HJS SEO Sitemap & Rich Snippets

A complete SEO layer for OpenCart 4 - the parts core simply does not have

HJS SEO Sitemap & Rich Snippets checks against the actual OpenCart 4.1.0.4 source, not assumed: there is NO XML sitemap in OpenCart 4 (the "feed" extension type is an empty placeholder, and core's only "sitemap" is an HTML page for humans with no products and no XML), and there is NO structured data anywhere (no Product, no Offer, no price, no stock status, no star rating, no breadcrumb trail). Core does set a canonical link on several page types and does ship a robots.txt - this extension replaces the former and complements the latter.

XML sitemap

• A sitemap index plus a separate file for products, categories, brands and information pages, each switchable, split automatically at 50,000 URLs.
• <lastmod> on every product from its own date_modified. Categories, brands and information pages get no lastmod - OpenCart 4 stores no date on those records at all, and a fabricated date is worse than none.
• Product images and (on a multi-language shop) hreflang alternates.
• Multi-store aware, built into OpenCart's own catalogue queries.
• Live by default at its own address, always current. Optional static /sitemap.xml files with a cron-safe rebuild URL.

Rich snippets (JSON-LD)

• Product and Offer: name, description, images, SKU, MPN and GTIN when the product has them, brand, price, currency, availability, item condition, validFrom, priceValidUntil and seller.
• shippingDetails and hasMerchantReturnPolicy inside the offer - the two fields Google Merchant now expects, built from your published policy on a settings screen. Left out entirely, never published half-finished, if a country is left blank.
• AggregateRating from OpenCart's own reviews, published ONLY when a product genuinely has reviews - it never invents a rating.
• BreadcrumbList on product and category pages; Organization plus WebSite with a SearchAction on the home page.
• Passed Google's Rich Results Test (3 valid items) and the schema.org validator (0 errors, 0 warnings).

Canonical & robots

• One canonical per page built only from the parameters that identify it - sort/filter/tracking parameters can never leak in. OpenCart's own canonical is removed first, so a page never carries two.
• Page 2 of a category canonicalises to page 1 or to itself - your call.
• noindex,follow on the page types you tick: search, compare, cart, checkout, account, paginated and sorted/filtered listings.

Bulk meta editor

• One screen listing products, categories or information pages with meta title, meta description and SEO keyword editable inline, per language and per store.
• "Show only what is missing" filters, templates with placeholders, "only fill in blanks" switch ON by default, chunked bulk apply with a progress counter.
• Category SEO keywords are read-only here on purpose (see below).

Built the safe way

• Patches NO core template - the entire storefront side is one OpenCart event on the page head.
• Creates NO database tables.
• Uninstall removes its settings, event and static files, and deliberately keeps every meta title/description/keyword the editor wrote, because that is your catalogue data.

What it does not do

Stated so expectations are right before purchase.

• No redirects/404 handling (a separate HJS add-on, HJS 404 Redirect Manager, does that).
• No AMP, no Open Graph/Twitter cards, no keyword research, no rank tracking.
• Category SEO keywords are not editable in bulk - a category keyword is stored against the whole category path in OpenCart 4, so changing one in bulk would rewrite every sub-category's URL.
• Shipping/returns data published to Google is your typed default, not a live shipping quote.
• No per-store settings (the sitemap itself is automatically per-store; configuration is shared).
• Built and tested against the default OpenCart 4 theme only.

Compatibility

• Tested: OpenCart 4.1.0.4. PHP tested: 8.4 (PHP 8.5 not yet supported).
• Works with SEO URLs on or off - both states tested.
• Not exercised: any theme other than default; a second live storefront (multi-store); a multi-language store; a special/customer-group price or non-default currency.

Support

HJS Apps - https://hjsapps24.store

Tags: seo, sitemap, xml sitemap, rich snippets, structured data, json-ld, meta tags, canonical