If you’re like me, you don’t do much for SEO on your site. If you’re a better marketer than me and also have tools that you use for SEO, you probably don’t use the built-in SEO tools with the Genesis Theme Framework.

The tools do their job and are already there if you want to use them, but they can be limiting, as well as duplicate work being done with any other SEO plugin that you may be using. You can choose not to use them, but they still take up some valuable space in your dashboard and while editing pages, and they can be a bit confusing if you’re handing the site off to someone else to manage.

Removing the Genesis SEO Settings

One of the many great things about Genesis is that it allows you to easily modify or remove various portions of it without having to directly edit the core files of the theme. This allows you to modify your child theme only, so that if you ever switch child themes or Genesis updates, your changes won’t break.

Place the following code in your functions.php file, or another file that loads on the dashboard.

// Remove Genesis SEO settings from post/page editor
remove_action( 'admin_menu', 'genesis_add_inpost_seo_box' );

// Remove Genesis SEO settings option page
remove_theme_support( 'genesis-seo-settings-menu' );

// Remove Genesis SEO settings from taxonomy editor
remove_action( 'admin_init', 'genesis_add_taxonomy_seo_options' );Code language: PHP (php)

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The first line of code removes the SEO metabox in posts/pages/custom post types. The post editor is already looking cleaner!

The second line of code removes the SEO settings menu from the left sidebar in the dashboard. If we’re not using it at all, no reason to have the settings page!

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Finally, the last line of code removes the SEO settings from taxonomies. That means that you won’t be able to access them on categories, tags, or any other custom taxonomies on the site.

And with that, we’re done! Three lines of code (plus a bit of spacing and comments to make it easier to read and remember what we did that for later), and we’ve removed access to the Genesis SEO settings. Again, this isn’t a knock on Genesis, but simply a way to clean up your site a bit if you’ve already invested in another SEO tool for WordPress.

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