SEO / Permalink problem

[dok1810]

HI Team,

Over a year a go we launched the new website of our company https://bootuitjes.nl specialised in boat trips. From the beginnning we are running in an SEO problem.

When you search in google for a keyword connected with an specfic boat activity we rank with both the specific page and the homepage or sometimes just with the homepage. For example

Search for ‘borrelboot amsterdam’ you will find our homepage indead of https://bootuitjes.nl/borrelboot-amsterdam
search for ‘bbq boot amsterdam’ and you will find our homepage and the page https://bootuitjes.nl/bbq-boot-amsterdam

Being a marketer specialised in SEO it frustrated me as i should be able to get the right page to rank. The pages are optimised, we have internal and external linking and the homepage does not have the keywords.

A year later, we still have the problem. However, today i started with implementing breadcrumbs in the X Pro header and i found something odd.

The url of all ‘normall’ pages are fine. But the individual boat trip pages are made as ‘post’ and have a different structure in the breadcrumb then in the URL. To see the breadcrumbs you have to scroll down a bit,the menu will come down.
See example printscreen: http://prntscr.com/i17f9w
It looks like the homepage is mentioned as a page between the homepage and the individual blog post. If so, that might explain why the homepage is ranking on all the keywords.

When you take a look at the breadcrumbs on our test site https://test.bootuitjes.nl/bbq-boot-amsterdam/ it gets even more clear:
Example: http://prntscr.com/i17i29

Now my short question to a long story. What is going on and how can I solve this?

[christian]

Hey @dok1810,

Regarding SEO, the issue would be quite hard to investigate because the area spans more than the theme. X / Pro code is search engine optimized. There are users ranking well using X / Pro. For this matter, you will need to seek help from an SEO expert. I believe there are several of them in the X Users Facebook Group.

Regarding the breadcrumbs, this is what I see when going to your test page. The URLs are the same.

The random structure in the breadcrumbs linking to a page (in this case the home page) is a known issue. There is currently no solution for this so I recommend not using this for your posts for now. To do that, duplicate your current header and remove the breadcrumbs and assign the new header to your posts.

In case I missed or I didn’t understand something, please give us more details and also access to your WordPress admin in a Secure Note so we could check your setup.

Thanks.

[dok1810]

The long intro was just to tell you our problem and that I think the problem with the breadcrum could be a factor in the SEO problem.

The schema code shows that the homepage is mentioned twice instead of once, as you can see in the source code: http://prntscr.com/i1a6g0

I am also ranking first page with X theme. The problem is, i rank twice with different pages on the same keyword. Therefore i will never get 1st place.

Therefore I am looking into every possible possibility. So i hope solving the schema problem might solve the ranking problem.

[christopher]

Hi there,

The Breadcrumbs have an issue regarding the Portfolio Parent but not the post category. I am not sure why this is happening to you, would you please make sure that your categories all the posts to proper categories and test the case?

I think the none categories posts are the problem cause. But please consider that our Breadcrumbs element does not incorporate the Google Structured data yet, so the schema problem you have mentioned should have another cause and not related to the breadcrumbs.

Thank you.

[dok1810]

Hi, Thank you for your reply @christopher.amirian.

I used the test.bootuitjes.nl version to test your theory and eliminated all ‘non categories’. All posts are now connected to a categorie.

Also i disabled all other plugins and deleted all javascript funtions connected to functions of external organisation.

Still the same problem is happening: http://prntscr.com/i23er3

Your code keeps forsing a second mention of my homepage…

I tested it with the live and test version one of my other sites build with Pro:

Test environment: https://test.dokonline.nl/online-marketing-kennis/seo-blog-bericht/
Live environment: https://dokonline.nl/seo/seo-tips-testpagina/

It does not give a second mention of the homepage on the test environment, but it does do it on the live environment. So it is not unique to the bootuitjes site, but it does not happen everywhere. So what is the difference between one and the other?

Also, it only happens within the ‘posts’ section. When i add breadcrumbs with regular pages everything is fine.

Tnx for your reply

[christian]

Hey @dok1810,

The difference is you have a blog page in your test site https://test.dokonline.nl/blog/ and you don’t have one in your live site https://dokonline.nl/blog. Try setting up a blog page and let us know how it goes.

Thanks.

[dok1810]

Hi @christian_y.

Thank you for the reply. Ok that is a logic one haha. So that is fixed. But that does not solve the problem.

Because now the breadcrumb is: Home --> blog --> Post
Can it be fixed so it is Home --> category --> post ?

Tnx for the help.

[christian]

That is currently a limitation of the Breadcrumbs. I’ll add this as feature request. For now, this is not possible so you’ll need a breadcrumbs plugin with more options or have a developer build one for you.

Thanks.

[RPronk]

To be honest I am shoked with this. I hope this can be fixed soon, not nice for SEO.

@dok1810 Thanks for reporting this

[nabeel]

Thank you for understanding!