I have created a Question and Answer website, but the Yoast options are not shown on the pages. Let’s get down to the bottom of what’s going on here. I knew that Yoast has some Structured data blocks, such as How-to and FAQ blocks, which will help you achieve what I am doing. My Q&A is a questions and Answers website, where someone asks a question and some other person can answer it (maybe one or many). I can also add a question from the backend by adding a new question, and when I do it on WordPress then at the bottom Yoast options are available. Once questions are added and I am supposed to answer them then Yoast options are not available seems it is treated as a comment. Please help me understand how can I achieve SEO using Yoast Premium in such a situation. here is the Questions section on WordPress.
Edit question, Yoast SEO premium is displayed for question.
Once the question is posted on the website UI, then anyone can answer. let’s suppose someone answers the question.
Now click edit on answers from here, Yoast is not available. Maybe it’s treated as a comment.
Please suggest how I do SEO on the Q&A website where Yoast options are only available for Questions and not for Answers.
This was the discussion between me and the support.
Support
Can you please let us know more details about your setup? Are you using any LMS like LearnDash? Are you using a custom post type for such a setup?
Admin
Let me brief my question would the Yoast plugin be enabled for comments on the post or Q&A website?
Support
It seems the issue is with the plugin that creates the Questions and Answers. The questions are created as publicly accessible custom post types, which is why you have a Yoast SEO meta box for them.
However, the associated answers are not custom post types or taxonomies but treated as regular WordPress comments. As such, you cannot get the Yoast SEO meta box for the comments. Also, there’s no need for the meta box under comments because there’s no SEO value added to optimizing comments.
Admin
Yes, you are right. Then how would I do SEO for the questions post for questions only the Yoast SEO is visible and based upon a question that would be hardly any text of line or a paragraph sometimes or mostly the title only. For this Yoast SEO always be red for me as I won’t be able to do SEO for the questions and answers (treated as comments) post.
Also, sometimes the question can be asked by other users directly on the website, not from the backend of WordPress. Any idea?
Support
How would I do SEO for the questions post for questions only the Yoast SEO is visible?
Your question is unclear. Doesn’t the Yoast SEO meta box show under the Questions post type anymore?
Admin
That’s visible. But let’s treat question and answer both as a single page where for questions Yoast meta box is visible but for answers are treated as comments on questions so for them Yoast meta box is unavailable.
Now the question here is, if I do SEO for a post then, I can optimize my post using Yoast meta box as it tells me all the issues with SEO. However, the same is not with questions and answers posts, where one user posts questions on the website from the website UI and other several users answer that question. Now if I open that question(post) in the WordPress backend and I see that question asked by one of the users assume the question only contains the worst “How can I draw a cat” and nothing else and its answer is supposed to present in the form of comments on the same question.
The Yoast meta box indicators show me huge issues with SEO since my question post only contains the question “How can I draw a cat” and not its answers(comments from other users). How do I do SEO in this case as I cannot write content in the original question asked by some users that might be of 1 line to n number of lines?
Support
You cannot optimize a single line of text like your question.
Please note that Google wants more text so that people can understand your website better.
Search engines are not very good at understanding single-line questions and answers. It would help if you wrote more text to make it more understandable.
If your content is only a single-line question and people will answer it, then SEO does not apply to your page.
We suggest optimizing your other pages, like your About page, instead. You don’t need to optimize every single page you have.
There are several free courses, including the WordPress for Beginners course, SEO for beginners, Yoast SEO for WordPress, and All-around SEO, available so that you can watch the videos and learn from them quickly.
And of course, our beginner’s guide to Yoast SEO
You can check out the video for how to set up the Yoast SEO plugin -WordPress SEO for beginners.