How to restore Yoast meta descriptions after a WordPress rebuild

A WordPress rebuild can preserve page content while still losing page-specific SEO metadata. In one migration project, a newly launched site had replaced many of its unique Yoast SEO meta descriptions with the same default description, even though the previous site still contained the original page-level values.

Freshy restored the SEO metadata through a staged process rather than a blind bulk import. The team compared the old and new sites, used the rebuild’s redirect map to match restructured pages, created a client-review sheet, backed up the live site, tested five pages first, and then updated 59 additional approved pages. In total, 64 live pages received restored meta descriptions. Six approved rows were skipped because they no longer mapped to a current published page.

Issue background

After a WordPress rebuild, the client noticed that many pages were using one generic meta description instead of the page-specific descriptions from the previous site.

That mattered because the old site had already accumulated carefully written SEO metadata across a large page inventory.

A read-only comparison found:

• The old site had 202 published pages.
• 134 of those old pages had a page-specific Yoast meta description.
• The new site had 108 published pages.
• 98 live pages were using the same default description.

The rebuild had also changed the site’s information architecture, so a simple slug-to-slug migration would not cover everything.

Diagnosis

The first comparison focused on direct slug matches between the old and new sites.

Freshy found 41 current pages with matching old slugs. Of those:

• 29 live pages were still using the default description even though the old site had a specific description available.
• 4 matched pages already had the same specific description on both sites.

That confirmed the old metadata was recoverable, but it also showed that direct slug matching was not enough.

Because the rebuild had consolidated and renamed many URLs, Freshy then used the site’s redirect implementation sheet to build a broader old-to-new map.

That expanded review covered all 202 old published pages and produced:

• 123 rows matched to a current page through the redirect list.
• 6 rows matched on the same path.
• 1 row matched by direct slug only.
• 7 redirects that led to a non-page target or no current published page.
• 1 external redirect.
• 64 old rows with no match found.

From that broader mapping, 102 rows were identified as good restore candidates because the live destination was using the default description and the old page had a specific description available.

The important complication was that multiple old pages could now point to the same new destination. That made human review necessary before any database write.

Resolution steps

The documented restoration workflow was:

1. Inventory the old and new page metadata. Freshy compared published pages and their Yoast meta descriptions across both WordPress sites.
2. Start with direct slug matches. This produced an initial set of 29 straightforward restoration candidates.
3. Expand the mapping with the redirect sheet. The redirect plan from the rebuild was used to connect old URLs with their new destinations even when slugs had changed.
4. Create a client-review spreadsheet. The review sheet included old URLs, new URLs, current live descriptions, proposed descriptions, match methods, and notes.
5. Have the client approve the intended values. The final working sheet used color coding to indicate which descriptions should be kept and which should not be imported.
6. Reconnect BlogVault and take a backup. Before any live batch update, the site was properly reconnected to BlogVault and a fresh backup was created.
7. Capture a targeted rollback snapshot. Freshy also saved the current _yoast_wpseo_metadesc values for the pages being changed.
8. Run a five-page test batch first. Five live pages were updated and then manually reviewed before continuing.
9. Verify both Yoast storage locations. Freshy confirmed the new values were saved in:

_yoast_wpseo_metadesc

and in Yoast’s indexable description records.

10. Apply the remaining approved changes. After the five-page test was approved, Freshy updated 59 additional live pages.
11. Skip unmatched destinations. Six approved green rows still did not map to a current live page, so no database change was made for those entries.
12. Spot-check the completed batch. The final implementation was reviewed after the write and marked complete.

In total, the process updated 64 live pages: five in the initial test batch and 59 in the final batch.

Final outcome

The site recovered a substantial amount of page-specific SEO metadata that had been lost during the rebuild.

The final result was:

• 64 live pages updated with approved meta descriptions.
• All five test pages verified before the wider batch was applied.
• Yoast meta values confirmed in both page meta and indexable records.
• Six approved rows safely skipped because no current published page could be matched.
• A BlogVault backup and targeted rollback data captured before the live writes.

The broader lesson is that SEO metadata migrations should not rely on slugs alone when a redesign changes the site’s information architecture. Redirect maps can be extremely valuable for reconstructing old-to-new page relationships, but consolidated destinations still require editorial review before old descriptions are restored automatically.

For batch SEO work, a small live test, a current backup, and a targeted rollback export are also much safer than applying hundreds of database changes in one pass.

If your WordPress rebuild replaced unique Yoast meta descriptions with generic defaults, contact Freshy. Our WordPress team can map old URLs to the new site structure, prepare a reviewable migration plan, and restore approved SEO metadata without overwriting the wrong pages.