Subscribe to this feed July 12, 2007

Typo3 CMS SEO (Part 10): Site Maps

Part ten of a ten part series: Typo3 SEO

Well, finally, we've come to part ten: site maps with Typo3. I feel that I could just keep going because there are still a lot of search engine factors to consider. Although I think I'll stop for now - because if I haven't made my point by now, then I probably never will! I hope I've demonstrated that Typo3 is your CMS of choice when it comes to SEO - because it's capable of easily accomodating any SEO requirement - unlike most CMS's today.

The final SEO factor that I'd like to consider in this final article is how to generate textual and XML sitemaps with Typo3 - quickly and efficiently. Here's how.

Generating Textual Sitemaps with Typo3

Textual sitemaps are important when it comes to SEO because you want to make sure that search engine robots have a clear understanding of your site architecture. And they're a built-in part of Typo3. You should link to your sitemap from your homepage at least, because your homepage is the first page to be indexed. Here's how with Typo3:

  1. Create a new page, and call it "sitemap"
  2. On this page, create a new content element, with the content type: "sitemap"
  3. Under menu type, select "sitemap"
  4. For starting point, select the root of your website.

That's it! The built-in content element will generate a simple text-based sitemap, corresponding to the non-hidden pages on your site, found here.

Simple.

Generating XML Sitemaps with Typo3

Next, for SEO purposes, you'll want to publish an XML version of your sitemap to http://www.google.com/webmaster or to https://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/mysites. For this, you'll want to download and install the mc_googlesitemap extension, which you can install in seconds:

Once installed, do the following:

  1. Create a new page, and call it "Google Sitemap" (or whatever) and make sure that the page is hidden from the menu (under page properties)
  2. On this page, create a new content element, with the content type: "sitemap"
  3. Under menu type, select "Google Sitemap for Pages"
  4. For starting point, select the root of your website.

That's it. The Google Sitemap extension will generate a Google/Yahoo compliant XML sitemap, which, in my case, is published (and always updated) here: 

www.dawsoninteractive.com/google-sitemap

The above link, BTW, is what I would submit to Google or Yahoo or whatever search engine.

And here's a sample of the XML output: 

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<urlset xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9">
 <url>
  <loc>http://www.dawsoninteractive.com/</loc>
  <lastmod>2007-07-11</lastmod>
 </url>
</urlset>

Again, too simple.

<- Back to: Articles
3 Comments
#3 Daniel Watts wrote at 1:36 pm, January 15, 2008 GMT answer homepage

John,

Thank you for the quick response and great information!

The problem I am having is actually not with RealURL but my sitemaps. URLs are generated just as expected; however, my site map will not generate entried from News and Blog pages.

I know this is possible by implementing Google Sitemap for Contents, but there is no information on how to do this when RealURL is active.


Danny

#2 John Dawson wrote at 8:43 am, December 28, 2007 GMT answer homepage

Hmm... I don't remember encountering any issues with RealURL, which correctly re-wrote my sitemap links. Here is my RealURL setup:

# RealURL Setup
simulateStaticDocuments = 0
baseURL = www.dawsoninteractive.com
tx_realurl_enable = 1
uniqueLinkVars = 1
linkVars = L
defaultToHTMLsuffixOnPrev = 1

And here is my .htaccess setup:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^typo3$ - [L]
RewriteRule ^typo3/.*$ - [L]

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-l
RewriteRule .* index.php

If you still have issues, I'll be happy to email you my RealURL-Config.

John

#1 Daniel Watts wrote at 12:07 am, December 27, 2007 GMT answer homepage

Hello Again! If you can't tell I am a big fan of this site!

I have mc_googlesitemap setup and working for my basic page structure (i.e. Google Sitemap for Pages). I would like to also use Google Sitemap for Contents to ensure google will index all of my News and Blog entries.

I understand, for the most part, how to get this working by reading the manual; however, the document doesn't explain how to get it working with RealURL. Since I am using RealURL the reference IDs are not used anymore which is how, from what I uderstand, the sitemap is generated.

I don't want google to think it is looking at two difference pages so I would rather use this method. Any ideas?

write a comment