Tutorial: Learn how to fix the incorrect pages found in sitemap.xml SEMrush Site Audit error now! 🔧
This Custom Web App Development and Technical SEO tutorial provides specific instructions regarding how to fix the incorrect pages found in sitemap.xml SEMrush Site Audit error for WordPress websites that are using both the OceanWP Theme as well as the All In One SEO plugin (AIOSEO).
This error, if left unaddressed, will probably have no significant impact on SEO performance however in my opinion if this file doesn’t belong in the sitemap then we should remove it.
Incorrect pages found in sitemap.xml TOC
If you’re here because you don’t need these files to be included in the parent sitemap file and would like to correct this SEMrush Site Audit error, then keep reading.
This post was updated on May 13, 2025.
Instructions regarding how to fix the incorrect pages found in sitemap.xml SEMrush error
In this section we’ll cover the preconditions required for the SEMrush error regarding two incorrect pages found in sitemap.xml that were discovered on this website along with the steps required to remedy this issue successfully.
Preconditions
This guide covers a very specific problem involving very specific technologies so if you do not have the following preconditions then the solution below may not be helpful.
With that said the following technologies are required for this tutorial:
Let’s take a look at the first step and that has to do with diagnosing the problem.
Step One: Spotting the “incorrect pages found in sitemaps.xml” error in the SEMrush Site Audit Report.
This error can be found under general errors section in the SEMrush site audit report and includes the “Incorrect pages found in sitemap.xml” text as we can see in the image below.
When we click on the “Incorrect pages found in sitemap xml” error we’ll see something like the description in the image below — these sitemap files are being included by AIOSEO.
Refer to the SEMrush Site Audit report issues section below — these are templates and we don’t need to submit these to any search engines for indexing.
In the following image we can see that the sitemap has been included in the parent sitemap.xml file for this website.
We don’t need these sitemaps to be included with the parent sitemap so we can remove these.
Step Two: Untick the AIOSEO “My Library” post type setting.
Locate the “My Library” posts type option under the AIOSEO Sitemaps, General Sitemaps, Sitemap Settings and untick this option.
In the image above we can see that the “My Library” option has been ticked and below we can see that it should be unticked.
Make sure to click on the Save Changes button after making this change.
Step Three: Rerun the SEMrush Site Audit Campaign.
We need to now execute a new SEMrush Site Audit — we do this by clicking on the Rerun Campaign button.
Step Four: Verify that the incorrect pages found in sitemap.xml error has been addressed.
Once the SEMrush Site Audit has completed and the report has been updated, we should see an improvement in the number of errors.
Upon closer inspection we can see that the incorrect pages found in the sitemap xml file are now no longer present in the report.
We can also see that there are zero incorrect pages found in sitemap.xml errors.
Finally, we can see that the sitemap.xml file no longer includes the oceanwp_library-sitemap.xml file, which is the expected result.
Step Five: Verify that your WordPress Website is functioning correctly.
I recommend checking that your WordPress website is functioning correctly after making these changes and this includes keeping an eye on your SEO performance.
One important issue that comes to mind is that your list of sitemaps may differ from my list, in particular if your installation uses different plugins — if an important sitemap is removed from your library then it could impact your performance in SERPs.
Tutorial Conclusion
By following the steps outlined in this tutorial, I hope that you can quickly and effectively resolve the “incorrect pages found in sitemap.xml” error, thereby ensuring that your website’s SEO performance is optimized and that search engines can accurately index your content.
See Also
- What are OGP Tags? Find out here.
- Learn how to find question keyword phrases your articles are already ranking for here.
- Learn how to fix the Duplicate, Google chose different canonical than user issue that appears in the page indexing report in the Google Search Console.
