Set up your content for hierarchical URLs

Hierarchical URLs, an alternative to flat URLs, are great for knowledge portals, intranets, and websites with nested content.

• Hierarchical URLs can look like /content-model/content-types/introduction.
• Flat URLs can look like /introduction-to-content-types.

Adding hierarchy to your URLs offers many benefits:

• Better SEO: Search engines favor descriptive URLs with clear hierarchies, improving page rankings naturally.
• User trust: Clean and hierarchical URLs appear more professional and trustworthy.
• Improved usability: Users can easily navigate the site and understand their location within it, enhancing the overall user experience.
• Contextual relevance: Hierarchical URLs provide context, helping users predict the type of information on a page.
• Data analysis: Hierarchical URLs make it easy to drill down into your web analytics section by section.

Remember that your URL hierarchy doesn’t need to reflect your content hierarchy one-to-one. Consider your project’s requirements and the comfort level of your content creators when choosing the best method for implementing hierarchical URLs in Kontent.ai.

Approach A: Content and URL hierarchy through Web Spotlight

Use Web Spotlight to manage your website’s information architecture. With this navigation approach, content creators can arrange pages in a hierarchical structure. Your web app then uses this structure to generate hierarchical URLs automatically. You construct hierarchical URLs by using parent-child relationships between content items. Each content item links to a parent item and the web app combines the URL slugs from each level to form the full path.

Approach B: Semi-hierarchical URLs based on content metadata

For semi-hierarchical short URLs, assign a URL prefix based on the content type, such as, /articles/ or /blogs/, and append the URL slug from each content item. This approach can also work with taxonomies.

Approach C: Full relative URLs stored in content items

Each content item includes a text element where the full relative URL path is specified manually. Your web app uses this value directly when generating the URL.