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. If provides both the end user and the search engine spider / crawler 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 Open Source CMS is the fact that you can download and install a number of different Sitemap components which once configured will automatically  display and update the contents of your web site to both your visitors and spiders/bots via a site map.

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 and meta descriptions clearly reflect the contents of your individual page contents as this will help both your visitor and the Bots understand what each document contained in your web site is about and index, rank it accordingly.

Where can I download a sitemap component :

A number of very good sitemap components have being developed and released for Joomla which you can install via the 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. This is the component we currently use for Joomlaseo web site. For more information click Joomap

samSiteMap

Component creates complex document trees and/or content lists for your website. samSiteMap can be used to create a full site Index (sitemap) or independent pages with narrower maps/lists of content for various areas of your website. Pages are dynamic, and will find all standard Joomla content that descends from any included template positions, menus, or menu items. Can be configured to automatically include/exclude all standard Joomla content. For more information click samSiteMap.