SEO and CMS – Top 5 Features to Look for in a CMS Package

Control can be a good thing. And, when it comes to your website, being able to add or update content yourself is a particularly inviting form of control. That is why more and more businesses are opting for a Content Management System (CMS) when developing a new website. These systems allow you to easily add news items, change images or even update pricing in a shopping cart and add new pages, all from the comfort of your own desk, without help from IT.

These CMS packages range from completely Open Source (and free!) programs that run on your own server and offer myriad plug-ins, to highly proprietary and complex systems that are hosted applications. Both ends of the spectrum can have their advantages and disadvantages, but there is one thing that any CMS package worth its salt must be able to do – allow for successful search engine optimization (SEO). If you build a site that is easy for you to update, but can’t be found on the search engines, whom will your updates impress?

There are many attributes you need to take into account when choosing a CMS package, but here are five key features that your new system must have if you want your website to be search engine compatible:

1. Static Looking URLs – most CMS packages operate by creating a database where the content actually resides. Then, the system calls up information from the database and presents it as a webpage to your visitors. This will frequently create dynamically generated URLs with the ?=ID parameter somewhere in the string. While search engines can read this information, they tend to like static looking URLs that contain keywords. Therefore, you’d want to make sure that the resultant URLs for your program would look like www.companysite.com/product/specific-product.php rather than www.companysite.com/product.aspx?c=684&pid=64323&VID=64279.

2. Code Modification – some CMS packages do not let you go in and modify the titles, descriptions and meta tags for your individual web pages. For SEO purposes, you want to have unique titles and meta information on all of your pages to help the search engines identify content relationships.

3. W3C Compliance – the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) has set up standards for website development that attempt to increase consistency and allow for future development. If your website is W3C compliant, then you know for sure that the search engines can spider your site.

4. Heading and Alt Tags – like the meta information on your site, it is good to have unique, relevant, and keyword rich heading tags (H1, H2) on each page, and relevant ALT tags on all images. Many CMS programs generate these automatically, but don’t allow you to change them. You want this capability.

5. Text Based Sitemap – every site should have a sitemap that lists all the pages of your website, and also gives you some nice keyword based anchor text. Most CMS programs will create a sitemap, but you want the ability to modify it to use keywords and to create multiple sitemaps if you have too many pages.

This post is not intended to recommend any particular CMS package because there are so many other attributes that may be of importance to you as a website owner. However, if you make sure your prospective CMS package can do these 5 things, in addition to whatever other features you need, you’ll have the ability to get your new website optimized for the search engines at some point. Always looking ahead!