subject: CMS and SEO: A boon/disaster relationship [print this page] CMS and SEO: A boon/disaster relationship
If you are engaged in online marketing, then most likely you are concerned with your site's or your client's site rankings on major search engines. In fact, for many businesses (especially online businesses), search engine optimization is becoming the meat and potatoes of their marketing efforts. A site that is not being found by its target visitors is like a hotel without its name: you may offer great hospitality services, but no one knows that you exist!
SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, is a strategy intended to enhance recognition of a site by major search engines. The goal of SEO isto have your website appear on or close to page one of search results on Google and other major search engines for keywords relevant to your business.The result SEO activities give includesbeing found by your potential customers which means more traffic to your site and ultimately more sales.
Search engine optimization is a tough business since its tactics are based on thorough analysis of search engines' algorithms to determine which elements make certain sites rank higher than others. As search engines are constantly refining their algorithms to eliminate spam, the factors that affect site rankings also change. As a result, SEO ends up being an evolving process, especially for broad keywords where competition is very aggressive.
Many organizations today implement content management systems to facilitate the process of making website updates. A CMS typically includes the back-end where authorized users can manage the site content, and the front-end (the public website) where this content is rendered to the site visitors.
When an organization decides to implement a content management system, it typically considers an array of factors that influence the decision of selecting one content management solution over another: cost of the CMS, implementation time, built-in list of features, opportunities for customization, reliability of support. The importance of SEO-friendliness as a factor in the CMS selection process is often overlooked.
Migrating from a static HTML site to a database-driven Web site poses many challenges, especially if a site already has outstanding search engine traffic. If you purchase a content management system (CMS) that doesn't generate search-engine friendly Web pages, then your site's "natural," or organic, search engine traffic can disappear.
Implementing a CMS can be a boon to SEO efforts,but it can be a disaster because many CMS systems were not designed with search engine marketing in mind. Some specific problems that content generated by this kind of CMS has in being indexed by search engines include:
Dynamic URLs: Search engines are programmed to limit the number of dynamic pages they index, and the primary way they determine pages are dynamic is through page URLs with special characters (%&=).
Bad meta tags: Meta tags are the HTML code components that search engines use to evaluate what a page is about.Many CMS systems do not allow users to assign unique, relevant TITLE and DESCRIPTION meta tags to content.These are important tools to help search engines understand your pages.
Keyword poor URLs: Even systems that do not use dynamic URLs often do not let you create URLs that include keywords. Keyword-rich URLs are an important step in optimizing your pages to rank well in search engines.
Search engine unfriendly design: If a page has the look and feel you want, does the underlying code matter?In one word, yes!Search engines can't see the page, so all they have to go on is the code.It is possible for designers and CMS systems alike to create pages that are virtually invisible to search engine spiders because of text in images,script-based navigation, overuse of AJAX and a host of other practices.On the other hand, it is possible through practices like semantic markup and CSS based layout and navigation to create pages that search engines can easily crawl and understand.
Search Engine Friendly CMS Systems:-
Lots of systems now advertise that they are "search engine ready" or "search engine friendly", but be sure to look at the fine print --- what they often mean is that a programmer can modify the system with add-ons (e.g. the Apache "mod-rewrite" extension) to not damage search engine results. This kind of approach can certainly work, but it does require need developers available who know CMS systems and SEO as well as the ability to add modules or change the configuration of your Web server. A much better solution is a CMS that directly implements common SEO tasks (human/search engine readable URLs, 301 redirects, meta tags) right in the tool with no additional server configuration required.
The solution: a Search Engine Optimizing CMS:
In order to get the best of both worlds --- the convenience and management advantages of a CMS and the site promotion advantages of SEO --- you need a search engine optimizing CMS. At a minimum, the CMS should not create URLs and content that engines refuse to index because it looks dynamic. The system should also allow you to create relevant, per-page meta tags and titles. And, the system should present content using navigation menus that search engines will follow.
To really make the most of your content in reaching better search engine rankings, your CMS users must easily be able to optimize content as they create it. For this, you need a CMS that allows non-technical users to easily specify keyword rich URLs, title tags, descriptions and image alt text. The system should provide feedback on these elements in terms of how they will impact the page's performance for selected keywords. This kind of CMS allows users to create and optimize content in one tool rather than having to switch back and forth between a CMS and a set of SEO tools.
The one thing that many CMS's do is create dynamic URLs that are hard to read - and most search engines don't like those. But the biggest problem with CMS tools is not the tool itself, but the people using it. If you're running a website with 4 Web designer/developers and 96 content owners in the CMS, chances are you have 4 people who understand SEO and work hard to create pages that are optimized and 96 people who are just trying to get their content up on the site as quickly as possible. If you don't train your content developers how to write SEO friendly content, how to add meta data, and how to create strong sub-titles your CMS will generate pages that are not well optimized. But that's not the CMS's fault.
Before you purchase any CMS, make sure the CMS system generates a user-friendly and spider-friendly URL. Second, don't rely on the CMS company's staff to generate search-engine friendly design templates for you. All too often, these CMS companies don't have usability professionals or truly qualified SEO experts on staff. If your current design templates are effective, they should easily integrate into the CMS with a few modifications.
Whichever CMS you may be analyzing, make certain that none of them create their own title tags, which are most of the time off-topic.If the CMS program is well-designed for the search engines, it will let the user write informative and effective title tags.When buying your CMS program , make sure it is search engine friendly.
Suggestions:
Things you should look for when evaluating a CMS from a SEO standpoint:
When selecting your CMS software, make sure that it supports search engine friendly URLs
When selecting your CMS software, ensure that you can manage the following for each page:
Page Title Tag
Meta Description
Meta Keywords
Ensure that your next CMS software supports cascading style sheets
Ensure that the WYSIWYG editors reuse the existing style definitions instead of creating new ones for each piece of content.
Disable the font definitions in the WYSIWYG editors
Select a CMS that comes with code-validation utilities
Select a content management system that comes with site mapping capabilities
Select a CMS that allows your users to have full control over image Alt tags and file names.
The importance of how a content management system can impact your site's SEO ranking should not be overlooked. Implementing a content management system designed with SEO in mind, and properly training your content contributors on SEO best practices can make a huge difference in your marketing efforts.
