SEO is set but not visible (Yoast)

Symptom

You generated or typed a SEO title and meta description, they are clearly present in the editor, but they do not appear in the page source (and may be missing from the rotation preview too). This is most common right after importing content, migrating, or activating WPML.

Cause

From Yoast 14+, the frontend serves SEO from an internal cache called the indexable table (wp_yoast_indexable), not from the post meta you edit. After imports, migrations or WPML activation this cache stays stale — so the SEO is set in the database but the page renders the old (empty) cached value.

Fix

Go to AISA → Utility → "Repair invisible SEO (Yoast)" and click Analyze and repair. AISA counts the affected items and deletes the stale indexable rows; Yoast rebuilds them from the post meta on the next visit to each page, and the SEO becomes visible again. Going forward, AISA also auto-refreshes the indexable whenever it writes SEO, so freshly generated values show without a manual repair. The wizard runs the same repair at its final step.

Quick DB shortcut (advanced): deleting indexable rows where the title is NULL/empty has the same effect — but the Utility tool is the safe, supported way.

Questions people ask

Do I have to repair after every edit? No. The repair is needed for legacy/imported data; AISA keeps new writes in sync automatically.

Will this lose my SEO data? No. The post meta (your real values) is untouched — only the cache is rebuilt from it.

Related

• Repair invisible SEO and database maintenance
• SEO-plugin adapters: Yoast, Rank Math, SEOPress, AIOSEO