If you’re a business looking to make money, it’s no secret you need a website. You might be thinking, “Duh, dude, who doesn’t know that?” (You’d be surprised.) But just having a website isn’t nearly enough for awareness or sales. People have to find you. Here’s where everyone’s favorite digital marketing buzzword comes into play—SEO (search engine optimization), the art of optimizing your website to rank higher on the highly coveted top pages of search engines.
While these three letters may seem simple, SEO is anything but (except for our team of noble digital marketers who know everything about this sh*t). One often-overlooked element that impacts your SEO efforts is your Content Management System, or CMS.
Choosing the right CMS goes beyond how your website looks or how easy it is to write blogs. In fact, it can significantly impact your website’s search engine visibility. We’ll get to the why and how in this article, so keep reading.
Before you make one more turn on your mouse, schedule a call with us if you’d like to chat about what we can do for your SEO or CMS needs. We get the marketing jargon but won’t throw it at you everytime we talk. And if you need proof of what we can do regarding SEO, you found this page, didn’t you?
What Is a CMS?
CMS stands for Content Management System, a software application that makes creating, managing, and publishing content on your website easy as hell. WordPress and Wix are popular CMS options.
Think of CMS as the central hub for your website’s content with other key features that allow for smoother operation, including a user-friendly interface, content organization, collaboration tools, security, and scalability. It lets you focus on content and leave most of the web maintenance to the software.
Key SEO Factors in Choosing a CMS
We know what SEO is, and we know what CMS is. Let’s put them together so you know why your CMS matters, and how it affects SEO.
Clean and Semantic Code
Search engines rely on code to understand the structure and content of your website. That’s why we joke about writing for robots. And while we love human interaction, entertaining machines is half the marketing battle. A CMS that generates clean, semantic code makes sure your website is easily crawled and indexed by search engines, meaning you’ll rank better.
How a CMS does this is by using clear and descriptive HTML tags to organize your content, making it easier for search engines to understand the hierarchy and relationships between different elements on your webpage.
URL Structure
URL structure matters because with relevant keywords placed in your URL, search engines know how to properly index your content. Our suggestion is to look for a CMS that allows you to create user-friendly and SEO-optimized URLs. Ideally, your CMS should allow you to customize URLs to include relevant keywords and be descriptive about the content on your page, letting your website speak both human and robot.
Meta Tags and Titles
Meta tags and titles are snippets of information that give search engines and users a quick understanding of your webpage’s content. It’s like the movie trailer for your webpage. A good CMS should allow you to easily edit and optimize meta tags and titles for each page so your titles are clear and descriptions are loaded with keywords.
Mobile-friendliness
Everyone sees your website on their phone. To neglect mobile-friendliness is a massive mistake for your brand. Choose a CMS that offers built-in mobile-friendliness or can easily integrate with other systems. Search engines prioritize mobile-optimized websites because they know that’s where the majority of people are looking. Don’t give search engines a reason to knock your content off page one.
Internal Linking
Internal linking is when you link to other pages on your website. It can be tedious at times, but absolutely necessary. Why? Search engines understand the overall structure, flow, and themes of your content when you link to and from relevant pieces on your website. A user-friendly CMS will make internal linking easy, allowing you to create a strong internal linking structure that improves your website navigation and SEO.
Security and Speed
User trust is incredibly important for your website. We absolutely get that. But in the context of this blog regarding SEO, you need strong security. A secure CMS protects your website from malware and hacking attempts, both of which can negatively impact your website’s ranking. Also, a CMS that loads fast tells search engines that your website offers a smooth user experience and will prioritize faster loading pages over slower ones.
Community and Support
As with anything, a supportive community and readily available resources are invaluable when navigating your CMS and SEO efforts. Look for a CMS with a large and active user community and great customer service so if you run into any SEO issues, you can maintain your site’s integrity and search engine standing while you handle any issue that may arise.
Which CMS Is Best for SEO?
It’s the oldest answer in the book but it applies here—it’s up to what you’re looking for. Doing your own research into which CMS will give you the best bang for your buck is our recommendation. But, you came here for answers so we’ll offer up some suggestions on where to start (and why we as a web design agency know what we’re talking about).
The blog you’re reading right now is hosted on our website which is built on WordPress. WordPress is a very popular CMS and for good reason. WordPress is easy to use, has plenty of plug-in opportunities, prioritizes security and speed, but also offers plenty of customization options for more advanced coders.
Some other popular CMS’s are Wix and Squarespace for information websites, and Shopify for e-commerce websites. We’ve also run into the occasional Drupal, FMG, Webflow, and HubSpot website, among others.
We know SEO can be challenging. In the same breath, we know finding the right CMS can also be tough. Schedule a call with us and let’s talk! We know both and are excited to share our experience and hear more about you.
