The Yoast SEO Plugin is compatible with Thesis, save for one remote conflict with the Skin Editor which we’ll explore below.
Before we do that, though, let’s examine what happens when you activate the Yoast SEO Plugin while using Thesis.
When you activate the Yoast SEO Plugin…
Thesis cedes control of major technical SEO components to Yoast SEO:
- Title Tags
- Meta Descriptions
- Meta Robots
- Canonical URLs
Yoast SEO can also handle your Google Analytics integration. Despite this, we still recommend using Thesis for this purpose because it:
- Uses the latest Google Global Site Tag integration
- Places all Google scripts precisely where they are supposed to go in your HTML markup
Skin Editor Compatibility Issue
If you find that attempting to launch the Skin Editor redirects you to the front page of your site, you may have the “Redirect ugly URLs to clean permalinks” option enabled in Yoast SEO’s Permalinks settings.
If so—and if you absolutely need that setting enabled, despite the fact it’s not recommended for use—then find the “Other variables not to clean” field in the Clean Permalink Settings section of the plugin’s Permalinks panel, and input the following into that field:
thesis_editor, thesis_canvas
Then save your settings. Doing this should allow the Skin Editor (and the Canvas, which is also affected by this issue in a less obvious fashion) to function correctly again instead of redirecting to the home page.