Minimum Pro & Yoast SEO Issues

[sdbroker]

I just redesigned my site with Minimum Pro and also started using the Yoast SEO plugin. I love both but I believe that there are some issues with Yoast SEO and Minimum Pro or other similar themes.

1. If I use the Front Page as it is defaulted with the latest posts, Yoast SEO cannot see it and although I see on the source code that it recognizes it as content="website" with the correct title and meta description that I have on the default home page settings, it will not see it on the SEO help suggestions and it will NOT add the site's url to the XML sitemap it sends to Google. As a result, Google indexes all the pages and posts of the website but NOT the home page. Instead Google has on its index the old home page with the old theme.

2. If I use the Front Page as a static page and create a "home" page to add the content and some widgets to display on the front page, the Yoast SEO correctly recognizes it as the front page of the site, redirects it to the main site url and it will allow me to do the normal SEO as any other page. It also includes the site url in the XML site map that sends to Google.
However, using a static page as the front page, when I look at the site's source code Yoast SEO sees the front page as content="article" NOT as website. In addition it adds a third RSS feed on the front page as well as to ALL other pages called "page comments feed".

Any suggestions on what's the best way to do this right (static or latest posts), so the main site is included on the XML site map, be able to see the content as website on the source code and not as article and also get rid off the additional page comments feed on every single page?

Thank you,
George

[workky]

George, what is your URL?

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life’s tough, it’s a lot tougher if you’re stupid
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[upsurf]

Did you ever get a solution for this issue?

I'm using the minimum theme and have just noticed that google is indexing my homepage as a post (showing the date of my last blog post back in early dec) and the homepage is not ranking as well as I'd expect (other static pages are showing up higher than the homepage on keywords they aren't even optimised for and that the homepage is).

This makes me think I need to change my homepage to a static page which I would gladly too except that means I lose the ability to use all the homepage widgets that I've got looking as I want them.

Would love to find out how I can change the homepage to a static page but keep it looking as it is with the widgets intact?

I've had a hunt through the forum and it appears a lot of people have had the same problem but may be describing it differently.

[sdbroker]

The solution that I found is to NOT use Yoast's sitemap but use the Google sitemaps instead that allows for the homepage to be included.

Another reason for the homepage not ranking as well is that unfortunately ALL Genesis child themes use <H4> tags instead of <H1> or <H2> on the front page's headlines when you use the widget's title, which is bad for SEO. Just look at the H-tag on any child theme's front page headline. I'm hoping that someone will address this issue on a future Genesis update. Easiest way to fix this for now is to NOT use the widget's title (on text widgets) and use the H-tag on the text content... OR you can hard code the title H-tags on the widgets at the functions.php file when you register them.

You can use a static page as a front page and still have the site tagline and the home-featured widgets as long as you enter some there. The static page content will be where the blog posts are on the demo. At least that's what happened when I tried it.

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