Crosslinks, Auto Internal Linking for Magento 2

What you get

Magento 2 Crosslinks

Panth Crosslinks turns keywords in store content into internal links. You define rules in an admin grid (a keyword plus a target: a custom URL, a product SKU, or a category ID) and the module rewrites matching words into anchor tags while Magento renders product descriptions, category descriptions, CMS pages, and CMS blocks. The original content in the database is not modified.

The replacement runs in PHP through plugins on Magento\Catalog\Helper\Output and Magento\Cms\Model\Template\FilterProvider, so it does not depend on the frontend theme. It is used by merchants and content teams who want consistent internal linking across a catalog without editing each description, and it works on both Hyva and Luma storefronts.

Product page: kishansavaliya.com/magento-2-crosslinks.html

Features

• Keyword rules managed in an admin grid with keyword search (keyword, URL, link title, reference value), filters, sorting, paging, an add/edit form, and mass actions (Enable, Disable, Delete).
• Three reference types per rule: Custom URL, Product by SKU, and Category by ID. SKU and category references are resolved to the current storefront path through the url_rewrite table at render time.
• Case-insensitive, whole-word keyword matching (bag does not match handbag).
• Injection into product description and short_description, category description, and CMS page and block content.
• Per-rule placement toggles for products, categories, and CMS content.
• Per-rule Max Replacements cap and a global Max Links per Page cap.
• Excluded HTML tags (headings, existing anchors, buttons, script, and style by default) whose contents are never rewritten; keywords inside tag attributes are never rewritten either.
• Rule priority: rules with a higher priority value are processed first.
• Store view scope per rule (All Store Views or a single store view).
• Optional time-based activation using Active From and Active To dates on each rule.
• Optional rel="nofollow" and title attribute per rule.
• Rules whose target resolves to the page currently being viewed are skipped, so a page does not link to itself.
• URLs using javascript:, data:, vbscript:, or file: are rejected when a rule is saved and again at render time.
• Injected anchors carry class="panth-crosslink"; a small CSS file with a default style is shipped and can be overridden from the theme.
• Existing rules created by Panth_AdvancedSEO in the panth_seo_crosslink table continue to work; no data migration is needed.

Usage

Once the module is enabled and rules exist, linking happens automatically during page rendering. There is nothing to run on a schedule and no console command.

• Product pages: description and short_description output through Magento\Catalog\Helper\Output::productAttribute() is processed with placement product.
• Category pages: description output through Magento\Catalog\Helper\Output::categoryAttribute() is processed with placement category.
• CMS pages and blocks: the page filter and block filter returned by Magento\Cms\Model\Template\FilterProvider are wrapped so the replacement runs after Magento has processed directives and widgets, with placement cms.

For each processed piece of content the module loads the active rules for the current store view (rules scoped to All Store Views plus rules for that store view) that match the placement, orders them by priority, and applies them to text nodes only. Tag attributes, comments and HTML entities are never modified. Matches are first replaced with placeholder tokens and swapped for the final anchors at the end, so a link inserted by one rule is never matched again by a later rule.

Anchors look like this:

<a href="/gear/bags.html" class="panth-crosslink" title="Bags" rel="nofollow">bag</a>

The default style is in view/frontend/web/css/crosslinks.css, which is added to every frontend page through view/frontend/layout/default.xml. Override a.panth-crosslink in the theme to change it.

Storefront results on Hyva and Luma:

Changelog

See CHANGELOG.md.

Compatibility

Composer constraints from composer.json: magento/framework ^103.0, magento/module-backend ^102.0, magento/module-store ^101.0, magento/module-catalog ^104.0, magento/module-cms ^104.0, magento/module-ui ^101.0.

Requirements

• Magento Open Source or Adobe Commerce 2.4.4 to 2.4.9
• PHP 8.1, 8.2, 8.3, or 8.4
• mage2kishan/module-core (^1.0), installed automatically by Composer; it provides the Panth Extensions configuration tab and admin menu group
• Core Magento modules: Magento_Backend, Magento_Store, Magento_Catalog, Magento_Cms, Magento_Ui

Installation

composer require mage2kishan/module-crosslinks
bin/magento module:enable Panth_Core Panth_Crosslinks
bin/magento setup:upgrade
bin/magento setup:di:compile
bin/magento setup:static-content:deploy -f
bin/magento cache:flush

setup:di:compile is only needed in production mode. setup:static-content:deploy is needed because the module ships a CSS file under view/frontend/web/css/.

Check that the module is enabled:

bin/magento module:status Panth_Crosslinks

Configuration

Go to Stores > Configuration > Panth Extensions > Crosslinks, or use the Crosslinks Configuration entry in the Panth Extensions admin menu. All settings can be set at default, website, and store view scope.

Auto Cross-Links

Config paths:

• panth_crosslinks/general/crosslinks_enabled
• panth_crosslinks/general/max_links_per_page
• panth_crosslinks/general/excluded_tags
• panth_crosslinks/general/crosslink_time_activation
• panth_crosslinks/general/limit_scope

With the default values the module is active after installation, but nothing changes on the storefront until at least one rule exists.

Crosslink rules

Rules are managed at Panth Extensions > Crosslinks in the admin menu (route panth_crosslinks/crosslink/index).

Each rule has the following fields:

If a save is rejected (for example an unsupported URL scheme), the form reopens with the values you entered and the error message. Saving, deleting, enabling or disabling rules marks the Page Cache and Blocks HTML output cache types as invalidated, so Magento shows its usual notice and the storefront picks up the change after you refresh those cache types in System > Cache Management.

Uninstallation

bin/magento module:disable Panth_Crosslinks
composer remove mage2kishan/module-crosslinks
bin/magento setup:upgrade
bin/magento setup:di:compile
bin/magento cache:flush

The panth_seo_crosslink table and the panth_crosslinks/* values in core_config_data are not removed automatically. Drop the table and delete the config rows manually if they are no longer needed. Keep the table if Panth_AdvancedSEO still uses it.

License

Free and open source under the MIT License. See LICENSE.

Developer Notes

• Module name: Panth_Crosslinks
• Composer package: mage2kishan/module-crosslinks
• Namespace: Panth\Crosslinks
• Sequence: loads after Panth_Core, Magento_Backend, Magento_Store, Magento_Catalog, Magento_Cms, Magento_Ui

Key classes:

• Model\Crosslink\ReplacementService::processContent(string $html, string $pageType, int $storeId): string does the matching and anchor building. Page types are product, category, and cms.
• Plugin\Crosslink\CatalogOutputPlugin (after-plugins on productAttribute and categoryAttribute of Magento\Catalog\Helper\Output).
• Plugin\Crosslink\CmsFilterPlugin (after-plugins on getPageFilter and getBlockFilter of Magento\Cms\Model\Template\FilterProvider) and Plugin\Crosslink\CrosslinkFilterDecorator, which wraps the filter and processes the output of filter(). Fluent calls such as setStoreId() return the wrapper, so getBlockFilter()->setStoreId($id)->filter($html) (used by Magento\Cms\Block\Block and the CMS Static Block widget) is processed too.
• Helper\Config exposes isEnabled(), getMaxLinksPerPage(), getExcludedTags(), isTimeActivationEnabled(), and isLimitPerContent(), all at store view scope.
• Model\Crosslink\Crosslink (model), Model\ResourceModel\Crosslink and Model\ResourceModel\Crosslink\Collection (resource and collection), Model\ResourceModel\Crosslink\Grid\Collection (grid data source panth_crosslink_listing_data_source).
• Model\Config\Source\CrosslinkReferenceType defines the constants url, product_sku, and category_id.
• Api\CrosslinkRepositoryInterface with a preference to Model\Crosslink\Repository; getById() and deleteById() read and delete rows directly, while save() inserts or updates the row (from a model or an array) and returns the entity with crosslink_id set.
• Admin controllers under Controller\Adminhtml\Crosslink (Index, NewAction, Edit, Save, Delete, MassDelete, MassStatus) on the panth_crosslinks admin route. Delete, Save, MassDelete and MassStatus accept POST only. Saving writes directly to the table with ResourceConnection.
• UI components: panth_crosslink_listing (grid) and panth_crosslink_form (form).

ACL resources:

• Panth_Crosslinks::manage (Crosslinks, under Panth_Core::panth_extensions)
• Panth_Crosslinks::crosslinks (Manage Crosslinks; used by all admin controllers)
• Panth_Crosslinks::config (Panth Crosslinks Configuration)

Database table (etc/db_schema.xml): panth_seo_crosslink with columns crosslink_id, keyword, url, url_title, max_replacements, nofollow, priority, is_active, in_product, in_category, in_cms, store_id, created_at, active_from, active_to, reference_type, reference_value, and an index on is_active, store_id. The table name is kept from Panth_AdvancedSEO on purpose.

The module declares no events, observers, cron jobs, web API routes, frontend routes, or console commands.