Back to Community
Home / Community / Plugin → Seopress – on-site seo

How to Fix Missing or Incorrect Product Category SEO Titles and Meta Descriptions in SEOPress

15 threads Sep 16, 2025 Plugin → Seopress – on-site seo

Content

If you're using the SEOPress plugin for your WooCommerce store, you might run into a common issue where your product category pages don't display the custom SEO titles and meta descriptions you've set. Instead, they might show the default category name, a paginated title, or even trigger a JavaScript error. This guide will walk you through the most common causes and their solutions.

Why This Happens

This problem typically occurs due to one of a few reasons: a misconfiguration in the Titles & Metas settings, a conflict with another plugin or your theme, or a specific issue with how the SEO metabox is loaded for taxonomy terms like product categories.

Common Solutions

1. Configure Your Title Templates

The most frequent fix is to define a global template for your product category pages. This ensures a consistent format and can prevent unwanted pagination text from appearing.

  1. From your WordPress dashboard, navigate to SEO > Titles & Metas.
  2. Click on the Taxonomies tab.
  3. Find the Product categories section.
  4. In the Title template field, enter your desired format using dynamic variables (e.g., %%term_title%% | %%sitetitle%%).
  5. Save your changes and clear your site's cache if you use a caching plugin.

2. Edit the SEO Settings for Individual Categories

Custom titles and descriptions for individual product categories are not set in the universal SEO metabox that appears on posts and pages. You must edit them directly on the category itself.

  1. Go to Products > Categories.
  2. Click to Edit a specific product category.
  3. Scroll down below the description field. You should find the SEOPress metabox there, where you can enter a custom title and meta description for that specific category.

3. Check for Plugin or Theme Conflicts

If you are encountering JavaScript errors (like "Uncaught TypeError: Cannot read properties of undefined") when saving, or if the metabox is completely missing, a conflict is likely.

  1. Temporarily deactivate all plugins except SEOPress and WooCommerce.
  2. Switch to a default WordPress theme like Twenty Twenty-One.
  3. Check if the problem persists. If it is resolved, reactivate your plugins and theme one by one to identify the culprit.

4. Ensure Your Theme Has Correct WooCommerce Support

Some issues with product data not displaying correctly in titles can stem from the theme. The SEOPress team has a guide on fixing missing theme support that can be helpful in these scenarios.

Conclusion

Managing SEO for product category pages requires checking both the global template settings and the individual term edits. By following these steps, you should be able to regain control over your category page titles and meta descriptions, ensuring they are displayed correctly to search engines and users.

Related Support Threads Support