Yoast Premium not working when using Classic Elements on X?

Support
#1

Hello,

After reading several forum posts, it seems there were some issues a few months ago (Q4 of last year?) with the Yoast (Premium) plugin not being able to ‘see’ the content of a page. It is suggested they we’re resolved in an earlier version of X as of which Yoast should work as expected.

However, not for me.

More specifically, not for me when I use Classic Elements in an otherwise V2 page, as we needed to do on a recent page of ours: https://www.bentopresentaties.nl/presentatie-ontwerp/sales-presentaties/

I boiled it down after reading this recent forum post by deleting sections one by one. In this way, I found out two specific culprits which make the Yoast plugin hiccup.

The Yoast plugin works on the site with ‘straightforward’ pages.

Hoever, on the earlier mentioned (longer) page – with a Gravity Form added through a Classic Gravity Form element and images using a Lightbox popup through the Lightbox shortcode, Yoast Premium acted up.

When I deleted the form, which was on the end of the page, the error messages disappeared, but statistics looked whack, with too many zero values:

When I also deleted the section containing the Lightbox images (and shortcode), things look normal again:

Both element make use of Classic Element and of shortcode in Cornerstone. Might it be possible that (a combination of) Classic Elements aren’t supported with X and Yoast?

And more importantly

Are there perhaps any known workarounds to add Lightbox functionality and add Gravity forms without using Classic Elements?

Hope to hear from you guys (or girls)!

Thanks,
Arnout

PS I use

  • WordPress 4.9.8
  • X Version 6.2.5
  • Cornerstone 3.2.5
  • Yoast SEO Permium plugin 8.1
#2

Update: I ruled out that there isn’t a compatibility problem between the Yoast and Gravity Forms plugins. When I make a simple WordPress page (no Cornerstone used), and add the form through a shortcode, the Yoast analysis runs fine.

#3

I can confirm that I am also having an issue with classic elements disrupting yoast. In particular my issue was with the ‘Classic Icon List’ element. When I remove any instances of it, yoast Word Count returns to normal.

@bentopres thank you for your efforts on this.

#4

I just found out that the shortcode to call the lightbox function:
[lightbox selector=".lightbox1a"]
was stored in a ‘Classic Raw Content’ element. When I replaced it for a V2 Element ‘Content Area’, the count issue with a lot of values going to zero (as in the second image) is fixed!

However, still I found no way to add a Gravity Form in Cornerstone. This still results in all kinds of errors in Readability-analysis of Yoast. This doesn’t happen when I call the form through their [gravityforms] shortcode in a non-Cornerstone test-page. There they work together nicely, so I figure it has something to do with how Cornerstone/X stores the Gravity Forms code that Yoast doesn’t like.

For this last part (Gravity Form) it doesn’t matter if I use the Classic Gravity Forms Element or put their shortcode in a new V2 Content Area element, both times it brakes Yoast (in contrast to when the shortcode is added to a plain WordPress, non-Cornerstone page).

Anyone any suggestions?

#5

Perhaps you should try to use a shortcode to set up the icon list and use a new Content Area element to add that code to…? (So avoid the use of classic elements)

#6

I’ll give that a try. I’m just glad to have found the cause so quickly (thanks to you).

#7

It gets even funkier… Still looking for an answer, I stumbled on this somewhat related comment, which suggested to actually DO USE the Classic Raw Content element for Gravity Forms.

Thought to give it a try, although my experiences with the Classic Raw Content element were not great (as described above), and lo and behold, that works.

But only then I found out, I had entered a different ID (of a similar form). Both forms are 95% identical, only order of fields and conditional logic differs. And the one form works, while the other doesn’t!

So it appears to come down to some small difference in the individual form which determines if the form works or not with Yoast. And also, the difference between non-Cornerstone vs. Cornerstone pages is gone…!

I guess I have to look in more detail into the form producing the error. But it doesn’t appear to be a Cornerstone issue after all.

(However, Cornerstone appears to somewhat critical on older style elements and shortcodes used. But that I managed to work around by now)

#8

Hey There,

Thanks for writing in! We are just glad that you have figured it out a way to correct the said issue.
We appreciate for letting us know!

Just for future topics, self responding or bumping your post pushes it back in our Queue system so it takes longer to respond to.

Best Regards.

#9

Ah, didn’t know. What to do then when I’ve got some additional insights? Edit the original post?

#10

No worries. Yes, you need to edit the original post.

#11

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