Can anyone give advice as to the best way to handle the creation of the site map data source for the Joomla tags? I am using SH404SEF and will ask this question there as well. The way I have the site map data source set right now it produces a URL in the html sitemap for that data source in this format:
https://www.ufcinc.com/tag/121 This is for the Joomla tag "invoice scanning." See it on our site map here:
https://www.ufcinc.com/jmap

There are no less than four total variations of the URL's creation for this one single tag, creating a mess for SEO, not that the tag URL is all that critical really, but it is just nice to not have to list a whole bunch of URL's in robots.txt exclusion rules. Here are the four possible format:

1. https://www.ufcinc.com/tag/121 This is the way it shown in the out of the box sitemap data source wizard for tags.
2. https://www.ufcinc.com/121
3. https://www.ufcinc.com/121-invoice-scanning
4. https://www.ufcinc.com/tag/121-invoice-scanning This would be my preferred version, with #3 a close second. I would then set the canonical URL as this version.

My question is regarding the excellent JSiteMap Pro extension, can the query for this data source be coded in such a way as to produce one of the pretty URL's containing both the tag number and the tag name?

Or, perhaps I need to create a custom SEF extension for SH404SEF? SemRush is not happy with my site audit when it sees three exta URL's for the same item. I am still wrapping my head around the value of the tag function that came in Joomla 3.1 in terms of SEO.

Thanks in advance.

Hi Jim,

the data source for Joomla tags is already supported through the wizard, no need to create it manually being error prone too.

The ways that the URLs are formatted is outside JSitemap, it depends solely on the routing system used, the native Joomla one or sh404sef.
https://storejextensions.org/faq/does-jsitemap-generate-urls-or-is-responsible-for-that.html

I don't know if sh404sef rewrites Joomla tags links too.
The Joomla standard routing normally generates links for tags like https://www.ufcinc.com/121-invoice-scanning
or https://www.ufcinc.com/menuitem/121-invoice-scanning
where 'menuitem' is a menu item linking a tags category in your website.

Aha, that helps a lot and confirmed what I thought. I have a way forward and will likely just have a freelancer build an SEF extension so I have finer control over the URL. Thanks so much John.