Content Management Systems for the SEO-Savvy

If you did not have a content management system (CMS), you would have to call on and wait for an external technician or IT person to add news stories, images, videos, and other content to your website. Obviously, this would limit your ability to be in “real-time”! And it would be an expense and bother you could do without. A good CMS enables you to do this, without having to have a lot of technical know-how. You’re not getting into development or design, but merely adding content and taking it live. When choosing a CMS, it is important that you take the time to consider how it will affect SEO. Let’s take a look at what you need to think about.

• Customisation. Because many CMSs are not built specifically with SEO in mind, they tend to do things like create dynamic URLs that can spook Google’s spiders. For instance, http://www.seowebsite.uk.asp?id=123&session=234234wrwresf&param=xsfdsd is not as appealing as a simple http://www.seowebsite.uk.aspx.  Another problem that you may run into is not being able to create unique title and description metatags, which can have a big impact on your rankings.  Being able to customise your URLs, metadata, page titles, and H tags is a must.
• The duplicate content problem. Say you sell shoes that can either be indoor football shoes or simply casual shoes. Your customers can find them by searching for either one of those categories, so the same shoes are in two different places. The CMS displays the same content on two unique URLs, and duplicate content is a great way to get yourself penalised. Your CMS needs to be able to be reconfigured so users are directed to one URL, instead of two for this product. As well, make sure the CMS supports the Rel=Canonical tag to help you combat duplicate content issues.
• Breadcrumbs. The CMS should support breadcrumb navigation, which is an important factor in conversion rates and user experience.
• Analytics. Make sure you can integrate analytics tools with your CMS to track user engagement and conversion rates.
• XML sitemaps. It’s a nice feature if your CMS can generate these for you.

CMSs can make your SEO efforts more effective and streamlined. Just make sure that when you choose, you remember to keep optimisation in mind.