Display Yoast WordPress SEO title in archive template

The WordPress SEO plugin by Yoast allows users to add SEO titles and meta descriptions to taxonomy term archive pages. These are then used in the head of the document.

I´m trying to display the SEO title of taxonomy terms as an H1 in my taxonomy archive template.

To do this in a post, post type or page is easy:

echo get_post_meta($post->ID, '_yoast_wpseo_title', true); 

On archive templates this doesn´t work.

Does anyone know how to get this to work?

Screenshot example

This is the title of a specific tag term. I´m trying to display this title – but then for a custom taxonomy term – in my archive templates.

Final code

This is what I ended up using in my archive.php template. It works if you´re using a custom taxonomy. For tags or categories have a look at Mike Madern´s answer below.

<h1 class="archive-title">
<?php
if ( is_tax() ) :                                                                   
    $taxonomy = get_queried_object()->taxonomy;
    $term_id = get_queried_object()->term_id;
    $meta   = get_option( 'wpseo_taxonomy_meta' );
    $title  = $meta[$taxonomy][$term_id]['wpseo_title'];
    //printf( '<pre>%s</pre>', print_r( get_option( 'wpseo_taxonomy_meta' ), 1 ) );
    if ( isset($meta) && !empty($title) ) :         
        echo apply_filters( 'the_title', $title );
    else :
        single_term_title();    
    endif;
endif;                              
?>
</h1>  

Get Archive SEO titles

If you defined a Custom Post Type archive title you can get that by:

$titles = get_option( 'wpseo_titles' );
$title  = $titles['title-ptarchive-POST_TYPE'];

echo apply_filters( 'the_title', $title );

Remember to replace POST_TYPE by your own Custom Post Type.

To display all the wpseo_title variables, you can use:

printf( '<pre>%s</pre>', print_r( get_option( 'wpseo_titles' ), 1 ) );

So you can easily pick the one you need.

Get Term SEO titles

Categories

By using this code you can get the SEO title you defined:

$cat_id = get_query_var( 'cat' );
$meta   = get_option( 'wpseo_taxonomy_meta' );

$title  = $meta['category'][$cat_id]['wpseo_title'];

echo apply_filters( 'the_title', $title );

Tags

By using this code you can get the SEO title you defined:

$tag_id = get_query_var( 'tag' );
$meta   = get_option( 'wpseo_taxonomy_meta' );

$title  = $meta['post_tag'][$tag_id]['wpseo_title'];

echo apply_filters( 'the_title', $title );

To display all wpseo_taxonomy_meta variables, you can use:

printf( '<pre>%s</pre>', print_r( get_option( 'wpseo_taxonomy_meta' ), 1 ) );

This way you can see the structure and available variables.