A Joomla sitemap is very important for your site's search engine optimization. A good Joomla sitemap won't help you rank more highly. To rank highly you will need on-page optimation and more inbound links from other sites.

However, a Joomla sitemap will still be enormously helpful for your SEO. A Joomla sitemap will help Google, Bing and other search engines find and understand your site's content.

In this tutorial, I'll show you how to set up a Joomla sitemap and submit it to Google's Search Console. We recommend the OSMap Joomla Sitemap extension. OSMap is one of the most popular and frequently used extensions in Joomla. Check out OSMap's sitemap listing on Joomla.org.

Video introduction to OSMap

Step-by-step guide to OSMap

  • Step 1: Go to the OSMap Joomla Sitemap landing page.
  • Step 2: Download either the Free version or the pro version. Our tutorial will focus on the Free version. You'll get a file to your desktop with a name like this: com_osmap_free_4.2.18.zip
  • Step 3: Go to your Joomla site. In your administrator area, go to Extensions >> Manage >> Install and install OSMap via Joomla's installer.

installing a joomla sitemap

  • Step 4: Go to Components > OSMap. You should see a page with two side menu item "Sitemaps" and "Extensions".

using a joomla sitemap

  • Step 5: Click "Default Sitemap" and select all the menus that you want search engines to find. Private menus shouldn't be included. Click "Save & Close" when done.

creating a joomla sitemap

  • Step 6: Click the "Extension" side menu item on the left, then click on "OSMap - Joomla Content".

joomla sitemap plugins

  • Step 7: You'll see a variety of different options for your sitemap. We recommend leaving the defaults, but you can adjust the settings as you like them.

joomla sitemap options

Allowing Search Engines to Find Your Joomla Sitemap

This step will allow Google to easily find and index your Joomla sitemap. We'll take the XML version of the sitemap and add it to Google Search Console. Before you start this section, you will need a Google account.

  • Step 8: Go to Components >> OSMap. Under the "Sitemap Links" section, right-click on "XML" link and select "Copy link location" (or similarly named).

xml sitemap for joomla

Don't worry if this version of your Joomla sitemap is hard to read. The XML version of your Joomla sitemap is only for Google's bot. Here's an image of the Joomla sitemap for this site:

joomla training sitemap

  • Step 9: Login to your Google Search Console account.
  • Step 10: Click "Sitemaps" and enter the URL for your XML Sitemap. It might take several hours or even days for Google to pick up this sitemap.
  • Step 11: Edit your site's robots.txt file and insert "sitemap: [absoluteURL]" on a new line, replacing [absoluteURL] with your copied URL form Step 8. Save and close.

Allowing Visitors to See Your Joomla Sitemap

In this final section, we'll take the HTML version of your Joomla sitemap and present it to visitors in a way that's easy to read. We'll make a menu link to the HTML version of the sitemap.

  • Step 12: Go back to the administrator area of your Joomla site.
  • Step 13: Go to Menus and find the menu that appears at the bottom of your Joomla template. Often this will be in "Footer" position and contains your copyright information, privacy policy etc.
  • Step 15: Click "New" and choose "OSMap >> Sitemap - HTML Format" and save. This will create a link to the HTML version of your sitemap.

menu link for joomla sitemap

  • Visit your sitemap on the front your site. You will now have a Joomla sitemap that your visitors will find useful:

html joomla sitemap

Other Types of Joomla Sitemap

A Joomla sitemap isn't just for content. OSMap creates a sitemap for your articles. However, OSMap makes it possible to provide sitemaps for specific types of information, including images and news: