Kontent.ai offers the flexibility to create any content hierarchy you need and expose that hierarchy in your URLs in several ways. This cheat sheet explores user-friendly approaches to help you choose the best method for your project requirements.
Why is this important?
Hierarchical URLs, an alternative to flat URLs, are especially useful for knowledge portals, intranets, and websites with nested content. For example:
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, which can improve page rankings.
User trust: Clean and hierarchical URLs appear more professional and trustworthy.
Improved usability: Users can navigate easily and understand their location within the site, enhancing the overall user experience.
Contextual relevance: Hierarchical URLs provide context about the page content, helping users predict what to expect.
Data analysis: Hierarchical URLs make it easier to drill down into your web analytics section by section.
Available solutions with Kontent.ai
Remember that your URL hierarchy doesn’t need to reflect your content hierarchy one-to-one. Consider your project’s requirements, SEO goals, and the comfort level of your content creators when choosing the best method for implementing hierarchical URLs in Kontent.ai.
Approach A: Use Live Preview for content hierarchy and URL generation
Live preview lets content creators see their content changes directly within content items, providing an in-context visual of your website structure while editing in real time. By using live preview, you can also manage your website’s information architecture as a hierarchical tree. 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.
Pros
Cons
Visual, user-friendly interface integrated directly into content item editing
Automatic URL generation based on the page tree
Easy to rearrange pages and update URLs
Reflects actual content hierarchy
Improved SEO with nested keywords
Flexible for complex structures
May add complexity to content modeling
Changes in hierarchy can affect multiple URLs and may require redirect management
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.
Pros
Cons
Simple to implement
Consistent and straightforward URL structure
Easy for content creators to manage
Less flexible for complex hierarchies
Does not reflect content relationships beyond the prefix
May not be optimal for SEO in all cases
Approach C: Full relative URLs stored in content items
Add a text element to each content item where the full relative URL path is manually specified. Your web app uses this exact value directly when generating URLs.
Pros
Cons
Maximum control over URLs
Easy to implement technically
No dependencies on content relationships
Allows to get an item by its entire hierarchical URL
Prone to human error in URL input
Risk of inconsistent URL structures if not managed properly
Difficult to update URLs across multiple items
Creates tight coupling between content and a single presentation layer
Jan Hermann, Jan Cerman
3 minutes
Web Spotlight / Linked items