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Yoast SEO meta box is missing

Yoast SEO meta box is missing

If the meta box appears but it』s partially or completely blank, please see this article.

The Yoast SEO meta box gives you feedback and tools to optimize your SEO. You can find it below your content. But what if it isn』t there? How can you get it back? In this article, we』ll discuss two ways to solve this problem.

It could be that the Yoast SEO meta box is disabled on the edit screen. If you』re using the block editor, you can undo this by following these steps. If you』re using the classic editor, we』ll explain the steps here. The meta box could also have been disabled in the Search Appearance settings of Yoast SEO. We』ll explain how you can enable it in the last part of this article.

Did you know the Yoast SEO Premium meta box comes with more extensive analyses and social previews as well? Compare the two versions here to make sure that you pick the version that fits your needs.

Edit screen (block editor)

If you』re using the block editor, the Yoast SEO meta box can be enabled/disabled on the edit screen. This setting is retained when you switch between the same type of edit screen and when you log out.

Log in to your WordPress website.When you』re logged in, you will be in your 『Dashboard』.Go to the edit screen where the meta box is missing.Click on the icon with the three dots in the upper right corner of your screen. Click on 『Options』 at the bottom of the drop-down menu.Scroll down to 『Advanced Panels』 and mark the 『Yoast SEO』 or 『Yoast SEO Premium』 checkbox.To show the panel, check the 『Yoast SEO』 box.To hide the panel, uncheck the 『Yoast SEO』 box.

Edit screen (classic editor)

If you』re using the classic editor, the Yoast SEO meta box can be enabled/disabled on the edit screen. This setting is retained when you switch between the same type of edit screen and when you log out.

Log in to your WordPress website.When you』re logged in, you will be in your 『Dashboard』.Go to the edit screen where the meta box is missing.Click on 『Screen Options』 in the upper right corner of your screen.Check 『Yoast SEO』 in the meta box.

Yoast SEO Search Appearance settings

The Yoast SEO meta box could also have been disabled in the Yoast SEO Search Appearance settings. Follow these steps to check whether that』s the case and to change it. Log in to your WordPress website. When you』re logged in, you will be in your 『Dashboard』. Click on 『SEO』. On the left-hand side, you will see a menu. In that menu, click on 『SEO』. Click on 『Search Appearance』. The 『SEO』 settings will expand providing you additional options. Click on 『Search Appearance』. Click on the 『Content Types』 or 『Taxonomies』 tab. Note: You will find the settings in both tabs. Use the tabs that matches the content type you are missing. The Content Type contains settings for posts and pages. The Taxonomies tab contains settings for categories, tags and formats. Toggle the switch to 『Show』 for the content types (posts, pages etc.) for which the meta box is missing.

Configuration guide for Yoast WooCommerce SEO

Configuration guide for Yoast WooCommerce SEO

Once you』ve set up the Yoast WooCommerce SEO plugin, you』ll want to set things up so they work the way you want them to.

Brand, Manufacturer, and ColorYoast SEO Breadcrumbs Replaces the WooCommerce BreadcrumbsAdminProduct identifiersPinterest Rich PinsXML SitemapsSchemaMetabox Notifications

The Yoast SEO: WooCommerce settings page is located under SEO → WooCommerce SEO Log in to your WordPress website. When you』re logged in, you will be in your 『Dashboard』. Click on 『SEO』. On the left-hand side, you will see a menu. In that menu, click on 『SEO』. Click on 『WooCommerce SEO』. The 『SEO』 settings will expand providing you additional options. Click on 『WooCommerce SEO』.

Brand, Manufacturer, and Color

There』s also a feature for improving the output of Schema and OpenGraph markup. This allows for (among other things) better sharing on Facebook.

The Yoast WooCommerce SEO plugin will add the 「Brand」 attribute as a 「product:brand」 tag in the source code of the product page. It will also add the 「Manufacturer」 and 「Brand」 attribute as schema attributes to the product page. This will help show rich snippets in Google for products.

The Color attribute describes the color of your product. That can help clients filter the results, to get their desired color.

To make WooCommerce SEO output these tags you will need to add attributes to your products. To learn more about the Brand, Manufacturer, and Color schema and how to set it up visit: How to Add Custom Attributes to your Products.

For a full review of what is outputted when you add a video on a page see our WooCommerce SEO Schema Documentation Guide. 

Yoast SEO Breadcrumbs Replaces the WooCommerce Breadcrumbs

Note: This section is only displayed when you have enabled breadcrumbs in our WordPress SEO plugin.

Enabling this will make sure your website is outputting the Yoast SEO breadcrumb, instead of the WooCommerce breadcrumb. The advantage is our breadcrumb is better customizable and gets picked up by search engines better. And all that at the tick of a box:

What do the Yoast SEO Breadcrumbs do?

The Yoast SEO breadcrumbs will output JSON-LD data in the source code. We have found this to be the most reliable method of implementing breadcrumbs for rich snippets.

What do the Yoast SEO Breadcrumbs look like?

Once configured, Yoast will show the JSON-LD in the source code.

Yoast SEO Breadcrumbs as JSON+LD as they appear in the Source code for the plugin sales page.

Eventually, Google will replace the link that appears beneath your SEO Title with one that shows the breadcrumb pathway.

Yoast SEO Breadcrumb pathway as shown in Google.

How do I further Customize the Yoast SEO Breadcrumbs?

You can do so by examining the filters and links on our Implement Yoast SEO Breadcrumbs page.

Admin

The last option is eally simple. If you want the WooCommerce meta box to show up above the Yoast SEO meta box, tick the box next to Move WooCommerce up:

Product identifiers

You can also find some of the plugin settings when you are adding a new product. If you click on the Yoast SEO tab in the Product data meta box, you will see some input fields that allow you to add product identifiers.

If your products have any of the listed unique identifiers you can add them in the appropriate field. Yoast SEO will use them in your Schema and OpenGraph output.

Pinterest Rich Pins 

The plugin will output WooCommerce』s price, currency and availability meta data for use with Pinterest』s Rich Pins. Below is the meta data that the WooCommerce SEO plugin outs:

In order to get rich pins you will need to valid and apply for them. Please use this guide here for more information: Rich Pins for My Site.

XML Sitemaps

The Yoast WooCommerce SEO plugin also does some things automatically, like removing stuff from the XML sitemaps that doesn』t belong there like WooCommerce』s Cart, My Account and Checkout pages. 

It also adds images from the Product Gallery into the sitemap.

Schema

WooCommerce SEO outputs several schema types based on the information you enter into WooCommerce. For full listing of all the schema types see: WooCommerce SEO Schema Documentation

With aggregateRating schema you need to have at least one review before the plugin can output it.

Metabox Notifications

The WooCommerce SEO adds additional checks in the metabox area of the Yoast plugin.

It will output a singular check for length in the short product description area. Specifically, it looks at word count and considers 0 as having no words, 1-19 as short, 20-49 as good, and 50+ as long. 

If you added a product gallery the plugin will check it for alt-attributes.

However, with regards to setting up the plugin: you』re done! Have fun with it!

Twitter Product Cards

Twitter no longer supports product cards. Learn more directly from Twitter here.

Why doesn』t Facebook display an image?

Why doesn』t Facebook display an image?

There are multiple reasons why Facebook or other social media platforms may not display the image you selected. Facebook, as well as many other social media platforms, uses custom metadata called OpenGraph. Read more about that in this article on social media optimization.

OK, so what could be the problem when Facebook doesn』t display the image you selected? And how can you solve it? Let』s first ask yourself the following questions:

Did you enable Open Graph tags? Make sure you do, by following the steps in this article.Does the Facebook debug tool provide any errors about your image? If so, try to fix these errors. Read more about how to use this tool in this article.Does the image meet the Open Graph image recommendations? Is the image too small? Too large? In portrait orientation?

The minimum width and height is 200 x 200 pixels while the maximum width and height we recommend is 2000 x 1600 pixels, and is less than 2mb in size. You can learn more about advanced image techniques here.

Caching

Sometimes caching is the problem. Try clearing all your caching such as from your server, theme, plugin, or CDN like Cloudflare. If you are not sure how to do that, please contact the right people such as the plugin author or host provider.

The Social tab in Yoast SEO

If you use Yoast SEO, you can manually set an Open Graph image for individual posts and pages. You can do that in Social tab of the Yoast SEO meta box, which can be found below your content (see image). You might need to force Facebook to refresh the metadata.

The Social tab in the Yoast SEO meta box

Social previews in Yoast SEO Premium

Yoast SEO Premium makes it even easier to optimize your Facebook image, as it comes with social previews for Facebook and Twitter. The Facebook preview visualizes what your post will look like when shared on Facebook. It』s immediately clear if your image fits and whether your title and description will display well.

The Facebook preview in Yoast SEO Premium

Related Articles

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Moving from HTTP to HTTPs in WordPress

Moving from HTTP to HTTPs in WordPress

When you move from HTTP to HTTPs there are several actions to take with Search Engines, WordPress, and Social Media Accounts.

As a best practice we do recommend creating a backup of your site before making changes. If you are not sure how to create a backup, please contact your host provider.

A. Things to Change With Search Engines

Claim and verify your HTTPs site with your search engines. You will need to add the site in the search engines and verify ownership. These guides explain how to do this with Bing, Google, and Yandex. Submit your Yoast sitemap: sitemap_index.xml under the new HTTPs site. This guide explains how to submit the Yoast sitemap to Bing, Google, and Yandex: Submit Your Sitemap to Search Engines.Delete any and all sitemaps you have under your old HTTP site. NOTE: It is OK to keep your old HTTP site in your Search Console, just be sure to delete the sitemaps under it.

B. Things to Change in WordPress

Since the 5.7 release, WordPress automatically detects whether your WordPress website runs on a hosting package that supports HTTPS but is not yet set up to use HTTPS by default. If it is not, you will see a critical notification in the Site Health tool. You can find the Site Health tool on your WordPress Dashboard, or by going to Tools->Site health.

When you see the notification 「Your website does not use HTTPS」 all you need to do is expand the issue and click on the button to update your site to use HTTPS. Then, WordPress will automatically update the database URLs.

WordPress will also detect if your site does not support HTTPS. In that case, you will see a recommendation to contact your host and switch to HTTPS.

C. Things to Change with Social Media

When you change to HTTPs any social media shares you have will be lost. This is a result of how sharing works rather than a flaw or bug with Yoast. You can restore the shares on a site by using a filter outlined in this guide: Changing the OpenGraph (og) URL

D. Other Things to Consider

If you are going from the WWW to HTTPs this guide explains more about how to make the change: Redirecting Your Site to Non-WWW and HTTPs.

News sitemap doesn』t work when I have Custom Post Type 『News』

News sitemap doesn』t work when I have Custom Post Type 『News』

Note: The default Yoast-News-Sitemap will only show if you have a published news article within the past 48 hours. You may need to publish a post-type in order to generate that sitemap.

Yoast SEO: News will automatically detect a naming collision and change the news sitemap name. Please go to Admin > SEO > News SEO and click the 『XML News sitemap』 link to get the correct sitemap URL.

If you prefer to give your news sitemap a custom name, please use the developer filter discussed below.

How to Change the News Sitemap URL

Disable the sitemap feature. Disable all sitemaps by following the steps in this article. Add the filter in your theme』s functions.php file. See the example code below. Enable the sitemap feature. Enable all sitemaps by following the steps in this article.

This will create two sitemaps; one for the news custom post type and one specifically formatted to meet Google News guidelines.

News Post Type = www.example.com/news-sitemap.xml Google News Format = www.example.com/google_news-sitemap.xml

You or your developer can use a filter to change the name of the Yoast SEO news sitemap. An example of how to use this filter is below.

/* Change Yoast News sitemap when custom post news conflicts */
function wpseo_change_news_sitemap() {
return "google_news";
}
add_filter('YoastWPNewssitemap_name', 'wpseo_change_news_sitemap');

Should search engines follow links on this page?

Should search engines follow links on this page?

In the Advanced tab of Yoast SEO you can allow or block search engines from following links in a post or a page, by selecting one of the radio buttons.

Search engines index websites by following links. But, links also help them make sense of your site and its structure. As such, they are very important for your ranking. So, why would you want to prevent them from following links in a post? Before making the decision, ask yourself the following questions:

Are all the links featured on this page trustworthy? If, for example, the page features user-generated content that you cannot fully control, you may want to block search engines from following the links. Are the links I added to this post valuable? Sometimes, you need to link to admin or login pages. Those do not add value to your SEO, so it is safe to discourage robots from following them.Did I include paid links in this post? You may have some sponsored links featured on a page. But, are you sure you want search engines to associate your website with the site you are linking to? If the answer is no, then don』t let them follow the link.

To learn more about this topic, you can read this article. Or, head to Google to check their guidelines.

Since Yoast SEO 14.4 it is possible to control individual links. Read more about the different link attributes or learn how to use the Yoast SEO link settings.