How It Works

A deep dive into the proxy architecture that powers SEO page delivery.

Overview

Nexting uses a reverse proxy pattern to serve SEO pages under your domain. This means when someone visits a specific path on your website, your hosting platform fetches the content from our servers and returns it to the visitor—all without changing the URL in their browser.

This is the same technique used by large-scale CDNs and enterprise applications. It's secure, performant, and completely transparent to end users.

Request Flow

Let's trace what happens when a user visits a proxied page:

User visits your domain

GET https://yourdomain.com/blog/seo-article

Your host checks rewrite rules

Vercel/Netlify finds a matching rewrite rule in your configuration

Request forwarded to Nexting

GET https://api.nexting.ai/proxy/YOUR_KEY/blog/seo-article

Nexting returns HTML

Our API looks up the page content and returns fully-rendered HTML with SEO meta tags

User sees the page

Browser displays content at yourdomain.com/blog/seo-article

Server-Side Only

This entire process happens on the server side. The user's browser never sees or communicates with Nexting servers directly. From their perspective, they're just visiting your website.

Key Components

Project Key

A unique identifier (like abc123xyz789) generated for each project. This key is used in the proxy URL to identify which project's pages to serve.

Found in: Project Settings → Proxy Endpoint

Rewrite Rules

Configuration that tells your hosting platform which paths to proxy. Each rule maps a source path on your domain to a destination URL on Nexting.

json

{
  "source": "/blog/article",
  "destination": "https://api.nexting.ai/proxy/YOUR_KEY/blog/article"
}

Verification Endpoint

A special path (/__verify__) used to confirm your rewrite rules are working correctly. When you click "Verify Configuration" in the dashboard, we check if this endpoint is accessible through your domain.

This path is automatically included in all configuration templates.

URL Structure

Understanding how URLs map between your domain and Nexting:

Your Domain		Nexting API
example.com/__verify__	→	api.nexting.ai/proxy/KEY/__verify__
example.com/blog/article	→	api.nexting.ai/proxy/KEY/blog/article
example.com/seo/page-1	→	api.nexting.ai/proxy/KEY/seo/page-1

Path Prefix

If you set a path prefix (like /blog) in your project settings, all your pages will be organized under that prefix, keeping them separate from your main site content.

What Gets Served

When Nexting receives a request, we return a complete HTML document with:

Your page content (formatted as HTML)
SEO meta tags (title, description, keywords)
Open Graph tags for social sharing
Canonical URL pointing to your domain
Clean, responsive styling

Response HTML (simplified)

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">
<head>
  <title>Your SEO Title</title>
  <meta name="description" content="Your meta description">
  <link rel="canonical" href="https://yourdomain.com/blog/article">
  <meta property="og:title" content="Your SEO Title">
  <meta property="og:url" content="https://yourdomain.com/blog/article">
</head>
<body>
  <article>
    <!-- Your page content here -->
  </article>
</body>
</html>

Search Engine Friendly

Search engines see your domain in the canonical URL and all meta tags, properly attributing the content to your website.

Verification Process

When you click "Verify Configuration" in the dashboard, here's what happens:

Dashboard sends verification request

We make a request to https://yourdomain.com/__verify__

Your host processes the rewrite

If configured correctly, your host proxies the request to Nexting

Nexting returns verification data

Our API returns a JSON response containing your project key

json

{
  "success": true,
  "projectKey": "your-project-key",
  "timestamp": "2024-01-15T10:30:00Z"
}

We confirm the project key matches

If the returned project key matches your project, verification succeeds and your project becomes active

Common Verification Issues

If verification fails with a 404 error, it usually means the rewrite rules haven't been deployed yet. Make sure to redeploy your site after adding the configuration.

Security Considerations

Project Key Privacy: Your project key is a random 12-character identifier. While it appears in configuration files, it only allows read access to published pages.

HTTPS Only: All communication between your host and Nexting happens over HTTPS, ensuring data integrity and privacy.

Published Pages Only: Only pages you explicitly publish are accessible through the proxy. Draft pages remain private.

No Direct Access: Users cannot access your Nexting dashboard or modify content through the proxy—it's read-only.

Performance

The proxy adds minimal latency to page loads:

Nexting API is deployed on edge servers worldwide
Responses are cached at both Nexting and your hosting platform
HTML is pre-rendered and served instantly
Typical additional latency: 50-150ms

Caching

Pages are cached with Cache-Control: public, max-age=60, s-maxage=300, meaning edge servers cache content for up to 5 minutes. Content updates may take this long to propagate.