Sitemap

[valinax]

Hello,
For a reason too long to explain I've been asked to create a sitemap of a joomla website that has to be different from the menu>categories>articles structure existing on the website.

If I create one manually, will it work for search engine?
Will google index the website reading the sitemap or from categories and articles structure?

Thanks

[waarnemer]

well you are free to go as a sitemap only needs the public accessible URLS..

there is no exact need to have it according to your navigational structure.. but it sure does help.. as that is sort of how bots index your site without a sitemap.

a sitemap generator therefore usually follows your structure.. (and probably it is easier to do such a scan, either online or from database)

[Webdongle]

Different in what way? only list Articles that don't have menu items?
Or a non xml sitemap that displays on the site but displays in alphabetical order without the category it is in?
Please be more specific of your needs

[valinax]

Hi, Thank you all for your answers.
I guess what I really need to know is;
Will google read and store a joomla website following first what it can read from the 'only-text' version, from the XML sitemap or from how categories and articles are structured?

Probably I don't have a clear idea of how the bots work on joomla website

Thanks again for your help

[Webdongle]

afaik search engine spiders use the site map to crawl the site. If you have no site map they are more likely to miss things. So creating a sitemap of all your links is probably best. But what does seo really mater?

[waarnemer]

If you DO have a sitemap and you submit it to Google Search Console (account needed) you will most likely get indexed a bit faster and more precise. That is google.. others may have other means.

If you DONOT have a sitemap, eventually your site will be crawled at a random pace and maybe not all at a time. But eventually you will be crawled and indexed.

Both will happen.. if you do not specifically disallow a url and it is not in your sitemap, it will eventually be indexed also.

Google tends to act as "human" as possible. Meaning a sitemap does something but not all. Google will still look at the content and how content is made visible. It will still check if a url in a sitemap is available through a navigation structure used by a human to decide on a ranking. Same for content. Content that is below the fold (you have to scoll to see) is ranking lower than content that immediately is visible.

Then there is relevance.. is your content relevant to the audience... relevance is not the same as unique.

Also ranking is of no issue if you are addressing just a select audience. IE. my site on "the se(x)ual life of an ancient ant in southern antarctica" will never rank top number one with the huge crowd... but there is a niche audience that will have it rank high... while a news site like CNN will rank top usually on every crowd.

But for ranking on the web.. consider it like this

there is sitemap 1%
there is code 1%
there is human readable, relevant and accessible CONTENT.... 98%

[roshanwebexpert]

You can take help from google, create sitemap with the help pf google rather than manually. It will be much better.

[Webdongle]

A dynamic sitemap created by an extension is by far the best and easiest.