In this topic we will cover the importance of including a sitemap within your Joomla web site.

What is a sitemap

A sitemap is a collection of hyperlinks that outlines and defines the website's overall structure.

It provides both the end user and the search engine spider with the opportunity to navigate or index your web site more efficiently.

Why is a sitemap important for my Joomla web site

One of the advantages of running the Joomla! Content management system is the fact that you can download and install a number of different Sitemap components which once configured will automatically display the contents of your web site in a site map format to both your visitors and search engine spiders.

A sitemap plays an important role in terms of web site navigation and search engine optimization ( SEO ) as it enables the spider to crawl your site more efficiently plus it provides them with a clear overview to the content's of your web site.

Google has indorsed the need for including a sitemap on your web site and has introduced an option called Google Sitemaps "which is an easy way for you to help improve your coverage in the Google index".

Please note before creating a sitemap make sure your page titles, meta descriptions and SEF search engine friendly URLs clearly reflect the contents of your individual page contents as this will help both your visitors and the search engines to understand what each document contained in your web site is about and index, rank it accordingly.

Where can I download a sitemap component for Joomla!

A number of very good sitemap components have being developed and released for Joomla 1.5 which you can install and setup via the Joomla 1.5 administrator console.

Google Sitemap Generator

The Google site map generator component for Joomla is a component which will automatically generate an XML sitemap file of your web site which you can submit to the Google sitemap web site. For more information click Google sitemap generator.

Joomap

Joomap (formerly "Mambo Map") is a sitemap component for Joomla. Besides the normal Menu Structure, Content Categories and Sections it also supports Php Shop Categories. For more information click Joomap

XMAP

Xmap is a Joomla! component which generates a sitemap based on the strcuture of your menu items. Xmap is very easy to install and setup plus includes a number of useful configuration options plus support for a number of popular 3rd party components including DOCman, VirtueMart, Fireboard, Hot Property, Mosets Tree and more.  For more information click Xmap component