During the operation of a website, a good URL structure is like a clear map, which not only helps users understand the content of the page intuitively, but also guides search engines to efficiently crawl and understand your website.AnQiCMS was designed from the beginning with the needs of search engine optimization (SEO) in mind, integrating powerful URL management features that allow us to easily create a search engine-friendly website structure.

Why is it important to understand the significance of search engine friendly URLs?

Before delving into the specific features of AnQiCMS, let's talk briefly about what makes a URL 'good'.In simple terms, a search engine friendly URL should have the following characteristics: it should be concise and clear, reflecting the content of the page;It is best to include the core keywords of the page, as this helps search engines understand the theme of the page;The URL hierarchy should be clearly visible, allowing users and crawlers to easily determine the position of the current page;At the same time, it should also avoid too many meaningless parameters or too long strings, as these will reduce the readability and memorability of the URL.

Search engines prefer static or pseudo-static URLs because they usually mean stable content and clear structure, which are easier to crawl and index.Users also prefer such URLs because they are readable and memorable, and even more convenient to share.Therefore, optimizing the URL structure is an essential aspect for improving the overall SEO performance and user experience of a website.

AnQiCMS provides a URL optimization tool

AnQiCMS offers a series of features to help us easily achieve URL structure optimization:

1. Static rules: Basics and Choices

One of the core advantages of AnQiCMS is its powerful pseudo-static function. It can convert dynamic links with question marks and complex parameters into addresses that look like static pages, such as turning/article.php?id=123becomes/article/123.htmlThis not only makes the URL more beautiful, but also conforms to the search engine's crawling habits.

In the AnQiCMS background, we can go to the 'Function Management' under 'URL Rewrite Rules' for configuration. The system has preset four common URL rewrite rules to meet the needs of different types of websites:

  • Numeric mode:URL directly includes the content ID, for example/article/123.html. This pattern is clear and straightforward, but it is slightly unfriendly to SEO keywords.
  • Model naming pattern:The URL will reflect the model to which the content belongs, for example/article/seo-optimization.htmlor/product/luxury-car.htmlThis helps to clearly distinguish the type of content, suitable for multilingual sites or websites with complex content structures.
  • Category naming pattern 1 and Category naming pattern 2:These two patterns will integrate classification information into the URL, for example./news/industry/latest-trends.htmlThey can clearly show the ownership of the content, which helps users and search engines understand the hierarchy of the website.

It is crucial to choose the model that best suits your website's content structure and SEO strategy.If we focus primarily on content categorization and hierarchy, the classification naming pattern would be a good choice;If the content type has a large difference, the naming pattern of the model is more applicable.

2. Custom URL: Fine-grained control

If the preset rules cannot fully meet your fine-grained needs for URL structure, AnQiCMS also provides a powerful custom static rule function.This means we can build unique URL structures like building blocks with various built-in variables.

In custom mode, we can set personalized URL formats for core page types such as article detail pages, category list pages, single pages, etc. AnQiCMS provides several key variables for us to combine and use:

  • {id}: Unique ID of the content.
  • {filename}The custom link name (also known as URL alias) of the content, usually generated from the title.
  • {catname}Custom link name for category.
  • {catid}Unique ID of the category.
  • {module}The URL alias of the model the content belongs to.
  • {page}The page number (to be enclosed in parentheses, such as(-{page}))

For example, we can customize the URL of the article detail pagearchive===/{module}/{catname}/{filename}.htmlOr set the category list pagecategory===/{module}/{catname}(-{page}).

It is worth mentioning that when adding articles, categories, and tags, we can all manually set a "custom URL alias".AnQiCMS defaults to automatically generating pinyin aliases based on the title, but it's best to optimize it to be related to the content theme with English or pinyin phrases, and try to integrate core keywords.For example, an article about "SEO optimization techniques", a custom URL alias can beseo-optimization-tipsInstead of a long string of pinyin. Such a URL is not only more meaningful but also more keyword-friendly.

3. Redirect Management: Resolve Old Link Issues

During the operation of the website, it is inevitable that the content structure needs to be adjusted, the title of the article updated, or old pages deleted, which may cause a large number of old links to become invalid, causing visitors to see a 404 error page, and it may also damage the long-term SEO weight accumulated by the website. The 301 redirect management feature built into AnQiCMS can help us redirect