How does a sitemap affect the definition of canonical URLs?
-
We are having some difficulty generating a sitemap that includes our SEO-friendly URLs (the ones we want to set as canonical), and I was wondering if we might be able to simply use the non-SEO-friendly, non-canonical URLs that the sitemap generator has been producing and then use 301 redirects to send them to the canonical. Is there a reason why we should not be doing this? We don't want search engines to think that the sitemap URLs are more important than the pages to which they redirect.
How important is it that the sitemap URLs match the canonical URLs? We would like to find a solution outside of the generation of the sitemap itself as we are locked into using a vendor’s product in order to generate the sitemap.
Thanks!
-
Thank you for your responses.
We use Endeca, but while they have a site map generator, for whatever reason they are unable to produce URLs that match our new SEO-friendly vanity URLs. Right now we've had no site map for months, as we're waiting to try and find a solution to this problem.
From what I'm gathering, this is the right approach? As in, it would do more harm than good to upload a "bad" sitemap. Yes?
Also, there seems to be no way to get around this with a clever redirect scheme. Am I right in this also?
In which case, it may boil down to choosing between an accurate sitemap and SEO'd URLs. Not sure which would be more important.
Website's here, if that's useful: www.pli.edu
-
Bing has said that anything over 1% of bad URLs in a sitemap constitutes a dirty sitemap to them, so yes, it is very important.
Are you able to share the system that you're using? Others may have experience in working around this already.
-
It's extremely important the sitemap URLs match the canonical URLs that people arrive at. If they do not match the search engine will consider the sitemap "dirty" and not valuable as it is not accurate to the actual layout of the website.
Essentially, the search engines consider a sitemap URL that does not return an HTTP 200 status a bad URL and reject the sitemap. This is absolutely something that you should work to correct.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Having Problems to Index all URLs on Sitemap
Hi all again ! Thanks in advance ! My client's site is having problems to index all its pages. I even bought the full extension of XML Sitemaps and the number of urls increased, but we still have problems to index all of them. What are the reasons? The robots.txt is open for all robots, we only prohibit users and spiders to enter our Intranet. I've read that duplicate content and 404's can be the reason. Anything else?
Technical SEO | | Tintanus0 -
Does rel="canonical" support protocol relative URL?
I need to switch a site from http to https. We gonna add 301 redirect all over the board. I also use rel="canonical" to strip some queries parameter from the index (parameter uses to identify which navigation elements were use.) rel="canonical" can be used with relative or absolute links, but Google recommend using absolute links to minimize potential confusion or difficulties. So here my question, did you see any issue using relative protocol in rel="canonical"? Instead of:
Technical SEO | | EquipeWeb0 -
Question about creating friendly URLs
I am working on creating new SEO friendly URLs for my company website. The products are the items with the highest search volume and each is very geo-specific
Technical SEO | | theLotter
There is not a high search volume for the geo-location associated with the product, but the searches we do get convert well. Do you think it is preferable to leave the location out of the URL or include it?0 -
Marketing URL
Hi, I need a bit of advice on marketing URL's. The destinations URL is http://www.website.com/by-development.php?area=Isle Of Wight&development=developmentname. If we wanted to use www.website.com/developmentname on literature to send people to the ugly URL above, what would we do? Would we need to rewrite the ugly URL to the neat and then 301 the ugly to the neat? Currently, the team are using a new domain of neatandrelevant.info and 301 redirecting it to ugly URL but there are lots of different developments they want to send people to so a new domain is bought for each development which seems a bit unnecessary. They point to different pages on the ugly URL website. Assuming canonical tag would not be needed then because the ugly URL page would be redirected. Also, as the website has ugly URL's anyway, would it not be best practice to use rewrites anyway so that the URL's read www.mywebsite.com/region/development? Would it confuse things to then have extra short marketing URL's missing out /region? Hope that makes sense....
Technical SEO | | Houses0 -
Long URL
I am using seomoz software as a trial, it has crawled my site and a report is telling me that the URL for my forum is to long: <dl> <dt>Title</dt> <dd>Healthy Living Community</dd> <dt>Meta Description</dt> <dd>Healthy life discussion forum chatting about all aspects of healthy living including nutrition, fitness, motivation and much more.</dd> <dt>Meta Robots</dt> <dd>noodp, noydir</dd> <dt>Meta Refresh</dt> <dd>Not present/empty</dd> <dd> 1 Warning Long URL (> 115 characters) Found about 17 hours ago <dl> <dt>Number of characters</dt> <dd>135 (over by 21)</dd> <dt>Description</dt> <dd>A good URL is descriptive and concise. Although not a high priority, we recommend a URL that is shorter than 75 characters.</dd> </dl> </dd> <dd> URL: http://www.goodhealthword.com/forum/reprogramming-health/welcome-to-the-forum-for-discussing-the-4-steps-for-reprogramming-ones-health/ The problem is when I check the page via edit or in the admin section of wordpress, the url is a s follows: http://www.goodhealthword.com/forum/ My question is where is I cannot see where this long url is located, it appears to be a valid page but I cant find it. Thanks Pete </dd> </dl>
Technical SEO | | petemarko0 -
Do I have a canonical problem?
Does this site www.davidclick.com have a canonical problem because the home page can be requested via 3 different urls http://www.davidclick.com/
Technical SEO | | Nightwing
http://davidclick.com/
http://www.davidclick.com/index.htm but I'm confused in terms of applying a fix for example all advice here http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=139066#1 says i need to identify the duplicate files and add So my question is please if I do have a canonical problem how can i fix it when I only have one file for my home page, there are no duplicates 😞 Any insights welcome 🙂0 -
Rel=canonical issue
Re. http://www.appetise.com. We have been alerted that we are "not making appropriate use of the rel=canonical tag". Please could someone just clarify this for us and let us know the recommended remedial action we need to take to rectify the issue? Many Thanks, RB
Technical SEO | | E-resistible0 -
Is there actual risk to having multiple URLs that frame in main url? Or is it just bad form and waste of money?
Client has many urls that just frame in the main site. It seems like a total waste of money, but if they are frames, is there an actual risk?
Technical SEO | | gravityseo0