Embedded Field Use Cases | Yext Hitchhikers Platform
What You’ll Learn
In this section, you will learn:
- How embedded fields can help you
- SEO value of differentiated content
- Common use cases for embedded fields
Why use Embedded Fields
Most of our customers use Embedded Fields in one way or another. The key benefits are:
- Helping to create unique content at scale
- Helping to make sure content stays fresh/accurate
- Helping to manage URLs and tracking parameters
Creating Unique Content at Scale
Search engines want to see unique content for SEO. If they see a bunch of Pages with the exact same content, pages will not rank as well and the end customer experience won’t be as good – the content won’t be locally relevant. We recommend using embedded fields to manage this at scale. You can embed things like the address, services, products, languages spoken, or any text or text-list custom fields.
The most common fields we see customers use embedded fields for this use case are:
- Description (built-in field for Listings)
- Search / Pages Description (if customer chooses to have a separate custom field for a description on Search/Pages)
- FAQ Answers
- Featured Message for Listings
Helping Content Stay Fresh/Accurate
The other great thing about embedded fields is that when a source field changes, any fields that depend on it will also change. For example, if you embed the city name for a retail store on a description field, but the store moves to a nearby city, you don’t have to worry about updating 2 fields. You can update the city and the description will dynamically update in Yext Content and on Pages, Listings and Search.
URL and URL Tracking Management
Many brands choose to append their own tracking parameters to URLs so they can track performance using existing analytics tools like Google Analytics or Adobe. This is easy to do in Yext by simply adding the tracking parameters to the end of the URL fields, which is made even easier with embedded fields! This will mean that when someone visits that URL, it will be recorded both in Yext analytics and in your own analytics. Similarly, some page URLs commonly shift when there are changes to the content in Yext, and so can unique identifiers if you’re using them for custom tracking parameters. One of the most common use cases is to:
- Publish the URL of a page to the Landing Page URL field or a custom field.
- Embed that field in the Website field.
- Add tracking parameters by embedding the entity ID.
To learn more about Yext’s Conversion Tracking tool which can also help with this, read the Conversion Tracking module in the Analytics track.
Website Field Components
Note that the built-in Website field has a few different components:
- the URL
- the Display URL
- An option to “Use my regular website link only” (default) and “Use the display URL only”
On some publishers (only those that show the URL string on the listing itself, instead of a button or generic website link) we can support displaying a “pretty” display version of your website without the long tracking parameters. You should always enter your full URL, including tracking, in the “URL” subfield.
You can then optionally add the shortened “pretty” URL in the Display URL subfield. You have the option of deciding for the sites that don’t support this functionality whether you’d prefer to show the Main Website or the Display URL. We recommend always showing the Main Website so that you get full visibility for tracking.