Troubleshooting

Most problems with Signocore SEO come down to caching, URL rules that need refreshing, or another plugin doing the same job. Start with the section that matches what you see.

Changes show up late

Signocore SEO caches what it prints, so pages stay fast. It clears the right cache when you save something in WordPress, but a change made elsewhere can take a while to show.

The title in the browser tab is not cached by Signocore SEO; it is built on every visit.

Changes made outside Signocore SEO do not clear the cache, for example a new site title under Settings → General, or a custom field or product price that another plugin updates without saving the post. To see them right away:

1. For one page, open it in the editor and click Update (or Save).
2. For all pages, open any Signocore SEO settings page, such as Signocore SEO → General, and click Save Changes. This clears the cached head output, the sitemaps and llms.txt for the whole site.
3. To clear everything, including breadcrumbs, deactivate Signocore SEO on the Plugins screen and activate it again.

Two other layers can hold old versions:

• Page caches. A caching plugin, your host's server cache or a CDN keeps whole pages. Clear it after the steps above.
• Persistent object caches. On sites with Redis or Memcached, some object caches cannot clear a group of entries at once. If a sitewide change still does not show after step 2, flush the object cache from your cache plugin or hosting panel.

Note: While Settings → Reading is set to discourage search engines, Signocore SEO does not cache the head output at all.

The sitemap returns a 404 page

Open the sitemap from the link at the bottom of the XML Sitemap card on Signocore SEO → Visibility, then work through these checks.

1. Refresh the URL rules. The sitemap addresses are registered in a background task after activation. If that has not run yet, go to Settings → Permalinks and click Save Changes without changing anything. Saving any Signocore SEO settings page does the same.
2. Check the address. With plain permalinks (Settings → Permalinks set to Plain), the sitemap lives at https://example.com/?wpsseo-xml-sitemap=true instead of a .xml address.
3. Check your noindex rules. A sitemap for a post type, taxonomy or archive you have set to noindex returns a 404 page on purpose. For example, when author archives are set to noindex on Signocore SEO → Visibility, author-sitemap.xml is not available. The same goes for a sitemap page past the last one, such as page 3 of a sitemap with two pages. The sitemap index only lists sitemaps that have content.
4. Look for a file with the same name. If a real file such as sitemap-index.xml sits in the root folder of your site, the server shows that file instead. Signocore SEO warns you about it with a notice, see the notice table at the end of this page.
5. Check the server. The sitemap is created by WordPress, not stored as a file. If your server answers requests for .xml files itself instead of passing them on to WordPress, you get the server's 404 page. Ask your host to send requests for files that do not exist to WordPress's index.php.

For all sitemap settings, see Sitemaps, indexing and robots.txt.

WordPress's own sitemap redirects

Signocore SEO switches off the sitemaps built into WordPress. Unless you gave your own sitemap one of these names, visits to /wp-sitemap.xml and /sitemap.xml are sent to the Signocore SEO sitemap index with a permanent (301) redirect, so an old address you submitted to a search engine keeps working. Submit the new address when you get the chance.

There is no structured data on your pages

The schema graph is printed only after the Company settings have been saved once. Go to Signocore SEO → Company, check your details and click Save Changes. See Structured data.

Another SEO plugin is active

While Yoast SEO, Rank Math, SEOPress, All in One SEO or Slim SEO is active, Signocore SEO shows administrators the warning "We have detected that ... is active. To avoid conflicts, we highly recommend disabling it." You can dismiss it; it comes back when a different SEO plugin becomes active. Both plugins print titles, descriptions, canonical URLs, social tags and structured data, so search engines see everything twice.

1. Import your data first, see Switch from another SEO plugin.
2. Deactivate the other plugin.

The Table of Contents block is missing

The Table of Contents block, the [signocore-toc] shortcode and the subheading (H2 to H6) keyword check need the PHP dom extension. Without it, the block is not in the inserter, the shortcode shows up as plain text, and administrators see a notice about the missing extension. Everything else in Signocore SEO works normally.

Ask your host to enable the dom extension for PHP.

The title does not end with your company name

Append To Title adds " • " and your company name only when:

• the full title stays within 60 characters,
• the title does not already contain the company name, and
• the title does not come from a template.

To show your brand on every page, add %%sitetitle%% or the name itself to your templates. See Titles, descriptions and templates.

A placeholder shows up as text or prints nothing

• Check the spelling between the double percent signs. Upper and lower case both work, so %%Title%% is fine.
• Check that the placeholder works on that kind of page. %%title%% prints nothing on category and tag archives; use %%term_title%% there.
• Placeholders only work in title and description fields. In other fields, such as Breadcrumb Title, they stay as text.

The full list is in Template placeholders.

SEO Health or the Dashboard looks out of date

• SEO Health analyzes the saved version of a post. Save or update the post to refresh it.
• The Thin Content card and the Fewer than 240 words filter only count posts saved since the word count was added. If the SEO Dashboard shows a Count words for button, click it to count the older posts. Only administrators see the button.
• With Pro, the Orphaned Pages check needs every post in the link index. Click Index internal links for on the SEO Dashboard when it appears.

Pro features stay locked

• Check that Signocore SEO License Email and Signocore SEO License Key on Signocore SEO → General match your purchase, then click Verify license. See Installation and license.
• If an update on the Plugins screen says "To enable Pro features, please enter a valid license key here.", the update came without a download while a license key is saved. Verify the license, then click Check again on Dashboard → Updates.
• If the AI buttons show a lock although you have Pro, add an API key on Signocore SEO → Integrations. See AI generation.

Admin notices

If you are stuck, contact Signocore with a description of the problem and what you have tried.