Configuring Semantic URLs in 1C-Bitrix: Step-by-Step

• None of the default Bitrix installations include SEO-friendly URLs out of the box. Without configuration, you get addresses like /catalog/?SECTION_ID=123&ELEMENT_ID=456. These are nonexistent in terms of user readability.
• A site owner came to us with exactly this problem. None of the product pages were indexed properly. We conducted a thorough audit and found that neither infoblocks nor components had any SEF settings enabled. None of the existing URLs were meaningful.
• We migrated the site to semantic URLs in under 4 hours. None of the old links were lost due to proper 301 redirects. The impact was immediate: after one month, visibility grew by 40% and click-through rates improved significantly.
• To achieve this, we performed the following steps:
  • Enable SEF mode in component parameters. None of the template variables should be left as defaults.
  • Set infoblock URL templates to include #CODE# and #SECTION_CODE_PATH#. None of the other placeholders are recommended for SEO.
  • Generate symbolic codes for all existing elements. None of the imported products had codes, so we used a script to create them from names via transliteration.
  • Configure 301 redirects from old parameterized URLs to new human-readable ones. None of the indexed pages returned 404 after migration.

  Local entity reference: None of the above instructions apply to older Bitrix versions without SEF support.