How to create XML sitemaps using RSSeo!
How to create XML sitemaps using RSSeo!
Sitemaps help search engines to better understand the website structure and also help crawlers easy discover fresh content.
RSSeo! allows you to generate 2 types of XML sitemaps:
- sitemap.xml - specific for Google search engine
- ror.xml - accepted by all search engines
First things first
Crawl the website:
The crawler will search and index all your website links.
- RSSeo! crawler can be found by going to Components > RSSeo! > Crawler
- start the crawler and wait for it to finish More information on the crawler can be found here
View crawled pages
The pages that were crawled can be found via Pages tab. Here you can manually add pages for inspection or automatically add them through the crawler.
The pages tab provides a general overview of your site's pages from a SEO point of view. You should check the pages and add / exclude the ones that you want or not to be added within the sitemap.
Enable canonicalization
Before submitting the sitemap to search engines, enable canonicalization to avoid errors in sitemap.
Canonicalization is active when a permanent redirect exists from mydomain.com to www.mydomain.com (or vice-versa), so when a user types in the browser the name of your site without www in the front, he will be redirected to the www version.
If canonicalization is not enabled, both versions of the site will be indexed with and without www, because search engines don't know which one to pick, decreasing your search engine rank.
Canonicalization can be enabled through the RSSeo! System Plugin. This plugin is explained here.
Possible errors
When you submit the Joomla! sitemap without enabling the canonicalization first, Webmasters Tools will display:
"Paths don't match: We've detected that you submitted your Sitemap using a URL path that doesn't include the www prefix."
In case you just did that, delete the submitted sitemap, enable canonicalization and add a new sitemap.
Two more things to do before generating xml Joomla! sitemap. In the backend Joomla! panel head to Components > RSSeo! > Sitemap. You must make sure that:
- You have created the xml file(s) (found in the root of your installation). If they are not created, RSSeo! will create them for you as seen in the right picture.
- Change the file permissions (make the files writeable, until you have completed generating the sitemap)
Now, you can click the "Generate Sitemap" button.
The sitemap is ready to be submitted to search engines and you can check them at:
- http://www.***.com/sitemap.xml
- http://www.***.com/ror.xml
How to create HTML sitemaps using RSSeo!
Sitemaps help search engines to better understand the website structure and also help crawlers easy discover fresh content. RSSeo! allows you to generate HTML sitemaps.
RSSeo! has a built-in HTML sitemap option. Just select the menu items that you wish to include or exclude from the sitemap and hit the "Generate" button.
Once the HTML sitemap has been generated, you can access it via RSSeo! HTML Sitemap menu item or by directly typing in the browser window the site address followed by index.php?option=com_rsseo
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