When managing our own website content, the link (URL) in the address bar is often a detail that is easily overlooked.However, a clear and organized URL structure not only makes it easier for visitors to understand the content of the page, but is also the basis for search engines to effectively crawl and display website information.A good URL can not only enhance the user experience, but also directly affect the website's performance in search results.

AnQiCMS was designed with SEO needs in mind from the beginning, providing rich tools and flexible configuration options to help us build search engine-friendly URL structures.This includes pseudo-static settings, 301 redirect management, and custom content links, etc.

The core functions and advantages of AnQiCMS URL structure

AnQiCMS provides a variety of practical functions for optimizing URL structure, allowing us to easily configure:

  1. Flexible pseudo-static configuration: The website's URL looks more like a static page address, for exampleyourdomain.com/article/anqicms-seo.htmlinstead ofyourdomain.com/?id=123This format is more friendly to search engines and more descriptive. AnQiCMS is built with various static rules and supports customization to meet the needs of different websites.
  2. Custom content URL：Whether it is an article, product, category, or tag, AnQiCMS allows us to set custom URL aliases for them.This means that we can replace the automatically generated meaningless numeric ID with a keyword-containing, easily understandable English or pinyin phrase, which greatly enhances the readability and SEO value of the URL.
  3. Redirect ManagementWhen the page URL changes, content is merged, or the website structure is adjusted, a 301 redirect can ensure that the original traffic and search engine weight are not lost.The built-in 301 redirect feature of AnQiCMS allows us to easily manage these redirect rules.
  4. Support for canonical URLIn some cases, there may be more than one URL pointing to a page with the same or similar content.By setting a canonical link, we can tell search engines which URL is the 'preferred' version, thus avoiding duplicate content issues and concentrating SEO weight.
  5. Comprehensive SEO tool assistance：In addition to the URL structure itself, AnQiCMS also provides tools such as automatic Sitemap generation, Robots.txt configuration, and others, which indirectly assist search engines in more efficiently and accurately crawling and indexing our content.

Practice steps: Create a search engine-friendly URL structure

First step: Choose and configure the pseudo-static rules

The first step to optimize the URL structure is to enable and configure pseudo-static.In the AnQiCMS backend, you can find the "Static Rules" settings under the "Function Management" menu.

AnQiCMS provides four built-in pseudo-static rules that usually cover most website needs:

  • Numeric patternThe URL mainly uses the ID of the content, for example/article/123.html. This pattern is concise, but lacks descriptiveness.
  • Model naming pattern: The URL includes the model name (such asarticleorproduct) and content alias, for example/article/anqicms-tutorial.html. It is more friendly to English stations, and can clearly indicate the content type.
  • Category naming pattern 1/2: The URL contains category names and content aliases, which can more clearly show the hierarchical relationship of the content.

We recommend that most corporate websites and content sites chooseModel naming patternorCategory naming patternWill bring better SEO effects, because these patterns' URLs are more semantically meaningful.

If the built-in rules cannot fully meet your needs, you can choose the "custom mode" for more fine-grained configuration. In custom mode, you can use the following common variables to build URLs:

  • {id}: The unique numeric ID of the content.
  • {filename}: The custom URL alias of the content, usually the pinyin or English of the title of the content.
  • {catname}: The custom URL alias of the category.
  • {catid}The category ID.
  • {module}The content model (such as)articleorproduct) URL alias.
  • {page}：The page number for pagination.

Tip:Build custom URLs following the principle of 'short, concise, and accurate'. The shorter the URL, the better, including core keywords, and using hyphens-Replace spaces, avoid using underscores_Or other special characters. For example, instead of usingyourdomain.com/article_detail?id=123Choose insteadyourdomain.com/article/anqi-cms-url-optimization.html.

Step two: Refine content custom URL

After configuring the pseudo-static rules, the next step is to fully utilize the "custom URL" field when adding or editing content.This feature exists on the article, category, and tag editing pages.

  • Article/Product: When publishing a document or product, find the "Custom URL" field.The system usually generates a pinyin alias automatically based on the title. You can manually modify it as needed, ensuring it contains the main keywords and remains concise.For example, an article about the 'AnQi CMS URL Optimization Tutorial', its custom URL can be set toanqi-cms-url-optimization-tutorial.
  • Document CategoryIn the 'Document Category' management, when editing a category, there is also a 'Custom URL' field. Here you can set the alias of the category, for examplewebsite-seo-guide.
  • Document TagIn the 'Document Tag' management, you can also set a custom URL alias for each tag, for examplecms-best-practices.

Important reminder: The custom URL must ensure that it is unique across the entire site. If the alias already exists, the system will automatically add a number at the end to ensure its uniqueness.

The third step: flexibly use 301 redirect