URL Structures | Yext Hitchhikers Platform

What You’ll Learn

In this section, you will learn:

• The URL structure of Page Builder URLs
• Relationship between Page URLs and SEO

Overview

When you create pages via the Page Builder, page URLs are automatically constructed by default. Because each web page requires a unique URL, page URLs will be constructed using the subdomain selected by the user, the entity name, and a unique hash.

You can also use the URL structure of your choice for pages that are built in Yext’s Page Builder. This gives you more control and flexibility over how your URL is generated instead of needing to use an auto-generated URL. Having a custom URL structure allows you to better align your website and your brand.

Currently, our system automatically uses the Name field to construct Page Builder URLs (e.g. - domain.com/[name]-#######) With the Page Builder Vanity URLs feature, you can instead use any text field instead of the Name (e.g. - domain.com/[c_customField]-#######). This is configurable on each site’s Page Builder settings in the Path section. If you decide to leave the Path section blank, Page Builder will leverage the Name field instead.

Considerations

Once a page has been published, the URL can never be changed (even if the entity name changes). The only exception to this is if the pages were created by the Yext Consulting team.

Additionally, Pages made in the Page Builder must be on a subdomain (they cannot support subdirectories).

Page URLS & SEO

Most studies and SEO specialists agree that subdomain vs. subdirectory has no impact on SEO. For the most part, URL structures are a vanity feature, but have little functional value. While there are pros and cons to each approach, at Yext, we recommend a subdomain approach to services pages for a variety of reasons:

1. Performance, Scalability, and Reliability

   • Yext-hosted Pages are served from a global Content Delivery Network (CDN). This means that the most recent and up-to-date version of every local page is online and accessible from multiple points of presence across the globe. Because CDNs are part of a distributed network, this also means that there’s no single point of failure, or a single site that can be hacked.

2. Convenience

   • As much as possible, we want Yext Pages clients to be able to successfully launch pages with minimal effort from their internal IT organization. In many cases, the effort required to set up a subdomain for Yext Pages requires little more than a few minutes of work, as you will see in the steps outlined later in this training.

3. More Opportunities to Rank in SERP

   • Google’s index and algorithms understand the relationship between a root domain and subdomain. From Google’s POV, domains and subdomains are contextually the same. Though URLs on a domain and URLs on a subdomain are indexed separately, they often appear interwoven together within SERP rich results. In other words, Google understands that subdomains are part of the “primary” domain and that URLs on either the primary domain or subdomain are all effectively part of the same website.