LiveBall: The Very Best Hosted Landing Pages for SEO
LiveBall has been the premier solution for hosted landing pages and microsites since 2006. Our enterprise software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform has empowered marketers to perform targeted conversion rate optimization for PPC search advertising, email marketing, and display advertising campaigns—completely free from IT.
Now, with our latest release, we’ve extended LiveBall’s capabilities to make it the very best-in-class content management system (CMS) for producing organic search engine optimization (SEO) oriented landing pages as well.
We started with the list of 27 features that world-renown SEO experts Eric Enge, Stephan Spencer, Rand Fishkin, and Jessie C. Stricchiola stated in their bestselling book The Art of SEO: Mastering Search Engine Optimization for selecting a CMS with “search friendliness as their primary focus.”
Our goal was to support every one of these features that was relevant to landing pages or microsites. Here’s their authoritative list and how LiveBall incorporates each of them:
Title tag customization and rules. The ‘title’ tag of each page in LiveBall is completely customizable—add search optimal keywords in any order or format.
Static, keyword-rich URLs. Each page associated with a LiveBall traffic source has its own static URL. The paths of these pages are completely customizable and can include as many keywords and/or directory levels as desired. To help maintain consistency, URL paths can be composed of individually customizable parts for the traffic source, the path (for multi-step landing pages and microsites), and each page.
Meta tag customization. LiveBall page templates can include any meta tags that are desired—such as description, keywords, author, or Dublin Core content—which can then be customized on each individual page.
Enabling custom HTML tags. LiveBall page templates can include any XHTML tag, such as header tags of any level (e.g., h1, h2, h3, etc.), in any layout desired. On each page, the content of these tags can be completely customizable.
Internal anchor text flexibility. Multi-step landing pages and microsites in LiveBall can incorporate fully customizable navigation. Marketers have complete control over the anchor text for all links, including internal site links, on all pages.
Intelligent categorization structure. With LiveBall’s fully customizable page templates, you can create microsites and multi-page landing experiences with any categorization structure and navigation you want.
Pagination controls. Not applicable—applies to blogs and online catalogs.
301-redirect functionality. For each traffic source that is being routed through LiveBall, you can handle redirects with 301 or 302 redirect status codes, depending on whether you want the redirect to be permanent or temporary.
XML/RSS pinging. For each landing page and microsite domain that you are managing with LiveBall, you can click a single button to ping Google, Yahoo!, Bing, and Ask.com with new content.
Image-handling and alt attributes. Images in LiveBall pages can be easily assigned keyword-rich “alt” attributes, whether those images are part of the navigation or part of the content.
CSS exceptions. LiveBall “themes” for landing experiences are driven primarily by CSS and are 100% customizable. Create as many custom CSS themes as you want to change the visual presentation of elements while retaining their underlying HTML tag structure.
Static caching options. Images, Flash objects, and other media objects fully support static caching. LiveBall pages are dynamically generated on each hit, to provide highly accurate tracking and personalization features. However, LiveBall’s server farm, based at a tier 1 facility on state-of-the-art hardware, is managed 24/7 to assure lightning fast response times, even on dynamic pages.
URLs free of tracking parameters and session IDs. By default, the URLs of LiveBall pages are completely free of tracking parameters and session IDs. However, you have the option of adding any query string parameters that you want, if you’re also using a third-party tracking or analytics system that requires them.
Customizable URL structure. URLs in LiveBall are easily customizable and can include as many (or as few) directory levels in the path as you want. You have complete flexibility to change—or keep consistent—these URL structures across each of your LiveBall landing pages and microsites independently.
301 redirects to a canonical URL. LiveBall fully supports canonical URLs three ways: (1) with an optional tag on individual pages; (2) with an SEO “canonical path” that can be set for each traffic source when multiple versions of the content are being A/B tested; and (3) with support for 301 redirects when a traffic source should be permanently redirected to a new authoritative destination.
Static-looking URLs. By default, all LiveBall pages appear as static .html pages without any query string parameters. (You have the option of adding custom query string parameters, if so desired, to support third-party tracking or analytics.)
Keywords in URLs. Each page in LiveBall can contain any keywords in its URL that you want.
RSS feeds. Not applicable—applies to blogs and news feeds.
Tagging and tag clouds. Not applicable—applies primarily to blogs. However, if you wish to incorporate a tag cloud-like interface in a LiveBall landing page or microsite, you can certainly do so.
Multilevel categorization structure. Multi-step landing pages and microsites in LiveBall can have any categorization structure you want, and their URL paths are fully customizable.
Paraphrasable excerpts. Not applicable—applies to blogs.
Breadcrumb navigation. LiveBall microsites and multi-step landing pages can include any style of breadcrumb navigation.
Meta NoIndex tags for low-value pages. You can set meta robots tags on any page in LiveBall to indicate NoIndex, NoFollow, and/or NoArchive (by default, pages are Index, Follow, and Archive).
Keyword-rich intro copy on category-level pages. LiveBall is often used to present targeted landing pages as an introduction into deeper e-commerce category pages; all copy on these pages can be completely customized with search optimal keywords.
NoFollow links in comments. Not applicable—applies to blogs.
Customizable anchor text on navigational links. When using LiveBall to produce microsites—or interface to your primary web site’s navigation—you can customize the anchor text on every link, in navigation or content.
XML Sitemap generator. LiveBall automatically generates an XML sitemap that includes all microsites and landing pages for a domain (unless you choose to have it not do so for certain campaigns). LiveBall’s XML sitemaps automatically include the “last modified” property and a configurable “priority” property for each traffic source.
XHTML validation. This is supported by the very architecture of LiveBall. Designers have complete flexibility in creating beautiful pages templates that adhere to brand standards and XHTML validation. These templates can then be uploaded to LiveBall where front-line marketers can dynamically substitute content for specific campaigns without any risk of coding mistakes.
Pingbacks, trackbacks, comments, and antispam mechanisms. Not applicable—applies to blogs.
Out of the 27 CMS features The Art of SEO recommends, LiveBall fully implements 22 of them — and the remaining 5 are not applicable because they only apply to blogs, not landing pages or microsites.
