What is a Vanity Link?

A vanity link (also known as a vanity URL) is a unique web address that is branded for marketing purposes. Essentially, its primary purpose in our Georgia State setup is to provide site administrators with an alternative, cleaner URL to use, thereby offering site users a shorter and more memorable address for specific subpages they may wish to advertise (such as upcoming events or anniversaries).

A note about Vanity Links...  The Georgia State instance of WordPress multi-site runs in a sub-domain configuration. In this mode, each website is given a unique URL, which is structured with the sub-domain name preceding the root domain of gsu.edu. You can see this when you go to the admissions website. The URL for admissions is https://admissions.gsu.edu. Did you know that https://gsu.edu/admissions also takes users to the same page? What's important to know is that it's not automatic. WordPress is aware of all of the various blogs on the network, but it doesn't automatically create the URL forwards or vanity links from gsu.edu. Since the sub-domain site configuration method is actually related to a networking convention, we don't recommend treating sub-domain URLs as vanity links.

Why don't we use subdomains as vanity links?

A significant reason for not using vanity subdomain links is that all subdomain links must be registered and exist as independent URL records. This means all of these records are hosted back at GSU and require a lookup. These links may not see the constant level of traffic gsu.edu sees, and services may need to "refresh" the sub-domains location, causing additional load delay. Depending on the time-to-live (TTL) variables set by different internet service providers, users can encounter an issue. This is avoided when the site uses the sub-domain method and actually has content. We register the sites with various web management platforms, and they are constantly crawled by indexing bots to keep their records up to date.

How we set up vanity links at Georgia State

Our recommended method for setting up vanity links is to submit a ticket and have the team create a gsu.edu/link. Here we can capture performance data and manage the links without adding to the overhead of registering additional domains. There are costs associated with managing subdomains, as well as a more complex method of troubleshooting should an issue arise.

All of the Georgia State WordPress sites can also host their own vanity links, using the Yoast > SEO > Redirects tool. In this method, navigate to the Yoast Redirects tool and set up the shortened and clearer URL that you want to use as your vanity link. Then, instruct the tool on where you want it to redirect users.

If you have questions about this process or would like to learn more, drop us a note through Uservoice's ticketing system (https://gsu.uservoice.com). If you have a link that you would like to be added to gsu.edu drop us a ticket on Uservoice too.

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