One Page Websites - Duplicate Page issues + XML sitemap

[bailey_t]

I am working on an apartment community's website and it is a one-pager. Each section of the website (floorplans, amenities, neighborhood,etc) has a slug and is indexed by Google (I found the pages when I site: searched them on Google). When I run the site through ahrefs every 'page' on the site comes up as "Duplicate pages without canonical", I assume this is because each URL takes users to the same one-page site so search engines are seeing it as the same content being duplicated. Should the canonical for each page be the base URL ? or should the canonical for each 'page' be the URL with the slug?

Also, what is the best SEO practice for XML sitemaps for one-page websites? Should the XML sitemap ONLY include the base URL?

here is an example of a site that is similar to the clients:

https://www.canvasonblake.com/canvas-on-blake-denver-co/contact

 

[CarrieHill]

1 - Ahrefs is not Google - so even though it shows an error in Ahrefs - if Google is showing the anchor link (slug) as a result, and you're getting impressions & traffic to those URLs, you're not really doing anything wrong. Check your URLs in Search Console to see if the slugs are getting visibility and clicks. In this case, I think Ahrefs is just seeing multiple URLs showing the same content - they don't look at "sections" of pages like Google says they do (this is evidenced by the way they rank "content" in a featured snippet vs an entire page as result 1)

I've not run into this before as we don't deal with many one-page websites - but you technically could canonical to the base URL for that "page" - I'm not sure if it will do much for your ranking/leads/conversions. I'd test it to see if it improves your results - but watch it closely. FWIW, we use jump links on many pages for SEO and usability purposes and don't worry about canonical setups and have very good results with this strategy.

2 - Jumplinks or "anchor" links should not be in your XML sitemap - just include your base URL

Hope this helps!