speaking with Rafael Ramos on Twitterafter doing it several laps, it turns out that the subject Hello, Elementor for WordPress adds an SEO tag to the source code of posts and pages, especially the meta descriptionWhat if you install an SEO plugin there might be 2 tags meta description.
What is SEO tag Meta Description?
The label meta description it’s a SEO tag that summarizes the content of a publication, a sort of excerptand search engine bots, if this tag exists, use it to display text in search results.
After meta titleit is the most important SEO tag of each of them SERPsbecause together with this other it is the only text that is displayed following a search, and as an opportunity to “promote” your content.
WordPress creates the tag by default meta title but not the label meta descriptionand for that reason alone, a good WordPress SEO plugin is essential.
That said, there is a meta description duplicate it could confuse search engine bots and cause unexpected effects in the results of your content on search results pages.
What Google and other search engines do if there is no tag Meta Description?
By default, if the search engine bot doesn’t see a tag in the source code meta description It is complete space From fragmentfrom the search snippet, with the first text found in the post.
Because the Hello Elementor theme adds the tag Meta Description?
His explanation is really short:
To improve SEO without using external plugins, the theme adds a meta tag containing the page/post excerpt.
Because I think Hello Elementor theme adds the tag Meta Description?
As I told you before, WordPress creates the tag natively meta title from the post or page title, but not the tag meta description Why?
Well, for the simple reason that WordPress i don’t know where to find it meta description, it does not know what you want the excerpt or abstract of your publication to be for such an important tag for SEO, then don’t create any.
In this way, and as it says in the poor explanation, and therein lies the crux of the matter, to remedy this deficiency, without having to use plugins, if an excerpt exists of the page/post, the topic Hello Elementor uses that excerpt AS meta description.
This also means that if you haven’t defined a drawn by hand of a post or page, the Hello Elementor theme will not create the file meta description.
Therefore, if you define a manual excerpt for the post or page, the Hello Elementor theme will use it as a tag meta description.
It’s a good idea to add the Hello Elementor theme to the file Meta Description?
We see, the idea is good, as it covers a shortage of WordPress, but the result could be disastrousespecially if we take into account 3 things:
- What the user is not notified of the problem of it anywhere in the interface, description or theme settings.
- What there is no theme setting to disable This functionality.
- What the vast majority of WordPress users use some SEO pluginwhich together with the above can affect its positioning.
WordPress should also natively add the tag Meta Description?
Well, in my opinion, Yes I shouldprovided that the user has created a manual excerpt, indicating it in the documentation in some way.
That would be a significant SEO improvement, which WordPress SEO plugins would quickly and easily adapt to, being a native feature.
And plugins with Hello Elementor theme can’t do the same?
They could, but it’s not the same to adapt to WordPress, to the system that supports everything, as to adapt to whims of every topic, no matter how popular it is.
WordPress SEO plugins try to be compatible with all native WordPress features, because it is common ground for all, but they cannot be compatible with every single WordPress theme out there.
In what situations a Meta Description Duplicate with Hello Elementor theme?
However, despite all of the above, it is not always believed a tag meta description even if you have the Hello Elementor theme and an active SEO plugin, several things need to happen at the same time for this to happen:
- Have a manual extract defined.
- You have configured a template in the SEO plugin settings that uses the excerpt as
meta description.
Extra ball for SEOPress
As you know, I use and recommend SEOPress as a WordPress SEO plugin, due to its many virtues, including one clean source codeand another of them is that does not suffer from this problem with the Hello Elementor theme, well, with SEOPress active, and also if you have defined the template for the meta description from the manual extract, the duplicate tag is not generated.
Ok got it, but I use an SEO plugin, like 99.99% of WordPress users and I don’t want to have duplicate tags, how do I remove the tag Meta Description from Hello Elementor theme?
As I was saying, there is no button or setting for it, so if you’re using any SEO plugin other than SEOPress, you’ll inevitably need to do the following:
- Create a Hello Elementor child theme.
- Add to file
functions.phpfrom the child theme the following code…
/* Quitar meta description Hello Elementor */
function remove_hello_elementor_description_meta_tag() {
remove_action( 'wp_head', 'hello_elementor_add_description_meta_tag' );
}
add_action( 'after_setup_theme', 'remove_hello_elementor_description_meta_tag' );
Save the changes to the file and only the tag will be generated meta description created with your SEO plugin.
Another possibility, if you don’t want to create a child theme, is to create a specific plugin for this function, as I explained in this guide. You decide, but you don’t decide the topic.
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