Yoast SEO and GeoDirectory

Thank you for looking into this extremely important matter.

Until I had identified this issue, I could not understand why some of my standard WordPress pages were out performing the Location pages in Google SERPs even though there were many more internal links to the Location pages. The Location pages were performing very poorly.

The problem isn’t isolated to my installation as at least two others in the Facebook group are experiencing the same issue.

At the moment we are stuck with neither Yoast SEO or the SEO functions for Locations working in GeoD.

To have Yoast SEO work for Locations I believe would take more work as Locations aren’t a CPT.

I think the best option would be to:

Stop Yoast SEO trying to output Meta Descriptions on the Location pages as it over writing the GeoD Location Meta Descriptions. This may just mean outputting the GeoD Location Meta Descriptions after Yoast SEO has tried to output Meta Descriptions and just leaving a blank line. This is the most critical and urgent part.
Create a field (or use the existing table field) for SEO Meta Title for the Locations. This would then need to be added to the GEO DIRECTORY MANAGE SEO page. This is important as the default Location Title may not be the most appropriate title for the page. For example the default Location title for a city could be “Kyoto, Kyoto Prefecture”. Structurally this is correct, but most people would expect to see something like “Kyoto Guide” or similar.

Related to this topic. I don’t understand what the purpose of the Location Description field on the GEO DIRECTORY MANAGE SEO page is. It seems redundant or at least I don’t understand where this field is to be used or displayed.

Thank you again for your attention to this really important topic.

May be my explanation wasn’t clear.

With Yoast SEO installed there is no meta description being output in the html.
For example: https://www.gojapango.com/location/tokyo/tokyo/

<title>Tokyo - Go Japan Go</title>
 
 
<meta property="og:locale" content="en_US"/>
<meta property="og:type" content="article"/>
<meta property="og:title" content="Tokyo - Go Japan Go"/>
<meta property="og:site_name" content="Go Japan Go"/>
<meta name="twitter:card" content="summary"/>
<meta name="twitter:title" content="Tokyo - Go Japan Go"/>
 
<link rel='dns-prefetch' href='//maps.google.com'/>

As you can see above there are just blank lines in the code.

It would appear that Yoast SEO is trying to output a meta description, which cannot be modified via Yoast SEO, so the line is just coming out blank.

Unfortunately a generic meta description isn’t what is needed.

We need to be able to have a completely custom written meta description for each location as is possible with the GEO DIRECTORY MANAGE SEO » CITIES Meta Description

See https://www.gojapango.com/wp-admin/admin.php?page=geodirectory&tab=managelocation_fields&subtab=geodir_location_seo&gd_loc=city&s=Tokyo&country

Yoast SEO doesn’t allow use to do that.

Thanks again for your assistance Stiofan. It really is worth persisting with this. SEO is so important to the success of Geo Directory.

For description maybe we show our description if present and fall back to yoast one if not present? Would that be best?

This sounds good.

For the title we need to be able to SEO version of the title, which would be a new field.
Again it should be if present GD SEO Title, else Yoast Title, else standard GD Title.

Fantastic!

I can’t wait to see it.