Sitemap question

[Aftermath_SEO]

My sitemap includes www.example.com and www.example.com/index.html, they are both the same page, will this have any negative effects, or can I remove the www.example.com/index.html?

[NickPateman81]

Sounds like you need to sort out a canonical URL issue.

In your .htaccess file, redirect /index.html to www.example.com. It's easy to 301 it but you may also have non-www and www issues. If you're not sure what I'm talking about, check out that link above and it might make it all clear.

This should stop the XML sitemap generating the two pages.