How does a sitemap affect the definition of canonical URLs?

[emilyburns]

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!

[SarahGoliger]

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.

[KeriMorgret]

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.

[emilyburns]

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