ion interactive : LiveBall Feature Releases

SEO Feature #1: SEO-friendly (and analytics friendly) URLs

2009-12-31T19:40:17Z

LiveBall now allows marketers to generate SEO-friendly URLs — and include as many keywords in the URL as wanted to boost search ranking. It’s also believed that search engines favor .html pages without query string parameters. As a bonus, these friendly URLs are also nicer and more meaningful to users who happen to glance at them. Here’s a summary of the updates at the traffic source-level:

Respondent-identification variables have been removed from the query string for anyone who supports at least temporary cookies (about 99% of the users out there) — so URLs in a path are no longer different for every respondent. This is particularly useful for web analytics packages such as Google Analytics, as pages in a traffic source/path can be easily tracked in aggregate for all users.
Path and traffic source identifiers are now incorporated into a friendly URL. It appears as a “.html” page with no query string parameters.
The friendly address can now be carried along in the URL for the path as well (optional)

   So, if a respondent clicks on this URL:
     http://go.site.com/newyear
   The first page on the path would have a URL like:
     http://go.site.com/newyear/landing-123AB-456CD.html

Friendly addresses can also be added to a path and to individual pages.

SEO Feature #2: Control which landing pages are indexed

2009-12-31T19:21:13Z

LiveBall pages permit themselves to be indexed by search engines, by default. You can now sculpt which paths will be indexable and which won’t. When adding or editing a path, you can set three directives:

noindex: the page will not be added in a search engine’s organic results.
nofollow: links on the page will not be followed to find new pages to index.
noarchive: a copy of this page will not be stored in the search engine’s archive.

If you have a limited-time offer PPC landing experience, an appropriate setting would be “noindex, noarchive” but still allow following. This way the pages won’t appear in organic searches, since they are temporary, but the search engine will follow links that lead back to your primary site.

SEO Feature #3: Canonical URL support in a page

2009-12-31T18:29:57Z

Expert SEO practitioners can now minimize duplicate content issues by assigning a “Canonical URL” to any page within a path. A canonical URL will tell search engines to refer to that URL for the “official, indexable” version of the content on the page. Assign the canonical URL under the meta drop-down menu in your page editor bar.

This is an “expert level” feature — for most markets, SEO feature #4 will prove more useful and easier to manage.

SEO Feature #4: Specify the SEO landing page in a test group

2009-12-31T17:57:47Z

With this release, you can now mark a particular path at the traffic source level as the “SEO” path. This sends all search engine crawlers to that specific landing page within the traffic source. This should be thought of as the primary landing page — or “canonical page” — for the traffic source, with the other landing pages being run as experimental tests.

This feature prevents search engines from seeing more than one path per traffic source, and helps minimize concern about duplicate content.

SEO Feature #5: Automatic sitemap generated for each domain

2009-12-31T17:46:28Z

The best way for search engines to discover a certain set of your landing pages is to include them in an XML sitemap file that search engines look for. LiveBall now automatically generates a sitemap.xml file for each domain.

By default, a traffic source will be included in the sitemap.xml file if it is an “SEO” marked path, per SEO feature #4. You can override this when adding or editing a traffic source to always or never include it as well.

When adding or editing a traffic source, you can also set the “priority” of the traffic source in the sitemap.xml file. The default priority is 0.5, but especially important traffic source URLs can be marked higher, up to 1.0. This helps the search engine decide which URLs to prioritize in its crawl. LiveBall also automatically sets the “last modified” attribute in the sitemap.

Under Settings > Manage Domains, you have the option of disabling the automatic sitemap.xml feature on a domain-by-domain basis.

SEO Feature #6: Control incoming query string parameters

2009-12-31T17:37:18Z

When LiveBall receives incoming query string parameters to a traffic source, it does two things:

Saves the name/value pairs in the respondent’s record;
Passes along the query string parameters to the first page of the path

Step (2) is useful if you have third-party Javascript, such as Google Analytics or Google AdWords tracking code, that needs to read those query string parameters to properly attribute the respondent from his/her origin. In some SEO scenarios, you may prefer to remove those query string parameters from the URL.

When adding/editing a traffic source, you can now override the “pass query string to path” advanced option and set it to “no”. Step (1) will still happen — incoming query string parameters will be saved in the respondent’s record and can be passed along or exported later — but step (2) can be suppressed.

SEO Feature #7: Control over robots.txt for each domain

2009-12-31T17:12:14Z

LiveBall now generates a robots.txt file for every domain and points to the sitemap.xml file. By default it will not express any “noindex/nofollow” preferences, instead leaving those to be assigned on a path-by-path basis via SEO feature #2.

To override this on a domain-by-domain basis, navigate to: Settings > Manage Domains. You can include any custom directives in the robot.txt file.

SEO feature #8: Support for 301 redirects on closed traffic sources

2009-12-31T17:00:00Z

When you open a traffic source in LiveBall you can set a redirect URL along with an expiration date. When you close a traffic source, or it expires, respondents will be rerouted to your redirect URL, or the fallback URL for the campaign or domain.

This is a “302 redirect”, by default, that indicates to search engines the redirect is temporary. If you re-open the traffic source, the search engine will pick up any “link juice” where it left off. Link juice represent a link’s power, taking into account page rank or score.

For SEO paths, you can now use a “301 Permanently Moved” redirect setting at the traffic source level. This will tell search engines to transfer any link juice to the redirect you set.

SEO feature #9: Ping search engines to revisit sitemap

2009-12-31T15:31:00Z

Search engines discover you new landing experience content by checking the robots.txt and sitemap.xml files that are now automatically generated. You can actually “ping” search engines to give them a heads up you have new content available. This invites the engines to revisit the sitemap.xml for recently added content.

Under your global Settings tab, click on Manage Domains. You’ll see a new “Ping Sitemap” button on each row in the domain list on that page. Click on “Ping Sitemap” to automatically notify Google, Yahoo!, Bing, and Ask.com that new content is available in sitemap.xml.

Mobile Landing Pages Are Here

2009-11-25T21:56:02Z

We are excited to announce the launch of LiveBall’s new mobile-optimized quick-start landing experiences.

With the new mobile-ready quick-start experiences, you can quickly create mobile-optimized landing pages & conversion paths, and automatically serve up the best user experience to your mobile clicks.

Upgraded accounts will include:

5 ready-to-run mobile-optimized landing experiences — Pre-built landing pages and conversion paths that need only fill-in-the-blank text to launch.
Custom mobile-optimized image library — Ready-to-use, professionally art directed and optimized images
Custom mobile-ready forms — Pre-built and ready to convert

Turn the iPhone into a sales & marketing machine. Upgrade your LiveBall account and be a mobile marketing rock start before Google’s AdMob acquisition is even final. For more details on how to upgrade, or to request a free demo, contact your Account Manager.