8 incorrect pages found in sitemap - Weird Squarespace issue

[mgcyvr]

A sitemap.xml file makes it easier for crawlers to discover the pages on your website. Only good pages intended for your visitors should be included in your sitemap.xml file.
This error is triggered if your sitemap.xml contains URLs leading to webpages with the same content. Populating your file with such URLs will confuse search engine robots as to which URL they should index and prioritize in search results. Most likely, search engines will index only one of those URLs, and this URL may not be the one you’d like to be promoted in search results.

The above text was directly from SEMrush.

This comes up as 8 ERRORS on my website, and I would like to know if this is possible to fix, or is this a Squarespace issue?

I’m not sure if I’m allowed to post my link but here’s to my website: https://www.markgcarter.com/sitemap.xml

My site audit rating is 88% and it seems like I can’t get it any higher because of what feel like Squarespace specific issues.

Thanks for your help.

[donboe]

Hi @mgcyvr. Welcome to the SP forum. It is not a problem to post a link to your website or better, in many cases it is desirable, so that other members can help you more easily.

About your question! Are those 8 pages not specified?

[mgcyvr]

Hey thanks for the quick response. I’m not sure what you mean by ‘not specified’.

[donboe]

@mgcyvr

I’m not sure what you mean by ‘not specified’.

I mean the 8 incorrect pages.

[mgcyvr]

Here is a screenshot of the SEMrush back office and the 8 pages

[donboe]

Mmm is there maybe some content te same on the different pages. I mean for example the title and/or description? I noticed that all pages have the same issue Non-canonical URL. Try to set a canonical URL for each page and see what happens. You set it like this:

<link rel="canonical" href="https://www.markgcarter.com/about/" />.

and the same for the other pages ofcource

[mgcyvr]

Thanks for the reply. I was looking into it, but what I believe I seen what it might be, is when I’m in my back office, that is a different url but same content.

I will have to find the article that I read about it, but that seemed like the reason, but as for the canonical urls, I’ve heard Squarespace doesn’t fair to them easily.

I’ll try it and get back to you though.

[mgcyvr]

Thanks for your reply.

SO I’ve tried a few things and unfortunately no luck. I think this is a Squarespace issue and how they do things. I also tried what you said, but also in Squarespace is a place called URL Mappings

Squarespace’s URL mappings allow you to change the location of certain URLs on your site. The rules will only be applied when no real mapping is found. Mappings below should be listed individually with one mapping per line in the format:

<original url> -> <new url> <redirect type>

Example:
/journal/[name] -> /blog/[name] 301

Where: <original url>

Refers to the original URL that a user would type into their browser on your site. Can contain [id] to refer numeric portions of the old url pattern or [name] to refer to name of the item.

<new url>

Refers to the new location for the original content on your site.

<redirect type>

Either a 301 or 302 redirect.

Which I tried to use the code like: /home -> / 301

But that did nothing as well.

SO I think after everything it is a Squarespace issue.

[TechnoBear]

I also know nothing about SquareSpace. Are you unable to edit the sitemap manually?

If the URLs for the duplicate content are static, you could set them to redirect to the “correct” URLs. If that’s not a possibility, do you have some mechanism to add “noindex” robots directives to those pages?

[mgcyvr]

Thanks for the reply. I’ve learned that unfortunately there’s not much one can do with the Squarespace sitemaps.

They are pretty locked in unfortunately. There’s not much flexibility like in Wordpress