Content Management Websites - SEO Impact
Search Engine Optimization for CMS Websites
Content Management System (CMS) websites are predefined templates that allow members of an organization to add pages to a website with little programming skills. In companies that have many departments contributing to the daily upkeep of a corporate website, a CMS system is often selected to reduce the cost of maintenance. Also, if there are no HTML programmers on staff or a budget can not sustain an outside consultant, CMS websites are often considered.
CMS website providers strive to provide a template that is flexible and customizable to meet the demands of most businesses. You can do a search for "CMS web templates" or "CMS Websites" and you will see that most companies promise extremely customizable interfaces. In truth, all CMS templates have limitations so you need to see if their specific limitations impact your web design plans.
Must Have CMS Website Features
One of the most important features in your search must be the ability to have unique page titles, page descriptions and page keywords. In most "new" designs this is standard but we still see many existing sites with page titles that are all the same. Ask the vendor to show you sites of their current clients and check each page to see if the META tags are unique for each page. You can do this by right-clicking your mouse on any HTML page and select "View Source" from the menu. Look at the top of each HTML page for the META tag sections and see that the tags are unique.
Another important feature is how much control you have over the home page design. The home page is the most important page on your site for search engine optimization. If you don't have full control of your home page you may be short changing your look, feel and search engine visibility. Recently on of our clients, who uses a CMS package, found out that our recommend content changes could not be implemented without custom programming charges. For some reason, the home page was locked down more than other web pages and cost them significant dollars to make the site more search engine friendly.
Do CMS Websites Have a Disadvantage?
In a perfect world, fully customizable CMS website platform will not be a disadvantage for search engine marketing. Our practical experience has shown us that CMS websites often limit creativity and in some cases limit the "tweaking" of pages for optimal search engine results. This often is the case when the CMS system has long file names for the web pages it creates from its database. These dynamic web pages can contain numbers, letters and special symbols which are not good for search engine marketing. The ideal CMS system will allow you to type in the HTML page names for every page. For example:
This is an example from a NON SEO friendly CMS platform that identifies one product, a bottle of wine called Mollydooker Velvet Glove Shiraz:
The ideal page name should be something like:
http://www.mollydookerwines.com/buy-velvet-glove-shiraz
In the first case, Google and Yahoo will penalize the page for having too long of a URL name. In the second case, Google and Yahoo will reward the page with Google search results for the words in the URL name.
CMS Website Review
If you are using a CMS web platform and would like us to look at the current setup for its effect on your SEO planning, give us a call. In a short time we will be able to advise you if there are any significant changes that should be made to help your search engine rankings and visibility.