livebooks blog

Happy National Password Day!

Today we’re celebrating National Password Day, a salute to our most important online data and the crypto-keys that guard it. The average business user has at least 191 Open Sesames for their online accounts and hidden treasures, a true testament of how much of our activity takes place online. This contemporary status quo is the medium in which we’ve added a new and exciting feature to our websites: the Password Protection feature for private galleries, pages and items.

Password Protection 101

As photographers, we understand that some of your commissioned work is not for the general public, but for your clients’ eyes only, and we respect that. We also feel that your brand should accompany all of your work, and since your liveBooks site is the extension of your business, we figured it should also be the place to host your private collections. The Password Protection feature allows you to share galleries, pages or items only with those whom you’ve given the password to. It’s meant to ease the access to your private work while ditching the third image upload parties for your own personal cyberspace.

How to enable Password Protection

Go to your content editor and click on any page, item or gallery you want to make private. On the right side of the page you’ll see the Password dropdown field. Tick the “Require password” module and set your preferred password. Remember, this is a key you will share with your clients, so use something generic and simple. And don’t worry if you forget it: every time you access the protected page in your content editor, your password will be visible to you. Now your gallery, while still on your website, can only be accessed with the right key.

• When the password protection feature is enabled on a page, a lock icon will appear next to its title in the content editor.
• Using Password Protection on your home page will lock the entire website.

Just private, not hidden

Any page or item can be protected by a password on your liveBooks site. They will appear on your menu, in your dropdowns, on your pages, keeping your website’s style and feel. When you try to access them, a pop-up will notify you that until you type what you’re supposed to type, you shall not pass!

Once your clients enter the protected area, they can roam around the portfolio for as long as they want. For security reasons, we’ve added an extra layer of idle and off-site security: if you refresh the page or navigate to another one, the session will automatically close after five minutes. Don’t worry, you can login again with the same password.

Your pop-up style

When you first enable your password protection feature, the pop-up you’ll get will be set in plain neutral colors. Of course, you can leave it as it is, but you can use your brand palette to give it your look. To do this, go to your design editor, in Sitewide choose Style and the Password Protection setting will be the bottom one.

Take some time to play around with the style settings, colors, sizes and backgrounds. When you’re happy with the result, save, publish and you’re done!

Password Protection is available on all packages, so no one is left out of this wonderful and useful feature. Don’t have an account to test this on yet?

Go ahead and sign up for a free trial today!

We wish you all a happy and safe National Password Day!

Search engine optimization (also known as SEO) is a long-term process that can help your website show up higher on search results. Ranking on the first page of Google never happens overnight, but it’s better to start trying sooner rather than later.

If you are just starting out and not sure which steps to take to begin optimizing your website, here are some simple steps you can take to begin the process:

Generate More Content

Having several pages that describe your services, products and company history is great. But in order to rank highly, you’ll need to start publishing more content on a regular basis.

Building an online blog is one of the easiest ways to boost your SEO. Why? Because it tells search engines like Google that you are actively engaging in the online conversation surrounding your industry. Blogging also provides additional content, keywords, images and more for search engine’s to search through.

Companies that publish relevant, informative content online will rank higher on search engines. If you aren’t one of them, you will lose out to those that do.

If you struggle with creating content on a regular basis, consider setting aside one day a month to schedule content out in advance. Or hire a freelancer to help you!

Add More Keywords to Your Website

Although you never want to make it sound like a computer wrote your website, you may want to review the current web pages you have to ensure you’re including the right keywords to begin with.

While you read the content you already have up, keep your eyes peeled for keywords you know your potential audience may use on search engines to find you.

If you already have a large following and great brand awareness, make sure you have your company name listed in an appropriate amount of places. If you are a fairly unknown company, but have specific services or products others may search for, it’s vital that you begin listing out those services in detail.

One great way to see what phrases people commonly use surrounding your business or industry is to begin typing in keywords on Google. As you type, you’ll see related phrases and common search queries come up underneath the search bar. You’ll also find an area of “related” search terms at the bottom of your results list. Use these keywords and phrases (also known as long-tail keywords) in your website copy when it sounds appropriate.

Drive More Traffic

Whether you are regularly engaged on social media, or you’ve started a great email list of contacts who want to stay in-the-know about your company, find ways to drive free traffic to your website.

The more traffic you bring to your website, the more that search engines will see you as a relevant source of information. When that happens, your ranking starts to increase over time. It’s a great way to connect all of your marketing efforts and easily begin boosting your SEO — for free!

Improve Your Web Design

liveBooks offers stunning, customizable website templates for wedding industry professionals and creatives.

Impress your potential clients with a visually stunning website that is ready for search engines and looks great on any mobile device!

We’ve also got a top-notch support team who’s here to help you every step of the way. Start for free today!

It’s easy to build your liveBooks website from scratch by yourself; it’s also quite possible that some things will be left out. We want to make sure that all your parameters are properly filled, so that you won’t have any technical hiccups down the line. Here’s a list of five liveBooks features and why they’re so important for your website building process.

1. Canonical URLs

In your liveBooks content editor each page has its own presence, with specific content and design, but the search engines might not see it that way. In fact, when the “crawlers” go through your website and index it, they might get confused and see some pages as duplicates – a nuisance, especially when you spend so much time make each of your pages unique.

The fix: Go through each of your pages or items and open the SEO and Sharing dropdown. Make sure the Title tag and the Canonical URL fields read the same info. Do this for every page and search engines will never again get confused. Remember to do this every time you add a new page or item.

2. Search Engine Optimization

We’ve covered the importance of SEO, so go ahead and check that out for a comprehensive guide through your liveBooks SEO Everything™ feature. You’ll find all the info you need on the three main pillars of proper SEO in a liveBooks website:

• Overall website SEO
• Page SEO
• Image SEO

3. Image Size

All we want is for your clients to see your photographs and services in great quality and for them to show and load as fast as possible. To ensure that visitors, humans and bots, won’t leave your site due to slow loading time, resize your photos accordingly.

The fix: Photographs don’t need to be more than 72 dpi (dots per inch) for digital purposes. Most photographs, however, start around 300 dpi, causing them to be bigger in size (bytes). Ideally, images should be around 200-800 KB maximum each. We’ve covered this subject in greater detail here, so make sure you check it out!

4. Legacy URLs

This applies only to those who have migrated their old site to our liveBooks platform and ensures that their old links redirect to their new website. This is helpful with both search engine bots that are now able to find your new website, and to clients who bookmarked pages from your previous online presence.

The fix: Go to Settings – Legacy URLs. Copy all links from your old website and redirect them to your new pages. Do this for all pages! If the old link doesn’t correspond to either of your new pages, add the redirects to the homepage.

5. Responsive Design Review

This aspect is something that can easily be overlooked, but with great consequences on the mobile experience. Our platform features are all responsive and designed to look great on all devices. Still, editable factors such as padding or page and gallery names can sometimes interfere with the smooth design we create in every template. So when you build your website yourself, double-check that all pages look sharp. Just go in the design editor and toggle between all the devices.

If you have any other questions, remember that our award-winning support team is ready and happy to help! Good luck and have fun creating your new liveBooks website!

These days, nearly every business has a website. While this is by and large a good thing, it does mean the competition to win the hearts of online audiences is more steep than ever before.

But how do you go about that? What will make your website stand out, generate leads and satisfy customers?

No need to fret. Here are a handful of factors you can focus on that will help you go from being just another one, to being the one your ideal customers will gravitate to time and time again.

Quality Imagery

Have you been using photographs from 5 or 10 years ago? Or are you relying on traditional clip-art as your graphics?

If you’re going to get serious about your website, the visuals need to show it. One way to ensure you have a set of quality images to use for your website is to hire a branding or commercial photographer, alongside a graphic designer.

And if you already have high quality images, take it up a notch by making videos! All of the biggest names in marketing are talking about how fast video content is trending on every digital platform, which means that adding videos to your website can be a way to stand out from those stuck in the past.

Top-Notch Content

The phrase “content is king” has become a popular phrase to describe just how important text is for your website. And in more ways than one!

Every word you include on your website has the ability to either have an impact on your ideal audience . . . or lose them altogether. Make them count by being informative, engaging and valuable.

You’ll also find that the more high-quality content you have on your website, the better your chances of ranking well on search engines.

Blogs

Having a website these days simply isn’t enough to be found on Google.

Utilize a company blog to increase your ranking while also providing useful information to your audience. Although many business owners don’t think their industry or company could reap benefits from having a blog, it’s often more doubt than fact.

Company blogs today don’t have to fit the traditional idea of a personal blog. Think of any hot topic or debate in your industry. Think of your previous clients and the specific ways you’ve made a difference.

A blog can easily be used as a portfolio, compilation of case studies, a journal of industry insight and experience, and a whole lot more. Go outside of the box!

Social Media Links

Your website can be the “hub” that all of your other marketing efforts are connected to. While some clients or customers may find you on social media first, others may find your website and be interested to see your social media content afterwards.

Be sure to include links to your social media accounts on your website, either on your website’s footer, contact page, or about page.

Mobile Optimization

Within the last year, search engines have started to adjust their algorithms to place more weight on websites that are optimized for mobile devices.

What does this mean for you? If your website is responsive for a wide range of devices, you will win out against those that aren’t.

Create a Beautiful Website Today

liveBooks offers stunning, customizable website templates for wedding industry professionals and creatives.

Impress your potential clients with a visually stunning website that is ready for search engines and looks great on any mobile device!

We’ve also got a top-notch support team who’s here to help you every step of the way. Start for free today!