Everything you didn't want to know about CMS and SEO
Are you in the business of
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)? If you are in the business of designing websites you are also in the business of SEO. Perhaps you offer professional SEO services or you provide your clients with the best tools and techniques so that when an SEO professional optimizes your client's website they don't have to redesign entire sections of the site. In this post I want to take a look at the way in which a
content management system (CMS) helps your client with SEO.
OK. Enough with the acronyms! Let's get started
First of all, let's use Alighten.com as an example. If you Google “contract website CMS", Alighten is the number one position in the organic search. Organic search rank refers to your companies’ order of appearance in unpaid search listings. This is possible through the use of standard SEO best practices and an industry leading CMS system.
New pages Adding new relevant content to your client’s website, or fresh content, will improve your client’s organic search rank. A CMS allows you or your client to add web pages without knowing HTML, which keeps your client's website content fresh. To help keep content fresh, Alighten also offers built in blog and news modules that can be easily edited. By personally maintaining your blog on your own website rather than an external blogging client, like Blogger, your client's blog content will lead to improved search engine rankings.
WYSIWYG content editing A CMS system enables your client to edit existing content as if they were editing a Word document. This user friendly content management is known as what you see is what you get (WYSIWYG). The easier it is to make changes your website, the more likely to make changes frequently. Once again fresh content leads to improved search engine rankings.
Page titles Page titles are one of the most important factors in improving website organic search rank. As each page is created for a website a page title should be added that reflects the goal of the page as well as the targeted keywords. Using a CMS system allows for easy modification of the page title. This gives you or your SEO professional the ability to test keyword combinations and fine tune your client's organic search rank with ease.
Important: If you are working with an outsourced website coder like Alighten, be sure that your coder creates a dynamic page title that automatically changes to reflect the page content. This is especially important for a database driven website.
Image alt text Along with page titles, image alternate or alt text has been shown to improve organic search ranking. Alt text is the image text that appears if the image is not available or if the browser blocks the image. A CMS system allows for you or your SEO professional to simply "right click" on an image and set the alt text as new content is added, optimizing search engine rankings.
Hyperlink tooltip Another important feature of search engine optimization is the hyperlink tooltip. This is the text that appears to "pop up" as you hover over a link. Editing this text on every hyperlink in a non-CMS website can be time consuming. Using a CMS system allows for easy search engine optimization by allowing you or your SEO professional to simply "right click" on a hyperlink and set the hyperlink tooltip text as new content is added in the user friendly website manager.
Conclusion It's important to keep in mind that there is no magic bullet for SEO. SEO requires hard work on the part of the graphic designer, your SEO professional, or your client. By following the basic principles of SEO outlined in the Alighten
SEO big list you can greatly improve your client's organic search rank. A CMS system should be one tool in your toolbox for improving your client's organic search rank. Check the
SEO big list regularly as Alighten adds new tips on SEO from graphic designers and SEO professionals regularly. If you have an SEO tip,
tell us about it and we will add it to the list.