Primary Category not working

We understand you have the photograph category selected as the primary but videography is showing as the primary one on both the search map and directory listings. Let us know if we misunderstood anything.

Can you please elaborate more on how can we reproduce the issue on the search map and directory listing that shows the videography is being selected as primary so that we can understand the issue better?

We look forward to hearing from you.

Yes, that’s correct.

It’s a listing page and categories are checkboxes. Both Photography and Videography are checked, and “Photography” is selected as Primary Category. However, “Videography” appears as the primary category. I can’t elaborate further than that. I’ve seen previous posts about Yoast SEO having issues with Primary Category. Hoping someone can help with this.

Thanks

@jaydhcameron

Just to clarify are “Photography” and “Videography” both parent categories or one of them is a child category. For more information: https://yoast.com/help/implement-wordpress-seo-breadcrumbs/#configure

On a different note,

To troubleshoot the issue, can you please follow the steps below:

1. Install & activate the Yoast Test Helper plugin — https://www.ads-software.com/plugins/yoast-test-helper/
2. Go to your WordPress admin dashboard > Tools (sidebar) > Yoast Test
3. Locate the Yoast SEO section and select the “Reset indexables tables & migrations” button
After resetting, go to the WordPress admin dashboard > SEO (sidebar) > Tools section and click the “Start SEO data optimization” button.

Does this resolve the issue?

Thanks Suwash. Appreciate the help. I followed your instructions, but unfortunately the “Start SEO data optimization” stopped halfway with the same error message: “Oops, something has gone wrong…”. Any other suggestions? If I get the SEO data optimization to work, would that fix the primary category issue?

Hi,

There are two different issue we have outlined below.

A. Primary Category Not Appearing
To clarify, you have a search page here https://bridalconfidential.com/wedding-directory/ and when you search for that business https://bridalconfidential.com/business/eleveneleven/ it shows Videography as the tag on the page? See image: https://ibb.co/H7Ys2Yq. You want: photographer to appear instead?

If so, we are not sure if this is an issue with the theme, some other plugin, or Yoast. We would like some more information.

1. Are all your non-Yoast plugins and themes also updated?

2. How are your these pages: https://bridalconfidential.com/wedding-directory/ AND https://bridalconfidential.com/business/eleveneleven/ set-up? Are they created from a plugin or a theme? If so, which ones?

3. Are pages like https://bridalconfidential.com/business/eleveneleven/ a custom post type using a custom taxonomy? If your not sure, it seems like your theme developer can help.

4. If you go to SEO-Search Appearance-Content Types (or it might be Taxonomies) and click on Listing Category is the Yoast Metabox set to SHOW?

Same if you find the Listing (or it might appear as Business)? Is it set to show?

5. Are both the Listing (or Business) and the Listing Category public or private post types? If you are not sure, your theme/plugin author responsible for creating it can let you know. If you switch to public (if it is private) does the issue resolve?

B. SEO Data Button Not working
If you check for JavaScript errors do any appear on that page in the backend? They would appear in red in the console. Can you describe them or take a screenshot? If you are not sure how to look for JavaScript errors please use this guide https://yoast.com/help/how-to-find-javascript-errors-with-your-browsers-console/.

You can use a tool like: https://imgbb.com/ to share the image.

Note: We are also not 100% sure SEO Data button would resolve the issue but we should investigate this as well since it is not working correctly.

Hi Pcosta88,

Appreciate the feedback.

Yes to your first question. That is precisely the problem. Additionally, the icon for “Videography” appears on the map as well, instead of the “Photography” icon.

Now here’s the responses to your list of questions.

1. All plugins are updated, except for WPBakery, as I may need to purchase the next iteration. Would this cause an issue?
2. Both pages and the site in general is created from the theme Listeo. I’ve talked to the developer and he said its not a theme issue, and pointed me to Yoast SEO based on what was found on the web.
3. The Listing pages are published as “Listing” posts I believe. And they are categorized by a “Category” taxonomy.
4. Yes everything is set to “Show”
5. They are all public.

For section B above, here’s a screenshot of the Console errors/warnings: https://ibb.co/3dzVYL7

Please let me know if there’s anything else I can provide to help figure this out.

Thanks
Jay

Hi,

Thanks for the information! From what we understand your business pages like https://bridalconfidential.com/business/eleveneleven/ are a custom post type.

The Primary Category feature is not expected to work with custom post types. We understand this is a limitation of the plugin. We have a request to add support it here: https://github.com/Yoast/wordpress-seo/issues/15393 (the issue is related to adding the taxonomy into the permalink but the underlying issue you are having is all related).

We suggest commenting on it so you may be kept aware of updates. You may need a comment to post.

In the meantime, the only workaround is to develop on the Yoast plugin to force Yoast to output the primary category correctly.

Unfortunately, there’s a difference between the support we can offer and the level of programming needed to change (core) features of our plugin. Since we don’t want to take the risk that we break your website by suggesting incorrect or incomplete code, we cannot advise you on how to make such changes. And even though we cannot be of any assistance, you’re completely free to change anything in the plugin to better suit your needs.

We highly recommend checking out?our list of Yoast Partners here https://yoast.com/yoast-partners/ in case you are in need of development.

We will also keep this issue open for 1 week in case someone from the community can help. Perhaps a developer watching these forums can assist further. After which, we will close in order to keep the overview.

Thanks a lot. I hope this can be fixed soon.

Also, any suggestions on how to get the Start SEO Data Optimization button to work? I keep getting the same error. Thanks!

Hi,

We’re sorry to hear that you are also getting errors with running the SEO data optimization even after resetting it with the Yoast Test Helper.

When you try to run it again and receive the error notification, could you please open your browser’s console and check for JavaScript errors? Could you then provide us with a screenshot of the errors that are appearing? You can refer to this guide for more information — https://yoast.com/help/how-to-find-javascript-errors-with-your-browsers-console/

If there are any JavaScript errors, we would then recommend performing a conflict check to see if there are any conflicting plugins or themes that could be causing the SEO data optimization to stop from running — https://yoast.com/help/how-to-check-for-plugin-conflicts/

Hi Michael,

Thanks for your help. I’ve taken a screen shot of my console error message when trying to run the Data Optimization – see here: https://ibb.co/b6x4sr1

What do you think?

Thanks
Jay

@jaydhcameron

We noticed few JavaScript errors that indicates /wp-son/yoast/v1/link-indexing/posts calls are being blocked with 500 error.

The SEO Data Optimization tool uses the WordPress REST API to scan posts/pages. We can see in the screenshot the server returns a 500 Internal server error when accessing the REST API.

Please contact your webhost to review your server setup to determine why the REST API returns a forbidden error. There may be a server setting or module that needs to be adjusted such as mod_security. Once the server no longer returns an error, we would expect the SEO Data Optimization tool to load.

In addition, if you are using caching on your site (varnish or otherwise) you may need to adjust cache settings to remove /wp-json/yoast from the caching. If you are not sure how to do that please contact your host provider and/or caching plugin authors.

We are going ahead and marking this issue as resolved due to inactivity. If you require any further assistance please create a new issue.