The Question:
I'm starting a new site and have no idea what I should do for software. Do I need to use a content management system, and if so, how do I make sure it's SEO-friendly?
The Answer: It depends...
I want to try taking a new tact with this blog post and give some direction about how to approach this issue. There's no way to tackle the question from every angle in every possible way (at least, not without 100 pages of content), but hopefully, when you refer your friend who's launching a website or your new startup's VP of Engineering to this page, they'll find some helpful starting points. NOTE - This post isn't going to cover specific CMS platforms. There's some great web resources already out there like www.opensourcecms.com and www.cmsmatrix.org to help manage this task. Instead, this blog post will help you determine the essential questions to ask of your stakeholders before embarking on a web development project.
The first part of the question determines your need for a Content Management System (CMS), and I've made a handy flowchart to guide you through the process:
Nowadays, it's exceptionally rare for a company or even a private site owner to select a static site, even when a content management system isn't required due to the inexpensiveness of customizing free platforms like Drupal, Joomla, Wordpress, or Mambo.
On to the second portion of our query - how to ensure that a CMS will be search-engine friendly. Below are 12 basic SEO issues that frequently plague content management systems (both pre-built and custom-made). By dealing with these, you'll ensure a relatively smooth platform for content delivery:
- Title Tag Customization & Rules
A search-engine friendly CMS must allow for title tags to not only be customized on a page-specific level, but also enable rules for particular sections of a website. For example, if your site offered a blog, several static pages, and a forum, you might want to create a rule that all blog pages would begin with "Yoursite Blog > " while forum pages used "title of post > Yoursite Forum." - Static, Keyword-Rich URLs
URLs have historically been the most problematic SEO issue for CMS platforms. Nowadays, search-friendly content management systems should feature custom URL creation. Here's an example from SEOmoz's custom-built CMS:
_
_
Notice how the first line allows me to create the title of the post, while the second enables manual sculpting of the URL structure (and an automatic "generate" button if I'd prefer to simply use the post title). - Meta Tag Customization
The meta description and robots tags are the two critical ones (mentioned in detail here). Enabling editorial control is essential for a good CMS. - Enabling Custom HTML Tags
A good CMS has to offer extra functionality on HTML tags for things like "nofollow" on links, or <hx> tags for headlines and subheadlines. These can be built-in features accessible through menu options, or the CMS can simply allow a manual editing of HTML in the text editor window when required. - Internal Anchor Text Flexibility
In order to be "optimized" rather than simply search-friendly, customizing the anchor text on internal links is critical. Rather than simply making all links in a site's architecture the page's title, a great CMS should be flexible enough to handle custom input from the admins as to the anchor text of category-level or global navigation links. - Intelligent Categorization Structure
A close second to poor URLs is poor category structure. When designing an information architecture for a website, there should be no limits placed on how pages are accessible due to the CMS' inflexibility. CMS that offer customizable navigation panels will be most successful in this respect. - Pagination Controls
As pagination can be the bane of a website's search rankings (see here and here), controlling it through careful use of nofollows and meta noindex tags will make your important content get more link juice and crawl attention. - 301-Redirect Functionality
Many CMS sadly lack this critical feature, disallowing the proper re-direction of content when necessary. 301s are valuable for expired content, pages that have a newer version, and dodging keyword cannibalization issues. - XML/RSS Pinging
Although it's primarily useful for blogs, any content, from articles to press releases, can be issued in a feed, and by utilizing quick, accurate pinging of the major feed services, you limit some of your exposure to duplicate content spammers who pick up your feeds and ping the major services quickly in the hopes of beating you to the punch. - Image-Handling & Alt Tags
Alt tags are a clear must-have from an SEO perspective, serving as the "anchor text" when an image links and providing relevant, indexable content for the search engines. Images in a CMS' navigational elements should preferably use CSS-Image Replacement rather than mere alt tags, though the difference in our testing has been fairly small. - CSS Exceptions
The application of CSS styles in a proper CMS should allow for manual exceptions so a user can modify how a strong, headline, or list element appears visually. If they don't, writers may opt out of using proper semantic markup for presentation purposes. - Static Caching Options
Many CMS currently offer caching options, which are a particular boon if a page is receiving a high level of traffic from social media portals or news sites. Bulky CMS often make dozens of extraneous database connections, which can overwhelm a server if caching is not in place, killing potential inlinks and media attention.
I'd love to hear more in the comments about particular struggles you've had with CMS from an SEO perspective and what other features you think are important for a good CMS to offer. I'd also be interested to know more about anyone's specific experience with the various CMS platforms available (free and paid), and if you've got a favorite.
Nice approach Rand. Too often discussions on blog platforms or CMS becomes a recommendation based on experience and needs... but those experiences and needs may not match up to someone else's.
As for recommendations, one to check into and watch is MODx, which won Packt Publishing's "Most Promising Open Source CMS" award for 2007.
It is really a framework, so it may not be entirly plug-n-play, where you toggle on or off a few standard modules. But you can take an existing site and bring it over into MODx without any changes if you want... so SEO-friendly and web standards-based designers should love it. SEO friendliness is, for the most part, limited only by the designer/developer's ability or desire.
One of the challenges in looking at any CMS is that "SEO" has become a buzz word added to nearly every feature list. Of course, what this typically means is that it is "SEO-friendly" (hopefully at least). Of course there is a lot of looseness then within this definition, so a better understanding of your list above should be helpful for anyone in the market.
Like anything else, a CMS is just a tool, and even the most SEO-friendly of tools can fail misreably if used incorrectly. The real power of tapping into the full benefits comes back to having a strong foundation of knowledge of SEO practices.
Hello Identity ... and the rest, of course
New to the moz family I was looking for some information on cms systems and being through with Joomla and many otheres (I can't really see one single reason why there is so much fuzz about joomla, except it's free, too) I had a close-uplook on MODx and being NOT a programmer but designer at first I have to say, YEP, I will definitely spend some more time on that cms.
Thanks for the tip, indeed.
And Randfish ...GREAT post about SEO+CMS, indeed. I trust this will help many our colleagues and me out there to upgreat our service!
Thanks
Hey Rand! Nice post. Here's a few on my wishlist:
1) Robots.txt editor - needs no explanation!
2) Httpd.ini editor (for isapi rewrite driven sites) - so i can hard code my invisible redirects / permananent 301 rules
3) Dynamic / historic redirects (the page url is changed, the cms automatically creates the redirect unless instructed not to set it up)
4) User upgradable cloaking / session id / ua detection. Ok, so a new bot appears - how the heck do you update the config file?!
5)The ability to user define any url. No catch alls, no content ids, pure user defined urls. Sweet.
6) Dynamic meta code generated from global meta template manager - eg: [pagetitle] - news from SEOmoz - overridden of course by meta code added directly to the page.
Also for meta tag customisation, I think it's key to have an area you can paste all your meta code into, rather than being restricted to "title", "keywords" etc etc. Look what happened when the NOODP and NO Yahoo tags came out! Meta code templates can change a lot, why restrict the user to specific fields?
One last thing... a fully meta code managable homepage!
cheers, richardbaxterseo
I think there's one CMS that has a couple of the things you need: Hot Banana. The name is suspicious, I know ;-) but its from a sister company to Clicktracks.
I wonder if Rand knows this CMS (or anyone else)? They sell it as a "award-winning Web Content Management System (Web CMS - SEO CMS) For Marketing that helps marketers build and manage SEO-friendly Web sites".
Has anyone had first hand experience with them?
We have an in-house CMS, which is pretty SEO friendly, but still evolving.
Hot Banana is defintely one of the better CMS system when it comes to SEO. They actually have SEO specialists on staff and take the time to develop their product with SEO considerations in mind. In my opinion, this is the exception, not the rule for. Lots of CMS companies say their product is `SEO friendly`, but I struggle with really understanding what this often means. I also fully endorse the use of open source CMS tools developed with Joomla, etc. and I have seen many that work well.
Super Post from Rand.
I would start by adding a few items to the list:
1./ As a best practice, the ability to segregate production from publishing. Why? Sites do go down because of a CMS application upgrade issue or bugs, not because of the actual webserver load or webpages themselves. On top of it, this ease tremendeously portability of websites to different webhosts as required.
2./ Ability to manage in an integrated fashion not only one site but multiple sites. This means that if I change a link on one of my website, the others know about it, and update these links automatically.
3./ A vast number of SEO automation and implementation utilities, including rules based creation of URL's and meta tags, auto-population of fields, auto-optimization of text formatting, and more...allthewhile allowing human based fine grainage and modifications.
4./ If I'm a SEO specialist, the ability to manage all my client projects/websites trhough this single system, and broadcast rules changes across all clients/projects/sites
5./ This brings us to life cycle management, everytiome you change something, basically the system createsa/mend the appropriate 301's, links, etc...
As a disclaimer, I run a company called SEO Samba which has designed an SEO platform that does all of this, and a (lot) more.
Michel.
Good addition to Rand's brilliant post Mr Baxter. However please if you could shed some more light on points no 2, 4 and ''a fully meta code manageable homepage'' would be great.
cheers @GavSethi
Good addition to Rand's brilliant post Mr Baxter. However please if you could shed some more light on points no 2, 4 and ''a fully meta code manageable homepage'' would be great.
cheers @GavSethi
The web firm i currently work for has developed an AWESOME CMS... It has nearly all the 'special features' and can custom program additional features if desired! Check it out here: Fission Web System.com
I designed somewhere in the neighborhood of 30 Wordpress CMS/blogs in 2007. If I had the ability to go back in time to do 2007 over again I would make at least 15 of those site static or semi-static (limited database functionality). I’ve learned that there are at least two major questions you should be asking yourself before starting any design.
First I will tackle the functionality question. You hit a nice point in your flow chart asking…”Will non-developers be updating content?” Of course we all don’t have the time to teach our clients HTML. I think we need to ask “What exactly do they need to edit?”. If you find that your client isn’t interested in blogging and only wants to change a few rates here and there don’t try to force a CMS on them. I would build a very limited database to handle the rates and make the rest static.
Aside from the WYSIWYG, which I despise, I only see two major functionality advantages you can get in a CMS that aren’t easy to add to a static site.
You might say well it offers RSS, it automatically categorizes my pages, it allows me to use 10 of my favorite widgets…I say your RSS isn’t a problem, it’s only a simple xml file. The Wordpress categorization features are a joke. I would gladly trade all that away to have the flexibility to easily hand craft my information architecture. The widgets…YUK…I know it is important to interact with the community but I think we would all be better off with 90% fewer widgets.
The second question deals with time. I don’t think very many people really take this into account. If you are a web developer with the ability to easily craft a static website and you have already determined the site does not need CMS features then it should be simple. I figure it takes me a minimum of 10-20 hours longer to build a site as a CMS. I also figure that on average a CMS might save me 5 minutes per page of content. So, based on that, if you plan on adding more than 120 pages in the first year then it’s possible that you might save some time going with a CMS. Otherwise, go static and use that extra time to develop content.
I just can't agree more with you than a total 100% But I can do that many times, right? ;-)
From all clients we had for CMS, NON of them is actually (can) using it. I am a static fan and love the freedom of design and seo control.
And that count more to my lients than the countless fancy, blinking widgets and badgets and so many other stuff.
If you build, however, a dating or any other community sharing website, then it's ok. They love Xmas everyday
One thing I wanna add, however, is even with a site of 100+ pages it's no big deal to apply changes ... I do this now already with simple php includes and I am not a php programmer.
Excellent post Rand. Great recommendations. Back in 1999 when I launched the real estate website, I asked the web developer agency to create a system so I could update the information. They did, but with a terrible error, I was able to delete and add new properties but I wasn't able to update the information. It was a nightmare because any error meant that we had to delete the property and submit the information again. Months later I decide to hire another programmer who changed the system and also add a CMS for the homepage (which used to be a static page, totally useless). It was great. Most of the real estate agencies back then had institutional websites with no property listings so we had a good competitive advantage that is paying off today. So my recommendation is: see what your competitors are offering on their website and try to go beyond that, offer something they don’t (of course it has to be something valuable for the customer).
I'll talk about Drupal since I'm currently converting a site from a custom CMS to Drupal.Title Tags - currently uses whatever name you use for a page title. So if you name a page "The best CMS for SEO" that's going to show in your title tag as well as in an H1 header tag (for most design themes anyway). Some may not want this duplication or want a 100% custom Title tag so they'll either have to code that themselves or find a module to do it. I haven't found a module that does that yet, but I only looked for 5-10 minutes.
URLs - If you use the alias module this allows you to create any url you want. You can create URLs off directories that don't exist. If you wanted you could create https://www.example.com/seo-guides/cms/choosing-the-best-cms-for-seo even though seo-guides and cms don't exist as directories. However, if you use a breadcrumbs module it's going to automatically create a breadcrumb with seo-guides and cms as parts of the path. There is a work around that will make these links either non-links or make them javascript(void) type links so they don't actually go anywhere when clicked on.
Custom HTML - you can control whether content allows custom HTML, custom PHP, a combo of both, or limited HTML such as the basic tags (H1, underline, link, etc).
Anchor Text - you can name this differently than the page. For example in the link above you could tell the system to use the anchor text "SEO and CMS - a checklist before you choose" and that would appear if you show place that link in a navigation category.
Categories - drupal has a Taxonomy system which lets you create unlimited categories and sub-categories and freely tag content however you want. As for "navigation panels" it allows you to create as many custom navigation menus as you'd like. You could then create a "block" that shows these custom navigation menus and create rules on whether or not to show the navigation. For example you could have a custom nav menu with links to your top 10 (in your opinion) articles about a certain subject and then you create a ruleset that only shows that navigation block when someone is on a related page (via the taxanomy system or by entering in specific content IDs to show the block).
I haven't dealt with pagination however since you can over-ride ANY function in Drupal I'd guess you could overwrite the pagination function to add a nofollow to next/previous and or page number links.
301 - I haven't dealt with this yet but I need to. Drupal makes you create pages without a following /. So if you create https://www.example.com/blog it will be accessible with or without the slash which we all know is bad. I believe there's a module out there that allows you to 301 any url with a trailing / but I'm not quite sure yet.
Pinging - yeah it has this
Alt Tags - when you use the Content Construction Kit (CCK) it has an image module which lets you use custom alt takes for images.
CSS Exceptions - Not sure really how good of an idea this is. The whole idea of a CMS and user based rulesets is because you do not want people using purple headlines on a pink background. Now see, with the CCK you create custom content types. For example a content type for SEOMoz would be a "whiteboard friday post". In it you would make required fields such as a video, a title, and a description. You can then customize the output of this "page" so that the title appears in a CSS styled H1 tag, the video appears below that, and then the comments appear below that. Now for a content type such as a "blog post" you would probably just have something like a title, and the content. It's hard to explain but once you "get" how the CCK works, it's an amazing system. Think of a recipe site where users enter in the data. You could create a CCK type that accepts X number of ingredients, cooking directions, a prep time, and a cooking time - so simple that anyone could easily enter a recipe. And you don't have to do any programming at all to get your system to show that custom form to the user or to create those fields in the database.
Caching - It has built in caching functionality.
Overall it's an extremely powerful CMS framework. However it does have a very high learning curve. If you have any type of IT background then it will blow your socks off but if you don't it's probably better to stick with a CMS that does most things out of the box like Joomla or WordPress.
Thanks a ton for the valuable information on Drupal, Bradley. We're almost always doing custom built work here (and frequently finding that our clients, due to their large size, also have custom systems), but Drupal sounds like a very powerful option, particularly with a little customization.
Drupal has everything you need. It is sometimes called a "framework", but it is more than something like Cake PHP because you have a full CMS out of the box.
I've been using Drupal for 2 years. Some people say that it has a steep learning curve, but I don't think so. Once you get the basics down it's very easy.
Benefits of Drupal over WordPress: better URL control and something called "CCK/Views". Also the theming is much better in Drupal.
Benefits of Drupal over Joomla: better SEO out of the box and the ability to do complex things without having to write code (CCK/Views).
Benefits of Drupal over lesser-known CMS: Drupal has a massive user base, helpful community, and is not going away. Also, CCK/Views...
You can actually create your own templates on both drupal and wordpress using artisteer, that's what I use, but yes, Drupal is much better. It is harder to teach clients that have less web experience as Wordpress has a simpler interface according to them, but Drupal is the way to go these days.
+1 for drupal - its great.
also wordpress works great for medium sized sites.
Drupal is very impressive and well thought out. But, as you mentioned, does have a very steep learning curve.
Not the best approach, but I was learning to work with Drupal while building a new site... I spent about a month or more on that.
About that time I discovered MODx. At that point I was so impressed with MODx that I shifted gears and instead developed it in MODx instead... in about 4 days. In doing so, I felt I gained greater flexibility and an easier system to manage.
BradleyT, sounds like you know your way around CMS and scripts, so I'd recommend taking a peek at MODx if you haven't before. Unlike the typical approach of most scripts that focus on something... community portal, blog, gallery, etc., MODx lets you use it to do what you want and need.
Drupal has a Page Title module that allows for the creation of custom title tags. Make sure you read the readme file when installing.
Drupal also has modules that let you create custom description tags for each page.
Global Redirect module handles many of the 301 issues discussed above.
Drupal rocks!
The Global Redirect Module removes trailing slashes with "301" redirects.
Use the Page Title Module. (Title elements)
Breadcrumb output can be controlled in your template.php file.
Some of the terminology in Drupal is a little strange (taxonomy, nodes, CCK, views), but once you get the basic concepts down I don't think that it's difficult to use.
I think that Drupal does more out of the box than Joomla. I haven't looked at Joomla in a long time, but the last time I did it didn't have clean URLs.
My experience has been that the ability to automate or input a 301 redirect command is always overlooked and very difficult to push through (with a CMS developer). One thing I've seen is that a CMS vendor will enable users to create unique HTML titles, headings and keyword-specific URL's, but they are all tied to the same database entry. Therefore, if you change the title, it changes everything else (including the URL) - and there is a need to make certain that all web page history can be retained (by way of a 301 redirect).
One "nice-to-have" feature that I've asked some of our clients for is a way to easily export data (any data) - whether that be for RSS creation, XML sitemaps or product feeds (for search engine services like Maps, Google Base etc). Even if it needed to be received in a .csv or tab delimited file, the information could be manipulated locally and then manually updated.
I gave up on static sites a long time ago. It would take countless robot work just to make a simple edit or addition to a sites template...even after doing a 'Find & Replace' in Dreamweaver. In Joomla or any other CMS, it's a change one change all and for that alone i think it's worth it. If you wanted to change the sites template itself, just flick a switch and your all set.
The best part is the number of add-on extensions available for Joomla sites. It is literally like a shopping spree for your site. I would only recommend to read through all the ratings and reviews before installing any extensions. The community is pretty good with addressing any problems you might have before you actually install it.
@Lt. Draper - you are right however I use ARTIO SEF URL's and haven't had any major problems between components since most of the popular components support it.
Since search engine "visibility" is so intimately linked to scheduled, regular content churn, I actively encourage my clients to consider at the very least a company 'blog.
I recently moved one of my major clients away from a bespoke CMS that I'd written to Joomla! which serves their needs very well.
The irony is, they don't really want to make the updates themselves as such, other than the odd sales figure. It's more about speeding things up for me.
I've added a bunch of Modules, for things like making the URLs search engine friendly. But again, that's not really the reason we did it, it's more to do with the client being able to email out links to their customers.
In truth, the whole website is poorly optimized, not least because Joomla! isn't exactly the best CMS for SEO.
But also because the client really doesn't care about being found on the search engines. There's only really 3 companies in the world in their space, so everyone they want to reach knows who they are anyway!
That's business for you...
I think the way you put that is what is called "damning with faint praise" the choice to not use a CMS.
I have no idea about any other Platform, but WordPress is capable of most if not all of your feature wishlist - with the right plugins / theme that is.
I am up to my friggin eye balls in a giant site migration from static/php to plone zope at this very moment in Sweden. I could go on for hours about the process, but I'll keep it down to two words.
Expect delays.
Plone is awesome, but its a monster.
OMG I just realised no one even mentioned Plone???
Are you serious!!! What CMS is Google using? Duh...
Content Management Manage content from any web browser (even mobile phone browsers)Limited use of graphics in default interface for strong focus on the information and fast downloadsUndo and transaction rollback capability. Editing In-browser rich (WYSIWYG) editor for editing any kind of textual content.Edit content in any application (such as Dreamweaver or Word) without having to move content from server to desktop.Can upload and translate many common Office file types: Microsoft Word, Excel, Powerpoint, OpenOffice files, RTF.Live editing - you update the site from the site itself - no specialised tools needed Workflow Built in workflow for editorial approval before publication.Workflow is completely flexible and configurable through the web.Different content types can use same or different workflow processes.Content can be edited or moved during workflow process. People can create a document in "My Folder" and have it appear in the correct location on publication. Content Types Comes with content types for common cases: news items, events, links, documentations, and more.Easy to create new content types without any programming skillsDozens of content types available as add-onsFlexible metadata; comes with Dublin Core metadata as standard Searching Built-in fast, flexible search engineGeneral search or specific searches (only on title, category, author, etc.)New search indexes can easily be addedSearching always shows latest information; no lag before published content appears in search results. Membership Built-in flexible membership systemUser authentication can use built-in database, LDAP, SMB, ActiveDirectory, relational databases, and many other systems.Authentication is pluggable, so new authentication methods can easily be added.User can be members of groups and groups can nest.Single sign-on - prevents users from having to log on to each area separately. Security is controlled centrally. Security Rich security model to provide flexibility and simplicity for common cases.Scripts run in a sandbox, allowing site designers to create untrusted scripts. Presentation of Content Powerful template system - based on tested, proven designsTopics and Topic Map technologies enable efficient aggregation of content - management of content using a hierarchical topic systemFacilitates collaboration in editing and publishing Accessibility & Compatibility Plone meets or exceeds US Section 508 and WAI-AAA standards for accessibility.Plone's interface has been widely tested in browsers on multiple platforms, allowing rollout in hetergeneous environments and confidence in public launches. Data Storage Data is stored in built-in object databaseData can be stored in or accessed from relational databases, including Oracle, SQLServer, PostgreSQL, MySQL, Interbase, and ODBC-compliant databases.Users add content, managers manage. Letting users edit and add content lets them feel ownership towards the intranet, and encourages content production. This in turn leads more people to use the intranet actively.Easy to keep content updated, which again assures the value of the intranet Licensing Costs Open SourceAdd-on products do not have to be released under Open Source license. Technical Advantages RSS exports of data for aggregation and distribution of informationBuilt-in webserver (will also integrate seamlessly with both Apache and IIS web servers), FTP server, WebDAV, XML-RPC serverCan be statically deployed for security and high performanceSupports portlet technologiesModular object-oriented design based on the well-tested application platform Zope and the Python scripting languageObject database with full transaction supportPlug-in interfaces to Oracle, MS SQL Server, PostgresSQL, mySQL, Interbase, Berkeley DB - and generic ODBCPowerful templating language that facilitates round-trip design between designers and developersSupports distributed servers for added scalability under demanding conditionsCan be used as-is, or as a base for future web publishing platformsComplete separation of layout, content and site logic - you can have several interfaces to the same information Business Relevance Professional support services available in Europe and USARapid development and deployment - "Mostly done in an hour, completely done in 10 days"Large active community supporting developmentInternational focus - multilingual support and localization for the user interface - ideal for multinational companies (currently supported languages: English, Arabic, German, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Japanese, Chinese, Russian, Hungarian, Czech, Italian, Swedish, Danish and Norwegian). However, Plone also supports a fuller list of languages that can be used on the public pages on the CMS. Users own the content, a central unit controls the design - facilitates consistency and powerful communicationUsers of Plone include Google, eBay, NASA, Lufthansa, Government of Hawaii, Novell, and the CIA
I agree with DRDAVE, I have been using Wordpress and so far I have been able to address all the SEO issues you mentioned Rand. It would be nice to have a comparison chart with all the major features for each CSM system. Thanks.
That comparisson chart sounds nice! I would like to see something like that also.
I like the flow chart.
I agree that content management is a foundational issue for new web projects. But, in spite of companies implementing CMS so "non-developers" can maintain the site I frequently hear that no one in the company knows how it works.
You are right. Some of them don't know how to use it and most of them don't have the time to update the information. So the key is to teach them why is important and some may agree to outsource that service too, which can lead to an additional valuable service that the SEO can provide.
That's a good checklist. The one thing I would add, when selecting a CMS, is to consider heavily the supporting community and available modules, components, mambots, widgets, etc.
On their own, each CMS has their strenghts and weaknesses, but I find it's much easier to determine which is the best fit when taking a broader look at the community. In my case, I have sort of settled into a combo of Joomla/Wordpress for small to medium size sites (which is what we generally work on). Joomla to satisfy the heavy volume of easily modified individual template pages and Wordpress for the blogs.
Currently looking into Drupal, although as KatFrench aptly noted in a previous post - it's a content management framework (along the lines of CakePHP), as opposed to an actual system. That's not a bad thing, but I think Drupal actually foots the bill for another set of needs altogether.
I agree with seanmag,
The community for the CMS can be a huge help. Without it you can easily be stuck on the same problem for days.
Sorry, just had to comment that CakePHP has nothing to do with content management - Cake is an application development framework, you can Google the difference. Maybe you confused Cake with Mambo, a CMS that is being built on top of the Cake framework: https://bakery.cakephp.org/articles/view/mambo-licious
The is a very timely piece for me, as I'm considering switching my blog from custom-coded (PHP/MySQL) to CMS (probably Wordpress). I'm actually slightly worried about the SEO implications, as that's something I have a lot of control over right now. My major reason to make the switch is spam control and the massive amount of extensibility the major CMS platforms have (including future SEO plug-ins).
I used to be married to using a CMS (specifically ExpressionEngine) but now I'm a bit more like Duilen--I ask myself first if the project requires it. Some sites we do now are static, (with php includes to make life easier), some through Wordpress, and some through ExpressionEngine. (EE)
I used to use EE almost exclusively, but have found for some projects where SEO is the primary concern, Wordpress or static setup is a better solution. A few years ago, I did Rae Hoffman's site on EE. She ultimately had me change it to WP because of duplicate content concerns.
Today, it is possible to make EE more SEO friendly. Some SEO-related issues I have with it are:
-out of the box, it comes with an index.php extension added to all entries. Now, this extension could be renamed to a keyword-relevant word, but I'd like to see it removed, period. Rumor has it EE 2.0 will offer this. There are methods to remove this that include htaccess rewriting, and a couple of projects I did recently successful did so. However, not every client's server is going to accept the methods, which can be a pain.
-additionally, the template group NAME is also included, out of the box, in urls. This can be significantly trickier to remove out of the url structure than the index.php. So out of the box, you're getting urls that look natively like this:
https://www.yoursite.com/index.php/weblog/this_is_my_entry
I can easily tweak it to look like this:
https://www.yoursite.com/foobar/this-is-my-entry
where I rename "weblog" (template group) to "foobar." But removing foobar? Not for the faint at heart. Additionally, some methods that exclude the index.php screw with 404 returns and don't serve up proper 404 responses on pages not found. Not good.
The 404 issue can also be tricky. For example, let's say you had this url:
https://www.yoursite.com/index.php/weblog/this_doesn't_exist
EE will serve up your index page for the weblog template group unless you add code that tells us "require an entry, and if an entry is called up that doesn't exist, serve a 404."
It seems some more intuitive seo-based plugins were built for WP, such as SEO title tags, etc. However, EE's flexibility means that it's possible to create a custom field for your title tag, meta description, meta keywords, h1 tag, etc. Then, you could, on each entry, customize them as you see fit.
I haven't looked at utilizing WP as a CMS, but the thought scares me a bit. EE's biggest strength lies in its flexibility with custom fields. I have clients, for example, who are writers and will need to showcase all kinds of thumbnails, blurbs, links, etc on any given entry. To give them custom fields, with user-friendly descriptions, for this is super easy, and I can make one "weblog" use certain fields, another use different ones. The customization is great, and one of the reasons some clients continue to request us for EE work. I believe WP can be customized in a similar fashion, but my look at it shows the learning curve may be longer and the process for the developer less intuitive than it would be for an EE developer.
If my client is using mostly text-based pages plus a blog, I'll pop them on Wordpress (Bonus--it's free). If a lot of custom field work and variable layout styles, etc are needed, I go with EE, but lately build in additional time to make EE more SEO friendly off the bat. Most of the clients I put on EE are non-developers and need a super user friendly system to update their sites. If I'm maintaining a site, I find it easier and more SEO friendly to stick with static pages, and then add on wp in a directory for a blog if need be.
I wouldn't touch typepad or moveable type (at least up until now) to save my life if SEO is a concern.
Reese,
Can you elaborate on why you won't use movable type as a solution?
Hi Rand,
I agree to your post, most of the time a Static web site is sufficient for company however customers needs security comfort and they think they have it by using a CMS which it cut their dependency with design firms.
I think you should add a step in your Flowchart. Where it is asked the kind of changes to be made.
Sometime a good desktop based WebSite Editor like webcreator or iguana will act has a CMS more efficiency and it will be cheaper for the company then a solution like joomla or wordpress wich require IT support.
Thanks
Great post Rand-
Once I had gotten a little grasp of PHP, WordPress quickly became my favorite CMS. I'm a big fan of teaching not-so-savvy web content updaters how to post and use WP. Plus there are a plethora of SEO friendly widgets out there to use with WP.
Have worked with developers to build several custom CMS's with these goals in mind. We've had some success in having many of the features on this list but it always seems that we paint ourselves into some corners where others aren't easy to achieve. Still something of a Worpdpress newbie, but that's where I'm headed, and I guess Joomla and Drupal deserve a look as well. I'm just very weary of custom systems that fall short (mostly due to my own ignorance)
I seem to be in the minority, but I've been pretty happy with Movable Type. It meets most of the requirements on the list, is fairly easy to use and is now availabe Open Source.
Like many systems, you have to change a few of the default options to make it truly SEO friendly, but every site I've built with it has achieved top-10 placement.
RKF,
Can you elaborate on what steps you took to make Movable Type more SEO friendly?
Thanks in advance!
I've found creating a static html based site of around 2-300 pages (over time) works pretty well. I then add in additional CMS systems for blogs, comment systems, forums or whatever else I need. This gives me admin capability, while leaving me in absolute control of the site.
I am one of those website "builders" that is from a developer background, but am also a designer. I have been involved with the artistic creative process most of my life. And, although many people will argue differently, my experience has been that to get the results that I want, the CMS becomes more of a hinderence than a help. But most importanly, I have always been able to get my sites placement on the first, or at least second page of Google. I don't build blog-like sites that people want to update any more than twice a year typically. Among other things, I don't want to change the way that I do SEO. It's been very successful, and in my opinion, the most important part of website development. Is there a way to manage all metedata and class names (something I've found to be helpful) page by page in any of the currently available CMSs? In all honesty I have used joomla, wordpress and drupal, but am not an expert with any of them. Thanks.
@gcleff03
Pixelsilk offers page by page control of all teh netadata, class names, and more. You can learn more about it at Pixelsilk.com.
In full transparency, I work there, love it, and I'm a little biased. Also, everything I stated is true. ;-)
Mark KnowlesPresident & CEOPixelsilk, Inc.
All of us are usually tehnical guys, we know more or less about SEO, so for us indeed this article help a lot. BUT when we choose a CMS, the MAJOR issue is the client LEVEL.
We can offer to him Joomla for example, but when he will see the admintool, he will be scared. We will come with an argument, you know, this is easy to use, READY for SEO, have a lot of arguments what was mentioned in this blog and comments, but the main issue is that client will not be very happy.
So, from my point of view (could be a mistake this approach), a CMS must be easy to learn and TRANSPARENT for final user. This means, he does not need to know anything on how URL will be constructed, that if click a button have or not possibilities to add meta tags, or not and so on. He need to use the CMS, FAST, and of course the CMS do the rest behind.
CMS are useful if the stakeholders are 'publishing' content. If majority of the site content is user generated then a CMS is not necessary.
Depending on the Scope of the project.
Joomla needs to much tweaking to get it proper for SEO purposes.
I had the quickest and best results for smaller sites with modX.
It's a nice mix between a CMS and a PHP Framework and extremly flexible when it comes to Output and URL's.
For bigger projects the only way to go is custom-build.
So far we do all our bigger projects with the symphony framework, which gives us big freedom with the URL's.
Drupal is nice and capable also but it will need alot of tweeking and hacking to get it completly SEO friendly.
Nice diagram!
I usually use Wordpress as my CMS.
I'd add how easy the templates are to modify as a criteria. You can fix most problems with a few simple template tweaks on most of the CMS's. Likewise, most of the free CMS's use MySQL as their back end, so you've got access to the data for reports, csv files, etc.
One gotcha to look out for is something we just went through with Joomla. Yes, you can do SEO with Joomla with the SEF components, but some of the other components ignore those settings or insist on unfriendly URLs. We switching blogging backends because we found ourselves painted into a corner. So while the number of components is important, whether or not those components treat SEO the same way as the mothership isn't as obvious as we thought. I still think Joomla is a great platform, but with any of these you have to be careful how you're assembling the pieces.
I'm going to send this to my marketing professor!! Thank you for the insight! My classmates will thank me for the "getting ahead start on their future"
Here's another Rand Fishkin post we're compelled to show our. clients...thanks.
I know that another CMS that has been developed with SEO in mind is - websitemill cms - https://www.websitemill.net - they have added such functions as creating of custom html titles, urls, use of h1, 2, 3 etc. tags etc. overall they also offer a great customer support and can develop new functionalities really fast. i guess this is due to the fact that they aren't such a big company yet therefore they can't afford to ignore their clients interests and requests
As I realise that this post is already nearly a year old, I would like to add this link which brings us up to date with the latest in Award-winning CMSs: https://www.websitemagazine.com/content/blogs/posts/archive/2008/11/03/drupal-cms-gets-a-nod.aspx
Award plastered doesn't necessarily mean the plaster doesn't fall off. Google awards much stupid, meaningless (and often out-dated) content with a first page search result placing, too!
Haven't found (onGoogle) much about Plone (thanks a m8 times, Bobrains) but plentyfull about awards for this and that and most of them I wouldn't even spend time reading.
Thank for great article.
I've used Joomla, Drupal and WordPress for my small bussiness. WordPress is not used as Blog, We can use it as well as a CMS like I do with my site https://www.vietseo.net/ - and I can say that satisfied. There is so many plugin you can customize, the code is clear and easily to change.
I'm a fan of WordPress
I am so glad I found this post, just at the very moment when the organisation where i work full time is going through the process of commissioning a new mutilanguage, multi-sites CMS, thank you all of those that commented too because I have found as much goodness on the post as on the actual comments, great!
plone.org Check it son!!! Word is bond.
thanks bobrains, i am giving it a check, it looks like a good fit
XML/RSS Pinging Although it's primarily useful for blogs, any content, from articles to press releases, can be issued in a feed, and by utilizing quick, accurate pinging of the major feed services, you limit some of your exposure to duplicate content spammers who pick up your feeds and ping the major services quickly in the hopes of beating you to the punch.
Does this have to be in XML format (feed) in order to index fast (ping to get server bot to fetch new content)?
It would be beneficial to do a re-hasing of this post, as the CMS landscape has changed dramatically since the beginning of 2008. We use Wordpress now for 80% of our dynamic sites. With the friendlly user base and great plugins, only the really massive (or ecommerce) projects we develop need anything more.
It would be beneficial to do a re-hasing of this post, as the CMS landscape has changed
REALLY? have you read Identity' or Bobrains' post, NO? do it now and your search for of a cms will come to an end! ;-)
Working for an Internet consultancy company myself in The Netherlands, we've been working on a good extensive CMS ourselves. But in all fairness I have to admit that more than once I just don't need those huge complex CMS systems in which I only use the static content manager. Next big problem is actually programming (ever tried programming a form with PHP support in Joomla?!). And one thing is sure: you should not be paying for a CMS anymore.
The tips are good, but I'm annoyed about the fact that a CMS should take over everything. Why not only the actual content management instead of all those other aspects that only pro developers should be allowed to administer?
I've been working on a CMS myself (compactcms.nl) in which I hoped to combine all that is good :). If anyone has any tips for a simple, plain, SEO friendly CMS... Let me know! Otherwise I'd love to hear your feedback for my own project ;).
There was a good discussion about CMS's on thinkvitamin.com: https://www.thinkvitamin.com/features/blogs/redefining-content-management
A few comments that stood out and are complemented well by your flow chart:
"I think some of you guys are missing the point—no amount of tricked out framework-powered custom-admin ajax-display awesomeness is going to write a concise company statement, or select complementary images, or create attractive headings to match article summaries, or maintain a smooth page flow."
"As much as I love a well integrated content management system I think it’s hilarious (and sad) that a company will spend thousands and thousands of dollars on a web site and then place an untrained intern or entry-level secretary in charge of maintaining the content."
"Before I sell a CMS, I always ask: do you have the time and the basic skills to use it? 80% of the time, the answer is no, and my client have just saved hundreds of $ (not to mention time)."
I would add three more points to your requirements, Rand:
13. Proper handling of 404 errors
Many CMS out there return a 200 header when displaying a 404 error. There are usually workarounds, but the 404 header should be default behaviour.
14. Proper handling of multiple languages
I have seen a proprietary CMS that handled language changes by passing a cookie. Definitely not the way to go.
15. Links are relative to server root, not document
An important requirement. Imagine that a user makes an error in linking the homepage, adding a space at the end of the link. This may create a URL like www.domain.tld/%20 with all the links on that page having the %20 in it - if they are relative to the document.
Finally, I had to work on SEO on expensive CMS and portal systems and quickly reached the conclusion that the most expensive they are, the crappier for SEO. Like identity, I like MODx, use and recommend it, but think it is currently limited for multiple language websites and not suitable for large ones (1000+ documents).
I found a gem in the CMS world and thought i'd share.
TandemServer.org. They have a CMS system that is top notch in my book. SUPER simple to install and use. I'm big on Search engine optimization and these guys cover everything. I've been using it for about 6 months now and have 0 complaints. I cannot believe they give it away. i'd pay large sums of money for as i basically can't live without it anymore :)
anyway for those of you looking for a nice, simple cms that is very SEO friendly. check TandemServer.org out.
Nice post Rand! I know how that can be difficult to find a SEO CMS that's can fit today business needs.
I had experiment a lot of them and see so many problem related to SE compatibility and i think no one do the job perfectly.
Perhaps, I've work with 3WebManager in the past and it was a great management system and very customizable. It's perfect for business WebSite wich has SEO needs.
Wordpress is my drug of choice.
The out of the box SEO functionality is pretty poor, but you can get some good plugins that let you do what's needed.
I do still find there's some issues with urls and navs. ie if I want to hide the page from the left hand nav, then I can't make it a child of a parent, which means my url isn't layered properly. I know how to hide from the global nav ok, it's just the side nav which is giving me grief.
If anyone knows of any plugins or hacks to solve this then please let me know.
Dang. My head is spinning. I manage my own blogspot, and I'm struggling to implement some of what you talk about. I'll find an answer on one aspect, try it, and it won't work. I'll find another blog entry in the Internet universe, and it answers my problem, but then when I implement their solution, it doesn't work. Can you suggest any Internet resources that a plain package tech geek like me can comprehend and apply?
just a heads-up that someone's using your graphic without credit:
https://meghan.nonsociety.com/post/44470620/nerd-word-cms-a-k-a-content-management-system granted, it doesn't get a lot of traffic -- i just hate to see people doing this kind of stuff. :( if it doesn't bother you, forget i said anything! :/
I have an old site with tons of pages/content that I built in dreamweaver back in 03. Each page is template driven and whenever I make small changes to the template I have to painstakingly upload every page in the site to reflect those changes live. I'm now starting to use includes to make these changes easier but I will eventually migrate to wordpress. Like everyone's mentioned previously, you can't beat the simplicity of content management and all the plugins available. Plus, the blog format allows you so much more interactivity with your users via comments and other plugins like polls, surveys, etc.
Nice. I also agree with some of the comments RichB made esp. the robots.txt editor. Also i'd like to have the option to add in tracking code - tracking data and goals is so important at the moment!
Another great resource for CMS research and reading reviews, case studies and finding implementers for these systems is cmsharbor.com/
Just used this article for a client of mine so they understand what they are up against with a CMS they are currently using. Waiting to see what they want to do.
Still incredibly relevant!
It's a great article to ensure that which CMS is the SEO friendly. Among them WordPress is the my favorite SEO friendly CMS as it's provide more SEO plugins for better SEO.
Finally, It's one of the best articles to show your clients - To choose which CMS is more SEO friendly.
Saw this old post when coming up with our article on CMS tools. This is a good check list if a client wants to know his CMS is seo-friendly. I'm most particular about keyword-rich URLs and permalinks (for wordpress).
Thanks for this article.
[link removed]
I have a simple question I am launching a static website with Wordpress CMS but I worried about the Wordpress CMS because wordpress CMS is specially designed for blogs. So can I use this CMS for static website that is not continuesly update.
I am worried that when you do not up date your wordpress blog, the traffic of your website goes down. So does it also effect on website.If I do not update my static website that is running with wordpress CMS, their traffic also goes down with passage of time ?
Kindly reply me with reason, I have to take a decision on it. I am waiting for your reply.
Thanks
I have not used Drupal long enough to comment on it but having used both Joomla and WordPress extensively, I would definitely recommend WP. However, I am also willing to give one or two other CMS a try before reaching the ultimate conclusion.
Hi,
i was working with Wordpress and make some small level sites with it, using plugins to improve SEO Onpage, recently. I like it, because you can put the content fast, ping many other blogs, so spread your news and found many free templates to build up your own webdesign. And it is easier than Joomla! i use for bigger sites.
Now i found Thesis at https://diythemes.com/
The information i found at WWW is that is the basis framework for Wordpress to develop small websites regarding SEO Onpage.
Can everyone confirm this?
I like Open source, because it is transparent and it based on one of the old vision of the WWW: to share.
Thanks,
Hans
Doing SEO Hamburg in Germany
Really informative post – thanks, Rand!
Does anyone have experience with the following CMS platforms? Thoughts from an SEO perspective?
Hello friends,
can we make a new discussion, where we can make a list with pro and contra which open source cms is the best base to build up fast and easy a seo optimized website?
From the discussion i take:
as most named.
I have made good experience with Joomla 1.5, but Wordpress is much more easier, if you want only to put some content fast.
My example for Joomla: https://www.daenemark-ferien.de
Thanks for your input,
Try https://www.seotoaster.com, it's far easier than WP for sure, and as far as SEO friendliness, it covers out of the box:
I have not finished computed the list of plug-ins it taks for WP to come even close to it, but it's over 30 different plug-ins.
As far as building websites, it is also much easier than Joomla and Drupal. However, it is not adapted to large websites. It is ideal for small corporate websites and online shops.
It's free and open source too. There's a demo online.
Best, Michel.
ps: It also can connects to SEO Samba where one can remote control toasted sites from an SEO perspective and market these sites from a central location. I'm at the helm of SEO Samba.
Thank you Michael, i will take a look.
At the Weekend i have make a test with b2evolution. I was not so much satisfied but is interesting to connect different websites.
I think to interconnect and exchange different platforms, interfaces, apis, media and information is the next challenge for us. What we need is like amplify.com in social media for SEO Websites :)
Greetings,
Doing in Hamburg SEO since 98
Simplicity is good, yet to difficult to achieve. SEO is a fairly complex model, but I think we'll get there.
Please post on the seotoaster forum if you run into any kind of difficulty, I know the developers are eager to help.
Michael,
i installed your recommended Seotoaster with a very good experience, my little site https://www.x-webdesign.de is with SEO Webdesign Hamburg running now at top in SERP terms in Google.
But it needs more customization features at the backend, for bigger sites, to manage the different parts of the CMS not only at the page level.
Hi Seonetworker,
Thanks for using seotoaster. I'm glad that you like it. Watch out for a new major version of https://www.seotoaster.com coming online this month.
What features are you craving? please post on https://forum.seotoaster.com/ . Keep in mind that we want to keep seotoaster simple on purpose, and that seotoaster is open source. If you develop valuable plug-ins, we'll be happy to promote them.
Michel.
Thank you Michael, i will take a look.
At the Weekend i have make a test with b2evolution. I was not so much satisfied but is interesting to connect different websites.
I think to interconnect and exchange different platforms, interfaces, apis, media and information is the next challenge for us. What we need is like amplify.com in social media for SEO Websites :)
Greetings,
Doing in Hamburg SEO since 98
Hello Rand Fishkin,
Do you know if any of the Dot Net Nuke versions offer these specific criterion?
Just found this post, good article, that question flow is almost exactly what I ask my customers when trying to see if they need a CMS. At first I believed that everyone could use a CMS and needed one but I am wiser now!
Our favourite CMS is Sitefinity it is definitely the best CMS I have worked with from a UI perspective and from the perspective of their support. It went through a major shift between versions which was painful but that was necessary to get to where it is today unfortunately. It ticks all the boxes we have in terms of SEO too!
Adding to #2 Static, Keyword-Rich URLs, you'll want a CMS that supports file names with alternate extension when you need to prove site ownership for Google Webmaster Tools or Yahoo Site Explorer.Related to #12 Static Caching Options ("...bulky CMS often make dozens of extraneous database connections"), your CMS should be able to consolidate data coming in from multiple servers. Ektron can't do this.
Very useful post.
Just wanted to share with everyone my experience of creating seo friendly real estate classifieds web site. I've used iRealty cms fro that, since it has everything I needed from seo perspective. It’s rather easy to create custom URLs for listing details page, and add properties info to titles and description tags. So I would recommend it to everyone who creates SEO friendly real estate site.
Our site used to use one of the free CMS systems, and although it did allow for great SEO control, it's usability was just awful. So a huge one from me would be USABILITY. There's no point having all this SEO flexibility if the whole CMS is inefficient to use.
I'd also like to see rewrite editors for isapi and apache built in.
I think it would also be cool to have a semantic keyword suggester, based on a thesaurus. The suggester analyses the page copy and finds a couple of good potential synonyms for keywords.
And my last request (please tell me if this exists in any CMS because I've not seen it yet) would be the ability to graphically map your content by internal links, based on hierarchy from homepage.
I don't want too much.
The best that u can do is create a custom system.
Maybe should be more expensive but you don´t have to deal with the typical bugs that the popular CMS have.
I like this post and this thread. Great stuff!
Your list covers a lot of the issues that we have seen as well. Your multiuser and/or non devleoper question is a great qualifier as a good CMS can really help groups of people get some work done. A lot of our clients have that exact scenerio.
The role of an SEO professional in these multi user environments needs to be understood by the CMS. Pages that the SEO role "owns" should have a special approval route that may differ from other pages in the system. This shouldn't be a "staple on work around", it should be built into the design.
Early.
Mark Knowles(not the tennis player ;-)
All good things to look for in an SEO friendly CMS. A few things that I came across in my day: (Things to stay away from)
A CMS that:
When we found the above system, the sales guy had no idea what we were talking about. We were glad we did our research before moving forward.
Just been playinng around with expressionengine for one of my clients, I have heard bad reports about it but it is not too bad really - Can't complain.
Excellant article Rand!!!
Just wondering if anyone out there has tried Movable Type 4? I would really like to know the experiences of using this platform from a SEO view point. I was thinking of using it for my website.
Cheers!
I am still amazed that CMS systems exists that do not take SEO into account.
Great job on the chart - simple but effective.
I've been getting used to Wordpress for blogging and Drupal for my CMS. i do have to say that using a CMS makes the task so much easier, and when I find that I need some type of customization, that the plugins have already been created. Makes the coding so much easier. I do however know my way around, which i think is important as well.
Well choosing the suitable CMS platform for a site is really a must in SEO field coz we have to make sure that the information provided in a site are detectable and readable by the search engines.
Like the flow chart Rand, definitely something people should follow before jumping into using a CMS which is not always the best option.
Totally agree with Bradley, having used Drupal largely myself it's a very powerful CMS with plenty of modules to customise it to your liking. Wordpress is easier out of the box but if you're happy to work at it then I'd suggest Drupal.
"[I]f you're happy to work at it then I'd suggest"
Plone
Just a thought...
Thanks Rand. Very usefull.
I setup my blog on Serendipity. I keep thining now, "Why? Why did I do that?" I honestly do not remember why I chose to go with it.
That aside, I am strugling to figure out a way to move it to WordPress without loosing the existing in-links and traffic to the messed up URLs that Serendipity created.
If anyone's used Serendipity, they know how limited the oprions are on it without having to do serious programming changes.
Has anyone faced this problem before? What is the best way to migrate my blog from Serendipity to WordPress?
Thaanks!!
I have had good experiences with WordPress and Drupal, although could be very tricky to configure SEO-friendly meta tags, URLs and titles on WordPress for a person that uses it for the first time.
Thanks for the heads up. Some of us have been thinking of trying to work out which clients should get a CMS as standard based on their needs. Your wee image has saved me loads of time and is now sitting on my office wall - so I can just point when I get asked questions about who needs a CMS.
I'd like to point out that the home of Mambo is actually at https://www.mambo-foundation.org, mamboserver.com is more or less a fan site at this point.
The upcoming 4.7 release improves standards compliance quite a bit, which in turn does help SEO efforts since search engines are basically blind users.
5.0 is being built on Cake PHP and looks like it's going to be quite an amazing leap forward.
I firmly agree with some of the comments regarding Joomla. With the assistance of some very good components (advanced_sef for one) good seo is a breeze. Joomla 1.5 recently released does not even need add on components now.
Ther are quite a few hot bananas around and I'm not sure if they will all deliver without tweaks and customizations. From my experience almost all the CMS's (WP, Drupal etc) needs customizations and addons without which anyone else can easily copy you out.
In order to bring in uniques and USP's there needs to be customization.
But I'm thinking abt it this way. If a CMS can do it all, will it one day replace the SEO guy there? I hope not.
I can't believe you are considering a CMS from a SEO perspective. CMS is more about building a site that:
- easy to use by the visitors
- easy to manage by the editors/publishers
- easy to maintain by the web site master
Most CMS aren't that customizable and are really hard to manage. SEO is something that both ugly and easy CMSs can or can not do, it's not something to choose by.
If we speak about choosing a CMS from a SEO perspective (though one should be more of an Internet marketer, than a SEO), we'd rather only make sure the site has the above only after we have chosen it for our readers/customers, etc.
That being said, how do you explain the use of your CMS, given the slow speed of the site after months after being repeatedly notified of it (you did improve slightly, but not by a large margin)? Not to mention that the comment lines still don't break sometimes, this comment being a good example.
If the CMS is used purely on an Intranet then go for ease of use, etc.
However, if you are putting it out on the web, then you can really screw up by choosing one that uses the same title for every page, doesn't allow for a customised meta description on every page, has a myriad of duplicate content issues, or isn't spiderable, uses javascript for navigation, uses session IDs in URLs and does any of the many things that search engines can't follow, or don't like.
Gosh, I hate to be self serving but here I go.
We have a CMS that we have offered our clients for years. We have built it throughout the versions to to provided guided SEO for our non-html clients. It guides Title, keyword, URL keywords, Anchors, Alt/Title tag, etc. It also automates sitemap.xml and points robots to the location. It is called SiteNow www.sitenowrightnow.com
Of course, not all clients take advantage of all of the featutres But those who do have acheived outstanding results in SEO, and all of our SiteNow clients sites are fully indexed because of the approach we have taken as we have built and upgraded SiteNow.
I've been using a fantastic CMS platform for the last 5 years. It has been designed by Intergage Ltd in Poole, Dorset and they seem totally committed to search engine optimisation facilities on their system. The client sites that I have used it on have always ranked high on the search engines and it has been incredibly easy to use and has brilliant and friendly customer support (with a customer intranet!).
For a small company they certainly offer a lot of flexibility. If you are interested in their site it's at www.intergage.co.uk It's not free (like Joomla) but it's a lot easier for us "non technie" people to use!
Jane Adams Dorset, England
I just wanted to echo the few people who recommended ExpressionEngine above.
It's extremely powerful and flexible.
But along with that flexibility come powerful options for optimizing your site for organic search (and also some responsibility for being hands-on with your code).
As for duplicate content issues mentioned above, there's absolutely no reason you couldn't create an ExpressionEngine-based site with no duplicate content whatsoever.
On my live concert video site I've decided to have full posts on my home page, category pages, and post details page. Sure, there's duplicate content, but it's a choice I made explicitly to give what I believe is a better user-experience.
And frankly, I haven't really noticed any "penalty" for having it set up that way. (Note: I also have a few duplicate meta descriptions and I'm still sleeping fine at night.) All of my posts get indexed just fine and those that are designed for specific keywords rank quite well.
Another benefit of EE is that it's a CMS, not blogging software (though it excels at blogging). So, if you're just blogging now but plan to do more in the future (forums, wikis, photo galleries, etc.) you're already ready already.
In short, if you want a very fully featured CMS I can't say enough good things about ExpressionEngine. If you have specific questions about it, feel free to drop me a PM. Or you can try the EE forums.
TL
P.S. There was also a thread about SEO-friendly CMS systems recently on the SEM 2.0 group so if you're interested you might want to take a look at what the folks on there had to say.
What if the LAMP stack isn't an option? Any suggestions then? We're specifically talking Windows Server/ASP.NET
Thanks
ExpressionEngine works on Windows, provided you have php and MySQL...
https://expressionengine.com/overview/requirements/
They even have a "Server Wizard" you can use to verify whether your particular server is compatible with ExpressionEngine.
TL
I use wordpress a lot but for more complex sites I really love Expression Engine.
what I have seen, is that often a client comes up, he has no idea what the CMS can do or not on a SEO perspective (they use mostly a free one), and expect that you can make them reach the top of the list just like that.
They have bought a site, and a CMS was proposed to them, but it is not always that easy to tweak them, in order to make the best job.
I know Mambo/Joomla and Drupal very well from a user, admin, and developer perspective. Better SEO, virtually full output control, which allows for valid and semantic markup, and a multi level category system, which features free tagging, were some compelling reasons to switch from Joomla to Drupal 2 years ago.
Many of the SEO needs you mention in your article are met by core Drupal functionality or can be acomplished with existing add-on modules.
Yep, Wordpress is the way to go for me and my clients.
The only thing it doesn't help with is writing great posts. That comes down to the user!
I have also heard great things about Expression Engine but have only dipped my toes in.
Hope this helps. Great post, Rand.
Personally I think Drupal is the best when it comes to search friendly content management system for the web. Here you can include blog, forum, survey, polls, ecommerce, forum, social networking aspects all in one CMS! I have added free 35 videos on how you can make a Drupal site here www.seoecom.com/cms
Rand,
On #12 "Static Caching Options", if we serve up every page, rocket fast do you care how it is accomplished or is the main focus fast results, every time?
Respectfully,
Mark
I actually blogged about this today because of this article. I thinks its excellent. Here are the two I have not seen mentioned:
1) Breadcrumb navigation based on the path the user took to get to the page. So in the event that you have a product that exists in multiple categories, make sure that the URL pointing to the product is unique (don't have multiple URLs for the same product based on the category names). This will require that the breadcrumb navigation is generated using cookies which means that the engines will only see the default breadcrumb navigation (make sure its the most important category of your site).
2) Pagination where there are multiple pages and page one is not consistent. So in the Dress example, if you click on Promo Dresses, there may be 10 pages of promo dresses. If I click on page 2, and then navigate back to page 1 using the menu of page numbers that typically is put at the bottom of pages like this, more often than not, the CMS system generates a new URL for Page 1 which thereby causes a potential duplicate content issue and also splits PR between the two pages.
Nothing worse than a client who has their own proprietary CMS that meets NO web standars, creates duplicate content, and lacks any SEO functionality at all.
You have a great there randfish, what you have thinking is a great tactic, I will shared this information to others. CMS could be a great help.,
When a user is searching for particular information, due to shortage of time or patience, he will obviously go to the websites that are listed on the first page. Search engine optimization help will ensure the maximum visibility of your website on the internet. The careful planning and strategies developed to promote your website will make certain that it gets a good ranking and has easy accessibility and visibility. The traffic will thus be guided to your website. The connectivity, links, content available on your website will guarantee that the users who have been guided to your site keep coming back every time they are looking for information that your website offers for more information visit
- Casey Removed Link
Wow... You don't say.... So let me get this right, users will search for information, and select from the first page of results...
OMG you are so right, why didn't I think of that?
But the term Search Engine Optimization is really long, they should shorten it to something more bite size, oh, I know let's call it SEO.
Wow Vikashseo, you are really breaking new ground, I like the way you think, can you tell me where I can subscribe to your newsletter?