URL Optimisation in Laravel
Importance of URL structure for SEO
URL structure is a critical aspect of SEO. A well-structured URL provides both users and search engines with a clear indication of what the destination page is about. In other words, the easier a URL is to read for humans, the better it is for search engines. A study by Microsoft found that a well-crafted URL could significantly impact click-through rates. It's also important to note that while a URL containing keywords can act as a ranking factor, URLs beyond a certain length won't be fully visible in the search results.
How to create SEO-friendly URLs in Laravel
In Laravel, you can create SEO-friendly URLs using the route() function. This function generates a URL for a specific route defined in the routes/web.php file. For example, if you have a route defined as Route::get('/post/{id}', 'PostController@show')->name('post.show');, you can generate a URL for this route using route('post.show', ['id' => 1]);, which will generate a URL like http://your-domain.com/post/1.
However, to make the URL more SEO-friendly, you might want to include the title of the post in the URL. This is where slugs come in. A slug is a URL-friendly version of a string, typically used to identify a specific resource on a website. For example, the slug for an article titled "A Beginner's Guide to Laravel" might be "beginners-guide-laravel". Slugs are important because they make URLs more readable and easier to share, and can also improve SEO by including relevant keywords.
In Laravel, you can use the Eloquent-Sluggable package to automatically generate slugs for your Eloquent models. To get started with Eloquent-Sluggable, you'll need to install the package using Composer with the command composer require cviebrock/eloquent-sluggable. Once the package is installed, you'll need to add the Sluggable trait to any Eloquent models that you want to generate slugs for.
Code Examples and Explanations
Here's an example of how you can use the Eloquent-Sluggable package to generate SEO-friendly URLs in Laravel:
First, add the Sluggable trait to your Eloquent model:
use Cviebrock\EloquentSluggable\Sluggable;
class Post extends Model
{
use Sluggable;
// ...
}
Then, define a sluggable() method in your model that returns the configuration array for the model's slugs:
public function sluggable(): array
{
return [
'slug' => [
'source' => 'title'
]
];
}
In this example, the sluggable() method is telling Eloquent-Sluggable to use the title attribute of the Post model to generate the slug. Now, whenever you create or update a Post model, Eloquent-Sluggable will automatically generate a slug and save it to the slug attribute of the model.
You can then use this slug when generating URLs for your routes. For example, you might define your post route like this:
Route::get('/post/{slug}', 'PostController@show')->name('post.show');
