livebooks blog

What’s next once you have finished creating your website? Publishing it for everyone to see! This instructional video shows you how to add your domain name to your liveBooks settings and helps set up all DNS records to correctly point to your liveBooks site. Note: GoDaddy is used in as the registrar example but all settings and changes apply to any domain provider.

If you have any questions while publishing your site, we urge you to contact our Support team at support@livebooks.com!

Have you been paying attention to how your website’s search engine mobile performance results have been doing? If you haven’t, it’s time to start now! Google has now announce that it will create a mobile index separate from its existing search engine. Due to the fact that over half of Google searches are now being made through mobile devices, it was only a matter of time before Google took actions to improve its users’ experience.

Google plans to create two separate web indexes – one dedicated to mobile pages and another to desktop pages. Mobile versions of the pages will be prioritized on its search results page. A desktop version will be displayed if the website has no mobile pages available.

What Does This Mean to Your Website?

Google will now place value on mobile pages when indexing a site and determining its position on search results. Once Google sets the change in motion, websites that do not have mobile-friendly designs will likely see significantly reduced search engine traffic.

If you host your mobile content on a separate subdomain, this could cause some problems for your search engine results. This is to say that if, for example, a mobile user attempted to access “yourcompany.com” on a mobile phone, they might see the URL displayed as “mobile.yourcompany.com”. If this is the case for your website, it may be time to revise the content you display on the mobile website. Google will be prioritizing the content on that subdomain rather than your desktop version.

Testing Your Website

You can now test how your mobile website is seen by Google’s web crawlers! Visit Google’s test for mobile friendliness to find out how your website performs. You will enter your website’s URL and click the “Analyze” button. If you’re website is seen as mobile-friendly, a green message will display letting you know.

liveBooks is Ready for Google’s Mobile Index. Are you?

liveBooks is ready for this change in search engine indexing! We are proud to say that all liveBooks websites are fully-responsive. Regardless of screen size, your website will adjust its width and features such as text and images to optimize its mobile visibility.

If you haven’t started using liveBooks yet, start your free trial and begin creating your beautiful, fully-responsive website today!

The liveBooks team has been working vigorously this year to migrate many of its clients from the Flash-based Legacy platform to the HTML5-based liveBooks8 platform. The HTML5 platform offers responsive templates that you are readily able to edit on your desktop, tablet or mobile devices! With it a ton of new features are also available – including advanced SEO tools and options for customizations, such as varied portfolio and gallery layouts, a library of hundreds of font choices, drag and drop design, in-line editing tools and much more!

In addition to the added features that the HTML5 platform offers, there is one big reason why you should migrate from your Flash website as soon as possible. All major browsers have already set into motion the blocking of flash sites!

Safari:
In June, Apple announced that the version of Safari that comes on macOS Sierra will block Flash by default across all websites. This means that if your website runs on Flash, your visitors will be greeted by the following message:

Apple has taken a very big stand against Flash since 2007. This is due in part to Flash websites having slow loading times, being a drain on laptop batteries, and continually having security issues. The measures that Apple has taken will continue to detract visitors from visiting your Flash website.
(Sources: PetaPixel, The Verge)

Chrome:
Google announced in May that Chrome would start to block Flash websites with the launch of Chrome 53 in September. More importantly – in December 2016, Chrome 55 will make HTML5 the default experience. Those websites that only run on Flash will need to be enabled by the user to display properly.
(Source: Chrome Blog)

Firefox:
Mozilla Firefox will retire Adobe Flash as soon as 2017. With the release of Firefox 53, Flash plug-ins will require the user to actively click-to-play. Though Mozilla hasn’t directly stated that Flash will be completely retired after the click-to-play change, the move is apparent.
(Source: ARS Technica)

Though Adobe Flash helped make the Web a rich and dynamic experience, a new generation of technology has pushed for a big change in website platforms. The liveBooks8 platform is the optimal choice for our Flash users to transition to.

To learn more about liveBooks8 and its main features, please visit this link.

To see our migration options and schedule your migration, please visit this link.

Search engine optimization, also known as SEO, is one of the most important features that your website can have. SEO is the ability for online search engines to recognize your site through proper indexing. With a sound SEO strategy, you will be able to organically drive customers to your business, based on keywords and common search terms.

The liveBooks8 platform allows you the ability to add SEO settings on an image/page level as well as site-wide level. This article will focus on the setting for page level SEO settings. To begin adding SEO settings to your pages, see below:

1. From the Content tab, enter your page by clicking its title
2. On the righthand sidebar, select SEO and dropdown the settings
3. You will notice 5 input boxes: Title Tag, Description, Keywords, Navigation Label, and Canonical URL.

• Title Tags: the title of the page that you see in your tab of the browser
• Description Tag: a concise explanation of the content of your web page for search engines to crawl through
• Keywords: keywords relevant to your business to be crawled and catalogues by search engines (separate keywords with commas)
• Navigation Label: set a different title/label for the navigation menu on your site
  • For example, yoursite.com/about-us can be changed to yoursite.com/abouttheteam
• Canonical URL: helps prevent duplicate content from being indexed
  • If someone tries to copy the information you have on your website to theirs, search engines will recognize you as the primary owner of the content!
• The first toggle option will allow search engines to index your site and display it in search results (we recommend always having it on!)
• The second toggle option will allow search engines to follow links and index them as well (we recommend always having it on as well!)

4. Select Publish and you are finished!

Is there a new liveBooks feature that you are excited to learn more about? Let us know at social@livebooks.com.