What is a deep link?

Learn all about deep links, the benefits of deep linking and how to set deep links up with Insytful and popular CMS' Contensis, WordPress and Drupal.

Deep linking has proved to be a valuable feature for users of Insytful.

The deep link feature has been designed to enhance your content management experience by connecting Insytful page reports with the corresponding editing page in your content management system (CMS).

The result is a seamless user journey that your digital team will love. Your team, whether developers or content editors, can find and fix issues with content in your CMS, removing the guesswork and pinpointing problems directly to aid your team's efficiency.

A deep link or deep linking is defined as links that take users directly to specific content within an app, rather than to a generic web page or homepage. Deep linking is used to make navigation easier for users, taking them directly to the content they are interested in, and bypassing irrelevant content. App links enable direct interactions with apps by allowing URLs to be opened within the designated app, bypassing irrelevant content. They are a secure and user-friendly option for enhancing user experience and journey continuity.

This streamlined workflow eliminates the need for manual searches within the CMS, enabling you to direct users to specific content within the app. Deep links make it easy to find the relevant page, addressing any identified issues or making necessary updates promptly.

Users can find and resolve issues quickly and effortlessly, saving time and frustration. Additionally, in-app deep linking is crucial for creating a seamless user experience by directing users to specific content within an app, thus improving conversion and retention rates.

By improving the user experience and user journey, you will increase user engagement. Users want a seamless experience which deep links can provide. Mobile deep links boost conversion rates and provide valuable performance metrics, making them essential for effective user acquisition, engagement, and retention strategies.

By utilising metadata from your web pages and customisable templates, deep linking empowers your team to navigate directly to specific pieces of content within your CMS, facilitating efficient editing and issue resolution.

Deep linking simplifies the process of moving from page analysis and reporting in Insytful to editing content in your CMS.

Whether you are reviewing performance, accessibility, content quality, or SEO scores within Insytful, deep linking allows you to seamlessly transition to the relevant editing page in your CMS with just a single click.

Setting up deep linking can be relatively simple, as most CMS support this functionality. If you need help setting up your deep link template, get in touch, and we can provide a plug-in. The guide below outlines how to set up templates in Contensis, WordPress, and Drupal, as well as how to set up deep link metadata in five steps.

Your deep link template is the foundation for your CMS integration.

Step 1: You will first need to identify the URL's that your CMS uses for editing content, for example:

• In Contensis: https://cms-mysite.cloud.contensis.com/app/projects/website/entries/12345678-1234-1234-1234-012345678901
• In WordPress: https://www.mysite.com/wp-admin/post.php?post=1&action=edit
• In Drupal: https://www.mysite.com/node/1/edit

Step 2: Once you know the format for your edit page, you need to identify the parts of the URL that determine what content you are editing, for example:

• In Contensis: https://cms-mysite.cloud.contensis.com/app/projects/website/entries/12345678-1234-1234-1234-012345678901
• In WordPress: https://www.mysite.com/wp-admin/post.php?post=1&action=edit
• In Drupal: https://www.mysite.com/node/1/edit

You're now ready to create your deep link template.

Step 3: For each part of your URL that can be changed, decide on a token name to represent that value, for example:

• In Contensis: ProjectId, EntryId
• In WordPress: PostId
• In Drupal: NodeId

Step 4: You can now replace the values in your edit URL with these tokens by putting them in square brackets, like so:

• In Contensis: https://cms-mysite.cloud.contensis.com/app/projects/[ProjectId]/entries/[EntryId]
• In WordPress: https://www.mysite.com/wp-admin/post.php?post=[PostId]&action=edit
• In Drupal: https://www.mysite.com/node/[NodeId]/edit

You're now ready to prepare your metadata that will be used to replace these tokens.

Step 5: In your page templates, you will want to include some meta tags using Insytful's "IDL" (Insytful deep link) format.

Example:

The format is relatively simple, the name should start with "IDL" followed by a colon and then your token name. The content is the value for that particular token on the given page.

Once you've added these to the page template and populated them with the relevant data from your CMS, you're ready to go!

On your next scan, Insytful will pick up the IDL metadata from the tags and populate the CMS URL - providing a link directly to your website.

Insytful is designed to improve users' digital experience. It uses industry-leading tools and its own scanning technologies to score your website’s performance, accessibility, content quality and other content-specific issues.

Try it for yourself and bring your products and services to an even wider audience.

Depending on how your website is set up, anyone can set up deep links following the instructions above. Once you enable deep linking, you should notice finding and fixing errors with Insytful becomes easier.

You don't need to integrate deep linking to use Insytful. You can still use the Insytful app to find and fix errors on your website without, however it is recommended for the best user experience to set up deep links.