Oh dear – SEO has always confounded me but as I am the one here at he moment I will do my best. First – have you set up the SEO options for SP (forum admin > components)?

And/or I think I have to ask if you are using any other SEO plugin as you do need to make sure that it is not forcing the WP page name to be used as this will always be the same which is why it needs the SP extensions.

Now Steve or Brandon can step in later and tell me what I missed!

Thank you.

This is our current config:  http://screencast.com/t/JzCUjQtjU0

Looks to me like I haven’t set up the SEO.  I’ll start experimenting…

–Does anyone have SEO config recommendations?

We are using the Yoast SEO…

Thanks.

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UPDATE

So, after changing some SimplePress SEO settings, I don’t see any changes to the titles or meta descriptions.
I suppose Yoast might be overriding SimplePress SEO, but not sure if I can ‘exclude’ Yoast from our forums folder.

SP will work quite happily with Yoast SEO but I really do have to ask you to wait a bit so Steve (Mr Papa) can weigh in who wrote the integration and has a much better knowledge of SEO then me.

Although having said that there are going to be quite a few forum threads dealing with this so it might be worth a search to save some time.

Sounds good. Thanks.

Appears to be my issue …

https://simple-press.com/support-forum/sp5-general-topics/simple-press-and-yoast-seo-seo-problem/

…however, the above post is inconclusive.

not sure those two tickets are the same…  yoast is overriding our canonical url and just using the wp page…

see:  https://simple-press.com/support-forum/sp5-general-topics/does-yoast-seo-wordpress-plugin-work-with-simple-press/page-2/#p124538

for a yoast workaround…

Wow, a 5 page thread…  BTW, I am using Yoast WP SEO on a Studio Press-Genesis theme.

So, I made progress. This is where I’m at:

1) Permalinks — are Good.

  Yoast  “Redirect ugly URL’s to clean permalinks” is OFF —  Tested ON and the Forums would not navigate properly.

2) Description — displays properly on all pages.

    SP Forum | Components | Meta Tags Data Custom Meta Description |  >> created a meta description

    Removed the Forum meta description from Yoast

    Set SP to:  “Use custom meta description on main forum page only, use forum description on forum pages and use first post excerpt (120 chars) on topic pages”

3) Title — Does not change. All pages always stay the same.

In the thread above  — https://simple-press.com/support-forum/sp5-general-topics/does-yoast-seo-wordpress-plugin-work-with-simple-press/page-5/   — 3 solutions were discussed ….

A)

Add a function to spFunctions.php (like below). However, in the thread Steve said this would be added to an upcoming release (April 2013). Has this been added? Or do I need to add?

1    function my_canonical_exclude( $canonical ) {

2        global $post;

3        if ( $post->ID == 6992 ) $canonical = false;

4        return $canonical;

5    }

6    add_filter( ‘wpseo_canonical’, ‘my_canonical_exclude’ );

B)

Change this…  add_filter(‘wp_title’, ‘sp_setup_browser_title’, 10, 3);

to this … add_filter(‘wp_title’, ‘sp_setup_browser_title’, 99, 3);

C)

http://dottech.org/101602/problem-with-post-edit-buttonow-to-make-yoast-wordpress-seo-work-with-simplepress-page-title-and-canonical-guide/

So, are any — or a combination — of the above relevant to the Title issue?

Thanks much!

Jim

I linked to a specific post with the title change…

https://simple-press.com/support-forum/sp5-general-topics/does-yoast-seo-wordpress-plugin-work-with-simple-press/page-2/#p124538

Steve

I tried each function in my /sp-resources/forum-themes/default/templates/spFunctions.php

Still, no title changes.
(In the second function, I did update the “ID” value.)

These are my SEO settings > http://screencast.com/t/ljrfWKakX
Do I need to change a setting in Yoast?

Thoughts?

I will try and see if Steve can get a look in here but he is off early this morning in a vacation so not sure if he will. About the only thing I know is that while we get a few questions on this subject they all do sort if out in the end so we know it works and can be done.

I guess if the worse comes to the worse I will have to download this SEO plugin and quickly learn what it is all about and hope I can sort it through trial and error!

Thanks, not super critical as our Simple-Press SEO has been screwed up for several weeks now  : )

But, I would like this wrapped up asap. Have a great weekend.

Thanks. It’s typical really…. We don’t get an SEO question for weeks and weeks and then 3 come along just as our SEO guy goes on vacation!

So, Steve is our “SEO” guy? And he’s on vacation?

We all have our strengths and weaknesses. Steve wrote all of the SP SEO and integration code and has worked with the Yoast SEO plugin. And he knows his SEO and his sitemaps. I work on other stuff and am the ‘go to’ guy for those.

I will give it a go but I will need to download the plugin, set things up and build a test environment for it before I can start to use it in a controlled local test site to see if I can spot any issues…. I am still guessing that the answer is out there somewhere! But I will give it a go.