Site:Frontend:SEOFriendlyURLS

Introduction

The format of your URLs actually matter. Depending on how you structure your URLs, your site may or may not be SEO friendly. SEO friendly URLs are important because it allows your website to be properly indexed by various search engines.

A simple way to be in compliance with SEO friendliness is to do your best to never use URL parameters. Search engine spiders are expecting a directory type format for your URL.

Not SEO Friendly

http://www.example.com/?page=content&contentId=This.is.my.new.bike

SEO Friendly

http://www.example.com/content/This.is.my.new.bike

URL Patterns

Each site is able to specify various URL patterns to customize how it should handle its URL structure. These patterns can be customized by clicking on the "URL PATTERNS" link under each site.

Each URL Pattern consists of the following:

name

this is a simple name to identify the pattern.

regex pattern

this is the actual regular expression used to parse the pattern.

variable matches

this is a list of variables that should be matched to the corresponding regular expression.

defaults

this is a list of variables that should be implied, if this pattern successfully matches the active URL.

final

whether or not to continue onto the next pattern of this pattern successfully matches the active URL.

layout

this allows the patterns to be organized based on priority. Sometimes it may matter which patterns get matched first.

Example

To match the SEO Friendly URL listed above, you would create the following URL pattern:

name

content 1up

regex pattern

/([^\/]+)\/([^\/]+)\/?$/

variable matches

page, contentId