Non-canonical pages listed in the sitemap - How to Fix?

Try this solution... 

@loylabel Hi there. You don't need to do anything regarding this. Just because Ahrefs (or any tool) labels something an issue, doesn't mean Google considers it an issue. If you search your brand name, you'll see your expected home page in search. Note, you might want to evaluate your blog URLs and implement some redirects there (currently /blog-3-1). Good luck! 

On 10/22/2023 at 7:19 AM, Sambob said:

Best approach (IMHO) is to work around it - think outside the square (No pun intended).

This works for me: https://viemedia/home

No system is perfect and no system will give thew user everything they need; and that comes from over a decade working on Drupal, Joomla, Wordpress*, and more recently SquareSpace.

From Google themselves.... possible solutions:

• Redirects: A strong signal that the target of the redirect should become canonical.
• rel="canonical" link annotations: A strong signal that the specified URL should become canonical.
• Sitemap inclusion: A weak signal that helps the URLs that are included in a sitemap become canonical.

The one stands out, for me,  is to do a redirect. BUT, as a redirect via SquareSpace is only possible for URL that don't exist, then a CDN is needed, I use Cloudflare and simply add a Rule for URL forwarding.

Simple. 

The second option is to add a rel="canonical" link to the Page Setting (Advanced), in Page Header Code Injection.
 

The answers are out there, you just need to ask Google, if the forum is not forthcoming 🙂 

Firing this subject up for 2024! 

@Sambob do you know how to do this? Or has anyone found anything that actually shows you step-by-step how to do this. I've found myself deep in youtube holes but 'just' need a visual step-by-step...type this here etc solution....seems it would be helping a lot of people out also being driven nuts by this 🫠

Example of my issue on my website:

Google search console/ScreamingFrog/Ahrefs show google isnt indexing: https://www.weemovers.co.uk/book-now/blackhorse-lane-childrens-classes  and is using https://www.weemovers.co.uk/book-now  as the canonical url. 

Attached is my screenshot from Ahrefs

Now March 2024 and still zero reply from Squarespace? To the people insisting this is fine, no, this is not fine.

Hi folks, I'm an SEO professional and this is how I solved this issue using Squarespace's URL mapping system. We had a number of "alternate" versions of a home page URL that were appearing in search results, so I created the URL maps to permanently redirect those locations: 

/index.html -> / 301
/home -> / 301

So now, mywebsite.com/index.html    -REDIRECTS TO->    mywebsite.com  
AND, mywebsite.com/home    -REDIRECTS TO->    mywebsite.com

Basically it works like this: In redirects systems, the forward slash by itself "/" equals the domain-homepage. So those URL maps above are taking the "alternate" versions of the homepage URL (mywebsite.com/index.html, mywebsite.com/home) and pushing them to the naked slash "/" aka the domain-homepage.

Hope that helps!

Hi all. Now that I am doing a site audit (after adding in some blogs and improving some content) the tool I am using came up with an issue reporting that my website got an error/warning because it's got a non-canonical pages in xml sitemap.

www.carlosazevedophotography.co.uk/home <- Apparently, the issue is with the /home.

The canonical, I guess good, is without.

The funny thing is that the /home is in the home page configuration setting and I can't delete it.

Does anyone knows how to get rid of this? TIA

I'm yet to know whether this has any long-term impact on my site https://www.goofles.com but I have used ChatGPT to evaluate the exported Ahrefs spreadsheet with non canonical links, and create no-index code for my category links. I'd assume that because Squarespace replaces these breadcrumbs with a /p/ anyway, it shouldnt affect the overall URL for each product page. Hope this helps someone.

<script type="text/javascript">
  if (
    window.location.href.indexOf("/shop/collaborations/goofles-x-lima") > -1 || 
    window.location.href.indexOf("/shop/print-type/vivid") > -1 || 
    window.location.href.indexOf("/shop/dog-breeds") > -1 || 
    window.location.href.indexOf("/shop/fit") > -1 || 
    window.location.href.indexOf("/shop/eco-friendly/sustainable") > -1 || 
    window.location.href.indexOf("/shop/materials/cotton") > -1 || 
    window.location.href.indexOf("/shop/apparel/unisex/t-shirts") > -1 || 
    window.location.href.indexOf("/shop/print-type/matte") > -1 || 
    window.location.href.indexOf("/shop/eco-friendly/organic") > -1 || 
    window.location.href.indexOf("/shop/accessories/hats") > -1 || 
    window.location.href.indexOf("/shop/apparel/womens/sweatshirts") > -1 || 
    window.location.href.indexOf("/shop/print-colour/blue") > -1 || 
    window.location.href.indexOf("/shop/dog-breeds/pomeranian") > -1 || 
    window.location.href.indexOf("/shop/dog-breeds/saint-bernard") > -1 || 
    window.location.href.indexOf("/shop/dog-breeds/golden-retriever") > -1 || 
    window.location.href.indexOf("/shop/dog-breeds/dalmatian") > -1 ||
    window.location.href.indexOf("/shop/dog-breeds/german-shepherd") > -1 ||
    window.location.href.indexOf("/shop/dog-breeds/cocker-spaniel") > -1 ||
    window.location.href.indexOf("/shop/apparel/unisex/hoodies") > -1 ||
    window.location.href.indexOf("/shop/dog-breeds/scottish-terrier") > -1
    ) {
    var meta = document.createElement('meta');
    meta.name = "robots";
    meta.content = "noindex";
    document.getElementsByTagName('head')[0].appendChild(meta);
  }
</script>
 

On 3/21/2024 at 10:24 AM, BlueSwitch said:

Hi folks, I'm an SEO professional and this is how I solved this issue using Squarespace's URL mapping system. We had a number of "alternate" versions of a home page URL that were appearing in search results, so I created the URL maps to permanently redirect those locations: 

/index.html -> / 301
/home -> / 301

So now, mywebsite.com/index.html    -REDIRECTS TO->    mywebsite.com  
AND, mywebsite.com/home    -REDIRECTS TO->    mywebsite.com

Basically it works like this: In redirects systems, the forward slash by itself "/" equals the domain-homepage. So those URL maps above are taking the "alternate" versions of the homepage URL (mywebsite.com/index.html, mywebsite.com/home) and pushing them to the naked slash "/" aka the domain-homepage.

Hope that helps!

Quick question: where exactly did you add this? Im VERY green when it comes to SEO and we are seeing this in arehfs. That said, our google console doesnt seem to flag it. But Im tasked with fixing this. Thanks.