Yoast SEO 文檔

How to fix missing Schema properties: 『offers』 should be specified

The full text of this error reads : Either 『offers』, 『review』 or 『aggregateRating』 should be specified. To make it easier for you to fix the error, we divided it in two articles. If you want to fix the 『review』 or 『aggregateRating』 schema properties go to this help article.

Google requires that all products have either 『offers『, 'review『, or 『aggregateRating『 properties specified in their markup. The offers property informs Google about what you are selling. So, by informing Google about your products, you increase the chance to get rich results. Examples of the questions that correct structured data markup answers are :

What is the availability of the product?What is the price of the product?In which currency is the product available for purchase?What is the URL of the product?Does the price of your product expire at some point?

If you provide Google with this information, you increase the chance you will get rich results for your products. With the Yoast WooCommerce SEO plugin, it』s easy to fix the either 『offers『, 『review『, or 『aggregateRating『 should be specified error. You can read more about the offer schema piece that WooCommerce SEO adds to your product pages on the Yoast developer blog.

Fixing the missing offers Schema property from the 「either 『offers』 『review』 or 『aggregateRating』 should be specified」 error

Yoast WooCommerce SEO automatically adds the correct offers Schema to your products. However, you need to provide the correct information in the WooCommerce settings. More precisely, you will need to add information about the price and the availability of your products. To add the required information to a product, follow these steps. Open the product you want to add the properties to from the Products overview in your Backend. In the Product editing screen, scroll down to the WooCommerce meta box. You will see the meta box with the General tab already open by default. In the General tab, add the price of the product in the appropriate field. You can add just the Regular price. The Sale price is optional (it only applies if you have a sale on your site). Click on the Inventory tab in the meta box to reveal its options. Fill in the stock status field (outlined in the image below) by selecting an option form the drop-down box. Besides In Stock, you can also choose Out of stock or On backorder. Click the Update button at the top of the product editing screen to save the changes. WooCommerce SEO will use the information you filled in to output the correct Schema properties. Go to the WooCommerce menu item in the Admin menu, and select Settings. The settings screen will open, and you will see the General tab setting by default. In the General tab, scroll all the way down to the Currency options and set the correct currency. If you need to, adjust the other available settings as well. To see what each setting does, hover the mouse over the question mark icon. Click Save changes. Scroll back to the top of the screen until you see all the tabs in the Settings and select the Tax tab. The tax settings will open. Check if the Tax settings are correct and they apply to your situation. If not, edit where necessary. You can use the question marks icons to see more information about each of the settings. Once you are done, click Save changes.

And that』s how you can fix the missing offers property! Want to get even more for your products? Get WooCommerce SEO!

Use the WooCommerce SEO plugin to solve this issue and more!

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Yoast SEO meta box is blank

If the meta box is missing entirely, please see this article.

If the Yoast SEO meta box looks like this on your posts, pages or custom post types, you know there』s something wrong.

Possible causes

JavaScript is disabled

The Yoast SEO meta box relies on JavaScript to perform all its tasks. If JavaScript is disabled, Yoast SEO cannot function properly. Please follow the tutorial on enable-javascript.com to enable JavaScript in your browser. This should solve the problem.

There is a JavaScript error

Browsers are pretty sensitive to JavaScript errors. If any plugin is throwing a JavaScript error, your browser will stop executing JavaScript altogether. This means that other plugins can stop Yoast SEO from working properly. Luckily your browser is very good at locating those problems. To learn how to check for JavaScript errors, read this article in our Help Center.

Avast is blocking Yoast SEO

The antivirus software 『Avast Antivirus』 has a feature called 『Script scanning』. It is supposed to block malicious scripts, but has been reported to block important Yoast SEO files as well.

To prevent this feature from blocking Yoast SEO, you can add your own URL to the 『Script exclusions』. For more information, please refer to Avast』s FAQ at avast.com/faq.php.

Outdated Plugins, Themes, and WordPress

Please check and confirm that you have the most recent versions of your plugins (Yoast included), your theme and your WordPress.

None of the above

If none of the above works to resolve the issue please perform a conflict check.

List of function words

What are function words?

We make a difference between function words and content words in the Yoast SEO keyphrase analysis and prominent words analysis. Function words mainly express grammatical relationships between content words. They don』t have much intrinsic meaning on their own. That』s why we filter them in our analysis for a growing number of languages.

What words are counted as function words?

Below you find all languages for which we have support for filtering function words. Please select the language link below to view the plugin files containing the function words for the specific language.

English function wordsGerman function wordsDutch function wordsFrench function wordsSpanish function wordsItalian function wordsPortuguese function wordsRussian function wordsPolish function wordsSwedish function wordsIndonesian function wordsArabic function wordsFarsi function wordsHebrew function words Hungarian function wordsNorwegian function wordsTurkish function words

Read more about the function word check in Yoast SEO.

Contribute and make features available in your language

Contribute language data

If you speak a language other than English, you can help us with your native speaker knowledge. You can do this by contributing language data such as word lists, for example. Have a look at this overview of features per language to see which Yoast SEO features already have support for your language. If support is still missing, you can contribute using the forms we』ve set up! We』ll then review this data and, if possible, implement it.

Function words

We』ve set up a function words form which you can use to provide us with lists of function words. Function words mark grammatical relationships. They carry little meaning on their own. This category includes words such as the, and, and for, for example. Since they carry little intrinsic meaning, we filter them from your keyphrase when carrying out the keyphrase analysis, and we use them when we create internal linking suggestions in Yoast SEO Premium.

Transition words

These words are used for the transition word assessment. This assessment tells you whether you have enough transition words in your text. You can send in words for your language using the transition word form.

Sentence length

The sentence length assessment tells you whether you have too many long sentences. We base this assessment on resources such as style guides, readability research, etc. You can contribute resources for your language using the sentence length form.

Consecutive sentences

The consecutive sentences assessment warns you if you have a number of consecutive sentences starting with the same word, making your writing sound too repetitive. When checking this, we skip certain words such as the article the, for example. You can send in a list of words that can be skipped using the consecutive sentences form.

Contribute to the codebase

If you are a developer, you can also contribute directly to our code base! All of our code and most of the language data we use are open-source. The assessments and their accompanying analysis functionality are part of our Yoast SEO JavaScript library. This means anyone can make a PR to expand a check for their native language, or improve our word lists if you』ve spotted any errors.

What has changed in News SEO?

At Yoast, we want to make optimizing your website and content as easy as possible for you. That』s why, in News SEO 12.7, we decided to make a couple of big changes. Let』s find out what changed and how this helps you with optimizing your news content!

Table of contentsSidebar integration Updated settings and improved user experienceWant to learn how to optimize your News SEO website?

Sidebar integration

We』ve integrated Yoast News SEO into the block editor and Elementor sidebar. This makes it a lot easier to use News SEO while writing and editing your content, as you no longer have to scroll down to find the News SEO meta box!

If you run Yoast News SEO, you』ll now see a collapsible item called 『News』 in the Yoast SEO sidebar. This will show the optimization areas you』re used to, nicely arranged next to your post. You can edit the Yoast News SEO settings all from the sidebar. This will give you a convenient overview while working on your content!

Updated settings and improved user experience

In addition to that, we』ve improved the user experience of the News SEO settings. For example, we』ve merged the 『Exclude from News sitemap』 and 『Googleblot-News index』 settings into one setting, called 『Exclude this post from Google News』. This new setting will make sure your article is set to noindex and removed from the News XML sitemap. Also, we』ve removed the genre settings, as the genre is no longer relevant for News XML sitemaps.

Yoast News SEO in the sidebar

Want to learn how to optimize your News SEO website?

We have a great article that might help you. Read: News SEO: How to optimize your news site.

Incorrect detection of the passive voice in Yoast SEO

The readability analysis of Yoast SEO assesses whether or not you use passive voice. Passive voice is a grammatical construction, that you』d better avoid using too much throughout your text. In a few exceptional cases, Yoast SEO wrongfully detects the passive voice. Here, we』ll highlight in which cases.

Yoast SEO and Yoast SEO Premium currently support the passive voice analysis for the languages listed on this page.

Human languages are often very irregular. That』s why it』s not always possible to achieve complete accuracy when automatically analyzing texts. In some exceptional cases, the passive voice analysis might fail to detect passive voice, or it might incorrectly detect passive voice when it isn』t there. To get an idea of when such cases might occur in each specific language, you can have a look at the overview pages for incorrect passive voice detection in the following languages:

EnglishGermanFrenchSpanishPolish

Are you struggling with more aspects of SEO copywriting? Don』t worry! We can teach you to master all facets, so you』ll know how to write awesome copy that ranks. Our SEO copywriting course is included in Yoast SEO Premium.

Warning: No outbound links appear in this page, consider adding some as appropriate.

Outbound links are links that point to some other domain from within your site. Your site should contain outbound links. If you don』t have any outbound links, it might affect your ranking negatively.

To get a green bullet, you』ll have to add at least one outbound link in your post.

Follow and nofollow

By default, Google follows every link on your site. If you don』t want Google to follow a specific link, you can use a nofollow link. A nofollow link provides a way for webmasters to tell search engines 「Don』t follow links on this page」 or 「Don』t follow this specific link.」

Related: Warning: no internal links appear in this page, consider adding some as appropriate.

Optimizing the SEO title and meta description of your homepage

On the general tab under Search Appearance, Yoast SEO allows you to edit the SEO title and meta description of your homepage. Your homepage is obviously an important part of your website. Although homepage SEO doesn』t really exist as such, having a good SEO title and meta description in place for it is still key.

In most cases your homepage will rank for the name of your business or brand anyway, and those are usually the only terms you want it to rank for. But you still need to convince potential visitors that a click is worthwhile. That』s where the SEO title and meta description come in.

Note: if you have a static page as your homepage, you won』t be able to edit the SEO title and meta description under the Homepage heading. Instead, you can edit the SEO and meta description on the static page itself, using the Yoast SEO metabox. The message will link you through to it, as the image below shows.

Message displayed on the general tab under Search Appearance when you are using a static page

SEO title

By default, Yoast SEO will generate your homepage SEO title by displaying the Site title, the name of the page, a separator and the tagline. But you might want to do something completely different. On the yoast.com homepage we have our mission, then a separator, then our brand name as the SEO title. This, then, is your chance to customize your homepage』s SEO title to your liking!

To customize your SEO title, you can either just fill in an SEO title you like, or use the snippet variables. We have an entire article explaining what snippet variables do, so check that out if they confuse you. Make sure your homepage』s SEO title is on brand, and captures what your visitors can expect from your business or site.

Meta description

By default, the meta description for your homepage will be empty. That means it』s extra important to fill one in yourself! If you don』t, search engines will have to automatically generate one, and it』s unlikely to be as good as a well-written message you』ve tailored to you and your visitors』 needs. 

Your homepage meta description is your business card. Make sure it』s inviting and that it mentions your USPs. Of course, we have lots of tips on creating the ideal meta description on our blog. Please note that the meta description field under the homepage heading doesn』t feature the feedback that you are used to in the Yoast SEO metabox. When writing it, make sure you don』t go over 155 characters. It might be a good idea to test your meta description in a post first, to get the feedback from the Yoast SEO metabox.

Sitemap error: XML or text declaration not at start of entity

Are you seeing one of the following sitemap errors?

XML or text declaration not at start of entity

XML declaration allowed only at the start of the document

In this article we provide you with steps you can follow to solve this issue.

This issue typically happens when a plugin or theme function incorrectly adds empty whitespace at the beginning of the sitemap. Please view the source code of your sitemap following the steps here.

Solution

As much as we』d love to help, our plugin does not cause this issue. However, the cause most often is an empty line at the beginning (before the <?php line) or end of the wp-config.php or functions.php file. If there is no empty line in these files, we highly recommend running a conflict check to identify what outputs the empty whitespace.

You may also need to clear your cache from your plugins/theme/CDN such as Cloudflare/server caching etc. If you are not sure how to clear cache, please speak with your developers or contact your host provider.

Once you have identified whether your theme or a plugin causes the issue, please contact the developers of the theme or plugin for assistance finding and removing the whitespace.

Sitemaps are great for helping crawlers find their way around your site. But, you know what is even better? An optimized site structure! Yoast SEO Premium makes it easy to improve and control the structure of your site. Among the many other benefits, it also comes with an internal linking feature and content filters. Their job is to make sure your audience and search engines find the posts and pages they need on your site.

My business is not listed! Can you add it?

In short: no, we can』t, unfortunately.

All the business types listed in the Local SEO plugin, are taken from the schema.org website. Schema.org is a collaboration between the four big search engines (Google, Yahoo, Yandex and Bing). They are the ones that decide which business types to list, so unfortunately, we can』t add them ourselves.

If you want to check the list on schema.org, just go here: https://schema.org/LocalBusiness. All the types that are in the list of our Local SEO plugin, are subtypes of Local Business. Or, of course, they』re subtypes of subtypes of Local Business.

Note: We check the schema.org website and update if there are any changes. So keep an eye on that list!

My type isn』t listed. Which should I pick?

If your business isn』t listed, please choose the closest, most relevant, business type. If no other types are relevant, please select the top item, which is Local Business.