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[Resolved] Yoast meta tags being overwritten in the wrong language

This thread is resolved. Here is a description of the problem and solution.

Problem:
If you're using Yoast SEO along with WPML and experiencing an issue where the title tags set in Yoast SEO for things like archive page titles are being overwritten from the source language (English) into one of the translations, this might be due to a specific sequence of actions. This includes configuring an 'Organization logo' in Yoast SEO, translating SEO titles and descriptions for archive pages, and making changes in the Yoast SEO settings, followed by visiting a translated language page on the frontend as the first page after the changes.
Solution:
We recommend that after saving the Yoast settings, you should visit the frontend in the primary language first. This workaround helps prevent the issue where the translated text overwrites the source language in the 'wpseo_titles' data. Our team has already reported this issue to the compatibility team and is in contact with the plugin author for a fix. You can follow the progress of this issue here.

Please note that this solution might be irrelevant if it's outdated or not applicable to your case. We highly recommend checking related known issues at https://wpml.org/known-issues/, verifying the version of the permanent fix, and confirming that you have installed the latest versions of themes and plugins. If the issue persists, please open a new support ticket here.

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This topic contains 2 replies, has 1 voice.

Last updated by Andrey 1 month ago.

Assisted by: Andrey.

Author Posts
May 12, 2026 at 6:49 pm #18031318

peterL-60

We are using Yoast SEO and the compatibility plugin. We are experiencing an issue where the title tags we have written in the Yoast SEO settings for things like archive page titles are being overwritten from the source language (english) into one of our translations.

The process to reproduce this issue is very specific. I found another thread here (https://wpml.org/forums/topic/conflict-of-saving-wpseo_titles-with-wpml-overwritting-in-secondary-language/) discussing this issue but WPML support was not able to reproduce because there was one critical step missing.

1) Have a site configured with WPML, Yoast SEO, WPML String Translaiton, and the WPML SEO plugin.
2) Configure an "Organization logo" in Yoast SEO > Settings > representation
3) Translate the SEO Title and Description for archive pages using WPML string translation
4) Make a change to the Yoast SEO > Settings area, such as tweaking a title or description field.
5) Visit a *translated* language on the frontend of the site. This must be the FIRST page you visit after making the change in the backend and it must be a translated URL.

On the frontend page load Yoast SEO will try to look for it's own internal meta for the "company_logo_meta" field. Normally stored in wpseo_titles. This meta is not available on translated URLs. Possibly because it's value is an array and perhaps skipped by String translation.

When Yoast SEO fails to find this meta, it will search for "company_logo_id" instead, which it does find successfully. It will then try to update the wpseo_titles option to add the missing "company_logo_meta" field for next time. Because we are on a translated version of the site, the values it will update into wpseo_titles will translations and not the source language.

Now that the faulty wpseo_titles data has been stored, loading the source language of an archive page will show the translated text that was improperly written. The english text has been wiped out. When this has happened to us in the past we've had to go back to backups to recover the old data from the database.
May 12, 2026 at 7:00 pm #18031325

peterL-60

As a workaround while this issue gets patched, this side-steps the problem:

/wp-content/plugins/wordpress-seo/src/helpers/image-helper.php

Comment out line #385: $this->options_helper->set( $setting . '_meta', $image_meta );

This is not a fix, and will likely cause other issues, but we will roll with it for now until this gets fixed in WPML SEO.

Mostly sharing here to help the WPML engineers understand where this is happening in the wordpress-seo codebase.

Screenshot 2026-05-12 at 2.58.06 PM.png
May 13, 2026 at 6:31 pm #18034164

Andrey
WPML Supporter since 06/2013

Languages: English (English ) Russian (Русский )

Timezone: Europe/Kyiv (GMT+03:00)

Thank you for contacting WPML support and reporting this issue.

I’ve checked this further and can confirm that the same issue from the support ticket you shared has already been reported to our compatibility team.

For now, the recommended workaround is:

* After saving the Yoast settings, visit the frontend in the primary language first

In the meantime, our team has contacted the plugin author, and the fix will likely come from their side. You can follow the progress here (the issue has been reopened):
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