First, do you need a sitemap?
A sitemap is a file where you provide structured information intended for web crawlers such as search engines. You might need a sitemap if your site is complex and/or multilingual. You might not need a sitemap if you have a small site, (Google say less than 500 pages), or if your site content is comprehensively linked from menus, or if you don't have videos, images or news pages that you'd like to appear in search results.
But if you do need or want a sitemap for Joomla, it is a simple task to add a sitemap to Joomla..
TL:DR: If you do, just Download OSMap from Joomlashack, it is free, although there is a Pro version should you need it.
Contents
So, if you do need a sitemap component for Joomla, here's what to do
You'll need to provide an email address to receive the link to the component. Once you've downloaded it:-
- Open Joomla Admin
- Go to Extensions : Install
- Choose 'Upload Package File'
- Browse for the zip file you downloaded
- Select it
- Wait for confirmation
- Go to Components : OSMap Free
- You should see links to XML (a structured format for google), HTML (a readable page for people), News (for Google News) and images (for images).
- Go to Menus : Choose a menu position, I chose the bottom menu.
- Choose Bottom Menu : Add new menu item
- Choose OSMap : HTML sitemap,
- Then save and close
- Have a look at your new html sitemap by clicking the menu item on the front end of your site.
My html sitemap is now visible
It is updated automatically, so theres nothing to manage but you need to tell Google (or other search engines) about it.
- Go to Components : OSMap Free
- Click the link to the XML sitemap
- Copy the link to this page
https://www.ezone.co.uk/component/osmap/?view=xml&id=1&format=xml
- Go to Google Search Console : Sitemaps
- Paste the link to your sitemap, and click 'Got It'
- Wait a few seconds and check for sitemap processed successfully
- Check to ensure Google can read your sitemap, this may take a while, and you may have to refresh your page to see the green success message.
See also
https://developers.google.com/search/docs/crawling-indexing/sitemaps/overview
https://www.joomlashack.com/docs/osmap/
