Previously used keyphrase error

Hi @4090-1,

One of the assessments of the SEO analysis in the Yoast SEO plugin is the previously used focus keyphrase check. This assessment checks if the words from the keyphrase were previously used in a keyphrase for other posts or pages on your site.

You shouldn’t use the same focus keyphrase more than once and more detail information about SEO impact can be read here. If you remember the post, just change the focus keyphrase a bit. If you believe, focus keyphrases are uniquely used per page then you can simply ignore the Yoast warning considering a false positive notice. This won’t hurt your site SEO.

Thank you for responding but did you even read the question?

I know the importance of the key words.

None of my other posts use the same key focus word.

Yes. I can ignore the warning. However, that is not a solution to the problem is it? I could stand in the middle of a race track and ignore a car coming at me at 400km/h.

I would prefer that a false warning does not come up. My question is about how I can achieve this.

I did an SQL query from the MySQL database that proves that the focus keyword _yoast_wpseo_focuskw is unique within wp_postmeta. Where else is it stored?

Hi @4090-1,

We’re sorry to hear that you’re having issues with some of the plugin functionality.

Can you please provide us with more information?:

• What is the Focus Keyphrase you are using?
• Is this happening on Posts or Page?
• The warning in the analysis should have a link to the other post that has the same focus keyphrase (You’ve used this keyphrase once before) or a link to the post search functionality if there is more than one article with the same focus keyphrase (You’ve used this keyphrase X times before). If you click it, what do you see?

As explained previously, this is happening on woocommerce products.

There are about 200 products and it is happening on about half of them.

The full error is “Previously used keyphrase: You’ve used this keyphrase once before. Do not use your keyphrase more than once.”

When I click on the warning “once before” for one product it comes up with a link to https://www.travelideology.com/wp-admin/post.php?post=2167&action=edit

This shows “You attempted to edit an item that doesn’t exist. Perhaps it was deleted?”

This is correct. The item was deleted in the database in tables wp_posts and wp_postmeta due to corrupted data.

Where in the database does it store the information that is causing the warning? This way I can fix that as well.

Thanks in advance.

Hi @4090-1

We’re sorry you’re running into this problem with previously-used keyphrases.

Since version 14.0, Yoast SEO no longer uses the postmeta table to store the SEO data.

If your site is up-to date and is using the latest version (14.2), please try the following to reindex the Yoast SEO data on your site:

1. Install & activate the Yoast Test Helper plugin
2. Go to Tools -> Yoast Test
3. Click the “Reset indexables & migrations” button
4. Go to SEO -> Tools and under SEO data, click the “Speed up your site” button.

We apologies for any inconvenience. If the relevant page is no longer exists, Yoast SEO content analysis should no longer has a reference on it anymore.

Can you please confirm how did you remove the relevant page? Did you remove it normally from the WordPress dashboard overview page or you have removed it manually from the database due to the data corruption?

@priscillamc Thank you very much for your help. Your solution seems to have worked well where 3 other Yoast support personnel were unable to understand and provide the solution.

@@priscillamc

Install & activate the Yoast Test Helper plugin
Go to Tools -> Yoast Test
Click the “Reset indexables & migrations” button
Go to SEO -> Tools and under SEO data, click the “Speed up your site” button.

Your advice has been useful for me too, thanks -:)