- Google with a sitemap: 14 minutes
- Google without a sitemap: 1375 minutes
- Yahoo with a sitemap: 245 minutes
- Yahoo without a sitemap: 1773 minutes
Creating the Sitemap
- Step 1: Go to the Sitemaps section on Joomla.org.
- Step 2: Download one of these components: Joomap, XMap or SEF Service Map. They are all good solutions. Our how-to here will focus on XMap.
- Step 3: In your admininstrator area, go to Extensions >> Install / Uninstall and install Xmap via Joomla's installer.
- Step 4: Go to Components >> XMap. You should see a page with three tabs "Sitemaps", "CSS" and "Extensions" plus a layout like this:
- Step 5: Click "Add Menus" and select all the menus that you want search engines to find. Private menus shouldn't be included.
- Step 6: Click the "Options" tab in the top-right, then click "Preferences". A pop-up will appear.
- Step 7: You'll see a variety of different options for your sitemap. We recommend the following: "Include link to author: No" and also "Use Cache: Yes. Click Save.
Allowing Search Engines to Find Your Sitemap
- Step 8: From the XMap popup, take the URL from the "XML Sitemap" field. Copy and paste or save it into a text editor.
- Step 9: Login to your Google Webmaster Tools account: http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/
- Step 10: Click "Sitemaps" and enter the URL for your XML Sitemap. It might take several hours or evey days for Google to pick up this sitemap.
- Step 11: Go to https://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/submit and submit the same XML version of your sitemap.
- Step 11: Go back to the administrator area of your Joomla site.
- Step 12: 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 13: Click "New" and choose "XMap" and save. This will create a link to the HTML version of your sitemap.
