CMS SEO

Search engine optimization is largely about good content, right? So implementing a Web Content Management System (CMS) will be a big help to your Search Engine Optimization (SEO) efforts because it will help you create fresh, interesting content, right? Not necessarily.

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:

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) shouldn't be the most important thing on your website; it is just a 'tool' to help you improve the website!The first thing you have to do on your website is, of course, have well written (unique) content! If you haven't got anything interesting to say on your site, what will a visitor do? He (she) is going to the next one, somebody else's. CMS Made Simple provides components (which can be used in combination with Smarty) to create a very accessible and search engine friendly website.

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.

CONTENT AUTHORS, CMS SYSTEMS AND YOUR SEO EFFORTS

If you've figured out how to have your CMS create search engine friendly content, then your content authors should be able create great optimized content, right? Again, not necessarily. Most CMS users are not knowledgeable about SEO and paying SEO professionals to learn your CMS and then use it to optimize all your content can be cost prohibitive. This means that your content authors will need help to create optimized content.

SEO help for non-experts (and experts too) exists in the form of many, many online and desktop tools. These tools will analyze content and report on how it is likely to perform in search engines. But, there is a limit to how many different tools your content authors can learn and are willing to use. You should also not underestimate the convenience factor. Studies have shown that exercise equipment that is always set up and available will be used on average more than twice as much as equipment that requires even minimal set-up. The same holds true for using SEO tools while creating Web content. Using external SEO tools creating content in a CMS is time consuming and repetitive. At the very least, users need to be in one tool to create content and another to analyze it. In many cases, the SEO tools cannot optimize content until the pages can be viewed live from a URL on the Web, so content that has not yet been published cannot be optimized.