <head>, wich was told by Ryte to be “malformed”…!)

Thanks

Edit : https://ibb.co/vjPxK1W

Hi @lsphoto,

Thank you for your replies.

You have multiple concerns, let us try to clarify them all.

Could you please at least tell why the only code part 100% red is about Yoast plugin? (into <head>, wich was told by Ryte to be “malformed”…!)

The fact that you see the JSON Schema markup in red is because Google Chrome does that by default, if you were to check this on ony page or site, you’d see the same. This does not mean there is anything wrong with it.

And my actual site/domain is now found page 9 of google search, with a brand new name : “Laurent Smet Photographies: Photographe dordogne 24”, wich does NOT correspond with nothing I wrote… (it should be : “Photographe Dordogne 24 | Laurent Smet Photographies”)
I suppose google decided by its own ??

Yes, the final decision of meta titles or description is made by Google. Configuring a meta description or title is only a suggestion. Depending on factors like search location, user, browser, exact search term, Google might decide that the meta description or title does not fit the actual search term and can show something different. We have documentation on this here and here.

BUT the meta-description IS ALSO in meta-title. That was my question.

I tried to find which page you are getting this for in this topic, but I am a little lost, can you please share us the exact page or URL you get this from so we can check what Yoast is outputting for the title and description. Thanks.

Hi @jeroenrotty , thank you very much !

First, thank you for the explanation concerning the “red code”, I asked because it is the only part in the <head> of my homepage with this color only, and as Ryte said that my <head> was “malformed” …

The problem of the title appeared with the changes made by/with Yoast. In summary, it all started with a warning from Yoast advising me to check with Ryte. One issue was that my site title was “Photographe Dordogne 24 France | Laurent Smet Photographies”, in the WP settings, my theme and in Yoast. Ryte told me it was 517px and It shouldn’t be over 512px. So I removed the word “France” and this problem was resolved. But this was the beginning of my problems… My site is just 3 months old, and I was already in first place page 3 in Google, when looking for a “photographer dordogne 24”, since I am a small business in the countryside.

This is where the problems started with Yoast. First the meta-title contained also the meta-description as shown in the screenshot of @pcosta88 : https://pasteboard.co/JfmhN0x.png
And indeed, this is how Google showed me: https://ibb.co/Sx8bcSf. However, in the settings of Yoast, everything seemed ok: https://ibb.co/M7pbC82. I disabled Yoast to see but it was the same.
I noticed by re-activating Yoast that some settings had changed, all alone, without me touching it!, (don’t know if it was like that before deactivating), namely that, as I only have a small site, I had configured Yoast like this: https://ibb.co/w6kytd6 . But Yoast had it transformed like this: https://ibb.co/VNx4Dqy …!
Besides, yesterday when I went to my site (domain name)(not logged in), I had a blank page. To access it, I had to type the automatic slug created by Yoast! I didn’t ask for that either !! How can Yoast make these changes alone? I feel like I have no control over anything, I’m seriously starting to wonder if it’s a good idea to keep Yoast …
Anyway, I made the change back as it was before. And the meta-title and the meta-decription do now reflect that well into the code !

Unfortunatly, all these changes led Google to “give me” another name : “Laurent Smet Photographies: photographe dordogne 24”. First in French the lack of a space before the “:” is a spelling error (aswell as the country without capital letter, it doesn’t look very serious !!).
Then my problem is that there is a famous actress/singer here called “Laura Smet”. So if you look for my name, I’m well after the tenth page … (except (when you write the name of my brand, so + ‘photographies’, for the “Google Maps Business box”)
But the worst (I make a new site to find new customers, not for those who already know me) is when doing a research for a “photographer in Dordogne 24” (= my country), I find myself even more far away in the results (instead of first result page 3) !! Regardless of the keywords, this “title” remains the same in the search results.

Conclusion: everything seems to be ok now about meta -title and -description, but google decided otherwise because of these changes (and maybe because of this actress too?). But in all cases I’ve lost a lot from the SEO point of view !!!

I didn’t yet make the check you suggest with the health plugin. But what I especially want is that google take into account the “real” title of my site! Is there anything I can do to “recover” my title, and help me go back up the slope of SEO ???

Last thing, with Chrome dev tools, it seems to be an issue with the sitemap (what Ryte also told !!)(I don’t know the difference between sitemap and sourcemap ?) : “DevTools failed to load SourceMap: Could not load content for chrome-extension://xxxxxxxnfdjdjjikgkefkcegefikecdc/scripts/driver.min.js.map: HTTP error: status code 404, net::ERR_UNKNOWN_URL_SCHEME”. Could this be related to the problem ?

Thank you very much @jeroenrotty if you can give me some advices !! (tussen buren, ik kom vanuit Belgi?..). I worked weeks to lose a lot in 2 days, it’s not really fun …
Thanks again for your help !

Edit : and I forgot to say that with all that, my score on google insight, GTMetrix, Pingdom, dareboost etc is literally plummeted !! Even I don’t know how it’s related, it’s a fact.

• This reply was modified 4 years, 5 months ago by lsphoto.

Hi,

One more proof of Yoast sitemap error. I do know that Yoast’s sitemap exists and that I can open it. But I just had a look at Neil Patel’s site and it found one “critical error” wich is : “no sitemap to interacts with bots”…
I don’t know exactly what it means, but as the Ryte analysis also said, the Yoast created sitemap (my only one) does NOT work as intended.
Could you please tell me what to look for to make it work ?? As written on Neil Patel’site, the “SEO impact is High” !!
https://ibb.co/xfQ35H8

Thanks !

EDIT : I found something I want to ask about privatly (have to share private stuff). I tought it was possible but don’t find how to.. Can someone tell how to do please ?? Thank you very much !!!

• This reply was modified 4 years, 5 months ago by lsphoto.

Hello,

Thank you for your response. We’re trying our best to answer any issues or concerns you might have regarding the Yoast SEO plugin.

However, with regards to analysis from other SEO tools and platforms, and specific SEO advice on ranking and traffic, please understand that we don’t offer that kind of support on these forums. However, we do have a lot of helpful articles that you can find on our Yoast SEO blog — https://yoast.com/seo-blog/

We can confirm that your homepage https://laurentsmet-photographe.com/ has the following title and meta description tags outputting in the source code:

<title>Photographe Dordogne 24 | Laurent Smet Photographies</title>

<meta name=”description” content=”Photographe pro en Dordogne 24 et au-delà. Pour particuliers, entreprise, artistes et sportifs. Famille, portrait, mariage, corporate, arts de la scène…” />

Please do note that what you’ve entered as the preferred title and description will not always be chosen by Google to display in the search results, for some several reasons. This article may be helpful — https://yoast.com/help/google-shows-different-titles-for-my-site/

As for your sitemap (https://laurentsmet-photographe.com/sitemap_index.xml), we can confirm that it is loading as expected, and the plugin is generating the correct sitemap output. Perhaps you may want to contact the respective SEO analysis tool developer for more information on that.

If you have any issues with the Yoast SEO plugin that may require further investigation and logging in to your website, we cannot do so on these forums. Perhaps you may be interested in Yoast SEO Premium in order to avail of premium support.