Search Engine Optimisation and CMS Systems

CMS (Content Management System) driven websites which make it simple for users to change content are becoming increasingly popular on the internet. These systems are great from a user perspective as very little knowledge of web languages is required to populate your website. You simply type information into the desired box and the CMS system will write the code for you.

However, from a search engine optimization perspective they can be very difficult to optimise due to the level of access provided by the system. We regularly have to optimise websites through different CMS systems with varying levels of access to the websites code if any! This makes it nearly impossible to optimise the site fully.

The most common problems with CMS systems I have come across are:

• The CMS system only allows you to change on-page content and that's it – You have no access to the code itself and therefore can't make the code fully search engine friendly.
• You can't alter title tags – Title tags are a very important part of the page, without them Google does not know what your page is about.
• You can't alter header tags – Google expects to see <h1>tags to be at the start of a web page, followed by <h2> like a word document. Not having the option to insert these tags greatly reduces the on page optimization.
• You can't alter links – There is no option to alter the links, this means you cannot change links to rel="nofollow" telling Google not to follow this link, this method helps to hoard your Page Rank. You also can't change the anchor text of a link, which can greatly affect the ranking of your page for a particular keyword.
• You can't alter any images ALT tags – You may wish to edit the alt tag of an image to describe it, this again can have a positive affect on your rankings.
• You can't make the code conform to W3C standards – You have no access to the code and can therefore not make the sites code valid. This could mean that some content is not getting spidered fully, or that the site doesn't appear correctly to disabled users or in different browsers.
• No FTP access – You can't upload optimization files such as the Google sitemap, Yahoo sitemap etc. This means every time you want to upload a file to your server you have to inform the developers who may charge you for the privilege.

Conclusion…

If you have to use a CMS try to ensure that the above features are available. There are some CMS systems available which offer a simple front end system to customers, whilst also providing access to the code for SEO professionals. Although this is not as ideal as FTP access, it will aid and speed up the optimisation process.

Paul
SEO Programmer