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Google won't recognise homepage, but other pages rank very high (muffin builder + seo problem?)

vuonlinevuonline
edited August 2016 in SEO
The website's url is kidsholidaytoys.com and the website was launched 6 months ago, yet it still struggles to rank for the search term "Kids Holiday Toys". The issue had our in house SEO expert tearing her hair out for the past 4 months, as we (the developers) have tried to work out if the problem is related to the code.

The page kidsholidaytoys.com/toyboxes ranks second in google for "Kids Holiday Toys" however the homepage is not appearing at all, after >4 months of seo work, this could only be the case if there is a problem with the homepage.

We have checked webmaster tools and there are no reported issues with the homepage. We have read about problems with BeTheme's built in SEO, so have tried turning that off completely in favour of Yoast, but it had no effect. Also, we have tried pressing the "Builder >> SEO" button in the homepage's content editor, with still no luck. The sitemap is correct.

We believe that google cannot 'see' the content on the homepage because BeTheme's built in muffin builder is putting the content so deep inside html elements that the search engines spider gives up. On the homepage, there are often >12 elements before you get to any relevant content.

Unfortunately, we are now at the point that if we cannot fix this problem in the next month we will have to redevelop the site without BeTheme and the muffin builder.

We really look forward to hearing your thoughts on this and thank you for your time considering this matter.

Laurence Pettitt and the rest of the team at VuOnline.

Comments

  • AlbertAlbert
    Hi,

    the problem you described above is completely unrelated to theme. And if your homepage does not rank well, you should contact with person who is responsible for SEO of your site because there is nothing we can do on our end.

    P.S. We checked your site of course and it is visible for Google bots of course so the problem is somewhere else.

    Thanks!
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  • vuonlinevuonline
    Hi there,

    Thank you for getting back to me so quickly, I understand what you are saying but do you not think it is strange that the 'toy-boxes' page ranks yet the homepage is completely invisible for a search term that is extremely relevant?

    Our SEO person is very good and has been doing this for a long time but she has no idea about why this is happening and has never seen or heard of anything like this before. Believe me, if there was a way we could have fixed this through seo expertise, we would have. A problem with the theme is the last thing we want as redevelopment time is expensive and is why we have tried for months to allow time for seo to get results, but the homepage has never showed anything.

    I would like to know how you are certain it is unrelated to the theme because, as far as I can see it is totally possible for it to be related to the theme, is it not?

    There seem to be other discussions online about BeTheme and Muffin builder having problems with Yoast: https://wordpress.org/support/topic/seo-yoast-plugin-doesnt-work-with-muffingroup-betheme



    Finally, I am glad you took the time to 'check it is visible to the search bots' and confirm our findings: as I said Google's webmaster tools does not flag up any issues with the site.

    I would really appreciate your help on solving this problem or at least finding the culprit as we have paid for this theme, we would really like to use it.

    Looking forward to hearing back you,

    Laurence
  • AlbertAlbert
    To be honest, we also have no idea what might be the reason as we did never met with anything similar so it's strange for us as well. We checked your site once again very carefully and didn't noticed anything wrong and really have no idea what might be the reason. You should probably speak with Google masters and try to ask them what might be the reason because we do not see anything wrong on our side and we are 1000% sure about this.

    Thanks for understanding!
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  • CatfaceCatface
    Hi Muffingroup. You mentioned speaking with "Google Masters"... Is it actually possible to contact Google regarding complex SEO issues like this? I've got a problem with one of my sites currently and would love to be able to get some advice directly from Google if it is possible?

  • AlbertAlbert
    @Catface We heard that some people got such contacts but we do not have any.
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  • ljcallanderljcallander
    @vuonline,

    Actually, what you are experiencing is about right.  For most sites, the home page is pretty general, and  the interior pages are more descriptive and speak to specific keywords better then the home page.  The home page can no longer do all the heavy lifting of the website for all your desired keywords, but it can do the job quite well for a few.  Remember, Google looks at the site as a whole, but ranks pages individually based on their relation to what GOOGLE thinks your keyword is for that page.

    If your interior pages (or landing pages) are ranking better then your home page - then well done!  Just make sure that those pages have some conversion techniques going on (lead capture, etc...).
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