Developing an SEO Friendly CMS

Being able to manage and maintain a website from a single interface that is easy to use is what a CMS is all about. It is what clients demand now they know the technology is out there. We used to have to convince clients to try them as they were often more expensive to develop than traditional websites. Now they pretty much sell themselves.

The ability for an organization to manage its own content is now a pre-requisite for any design we undertake. It works for the client, and it works for us. We are web designers and developers. None of us really want to spend the day copy and pasting content onto a website. Neither does the client want to pay us $$$ an hour to do it. By using a CMS, a member of the client’s staff can do it at no extra cost to them.
Being able to manage and maintain a website from a single interface that is easy to use is what a CMS is all about. It is what clients demand now they know the technology is out there. We used to have to convince clients to try them as they were often more expensive to develop than traditional websites. Now they pretty much sell themselves.

The ability for an organization to manage its own content is now a pre-requisite for any design we undertake. It works for the client, and it works for us. We are web designers and developers. None of us really want to spend the day copy and pasting content onto a website. Neither does the client want to pay us $$$ an hour to do it. By using a CMS, a member of the client’s staff can do it at no extra cost to them.

Developing an SEO friendly CM system is of further benefit to clients as they will in turn have to spend less on SEO efforts on their behalf. While it does cost more to create an SEO friendly CMS, it saves money in the long run. SEO is an expensive and time consuming business. It takes a lot of effort and skill to make it to the top of the SERPs, which doesn’t come for free.

An SEO friendly CMS should be able to do a few things.

It should generate URLs that use optimization techniques as well as provide for easy navigation. Having your keywords in the URL is an effective SEO technique, but they also have to be understandable by human visitors as well as robot ones. Getting this balance right is one of the aims of a good SEO aware CMS.

A good system will be able to generate its own sitemap in XML. That should happen both automatically and on request as search engines like Google and Bing like sitemaps as is makes crawling the site that little bit easier.

The CMS templates should have the ability to add alt-tags to images to add to the overall SEO strategy. They should also be easily updatable, reflect the brand of the company they represent and have working alternatives for incompatible browsers.

The layout of the site should be logical and follow an established hierarchy. Navigation should be easy to follow and not confuse visitors, human or robot. A site must be quickly and easily crawled, however large it might be in order to rate highly in the SERPs.

A CMS that considers itself SEO friendly should contain all of these elements. There are plenty of other features than are SEO friendly, but these should be the absolute minimum.
Developing an SEO friendly CM system is of further benefit to clients as they will in turn have to spend less on SEO efforts on their behalf. While it does cost more to create an SEO friendly CMS, it saves money in the long run. SEO is an expensive and time consuming business. It takes a lot of effort and skill to make it to the top of the SERPs, which doesn’t come for free.

An SEO friendly CMS should be able to do a few things.

It should generate URLs that use optimization techniques as well as provide for easy navigation. Having your keywords in the URL is an effective SEO technique, but they also have to be understandable by human visitors as well as robot ones. Getting this balance right is one of the aims of a good SEO aware CMS.

A good system will be able to generate its own sitemap in XML. That should happen both automatically and on request as search engines like Google and Bing like sitemaps as is makes crawling the site that little bit easier.

The CMS templates should have the ability to add alt-tags to images to add to the overall SEO strategy. They should also be easily updatable, reflect the brand of the company they represent and have working alternatives for incompatible browsers.

The layout of the site should be logical and follow an established hierarchy. Navigation should be easy to follow and not confuse visitors, human or robot. A site must be quickly and easily crawled, however large it might be in order to rate highly in the SERPs.

A CMS that considers itself SEO friendly should contain all of these elements. There are plenty of other features than are SEO friendly, but these should be the absolute minimum.