/pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/show_ads.js">

Content Management Systems Eyeball SEOs

Content Management Systems and search engine optimization (SEO) used to be mutually exclusive terms. But the SEO community has been driving the developers of Content Management Systems to integrate more SEO-friendly methodology within their systems.

Content Management Systems (CMS) are a hot topic right now with many corporate websites are turning to these systems to handle thousands of pages of dynamic data that they need to update regularly. Content Management Systems allow information to be added, edited or deleted automatically over the entire website. This can save hundreds of hours in manual updates. Pages of content are generated on the fly using a template driven system.

When Content Management Systems were first developed, most had little regard for the requirements of search engine optimization. For some Content Management Systems this still holds true. Most CMS's, however, now have workarounds to accommodate those wanting to perform search engine optimization on their websites. The workarounds in the Content Management Systems involve two areas: writing search engine friendly URL's and creating individualized title and meta tags per page.

Writing Search Engine Friendly URL's

Some search engines (SE's) and directories like Google and Yahoo! can now read dynamic URL's but there are still a fair amount which can't or can only partially read them. The SE's like to see pages that have unique content per page and may limit the number of variable strings (i.e. ?, =. &) in a URL to assure unique content.

By using a web server module called Mod_Rewrite it is possible to remove the stop characters from the URL string, thus making it more SE-friendly. To do this you will need to add a rule to the .htaccess file. For more information, see the following article on the Apache website: http://httpd.apache.org/docs-2.0/mod/mod_rewrite.html

Creating Individualized Title and Meta Tags

Some Content Management Systems such the latest release from Hot Banana Software boast full integration with SEO performance such as offering Conversion Tracking tool, Robots.txt and Meta Tag Management. Other CMS's such as PostNuke.com is struggling to catch up and offer workarounds to make their system more flexible and SE-friendly.

PostNuke.com says that their next version (.8 release at this writing) will be fully SEO compliant. Until then, they recommend the pnMeta module, which will give control over the title, keyword and description tags over an individual page. Dynamically generated meta tag information, however, is not recommended. For more information see: http://www.miragelab.com/News+article-sid-19.phtml

What Does CMS Mean For SEO's?

Search engine optimization experts and others using SEO techniques will need to work closely with Webmasters and developers who use Content Management Systems on their web properties. This collaborative effort is necessary to insure that URL's are SE-friendly and that unique title and meta tags are severed up for each optimized page. A large website with tons of valuable content, should rank well in the search engines according to the SE's guidelines and the CMS technology would do well not to inhibit this, but rather would do well to promote good search engine rankings for large websites.

Kevin Kantola is the CEO of SEO Resource, a California search engine optimization company, and has published many articles over the past 20 years.

RELATED ARTICLES

Fresh Content Improves Search Engine Optimization
Many search engine optimization companies will sell you a search engine optimization package that addresses many of the major aspects of search engine optimization. These aspects include, but are not limited to, use of file names, alt tags, h1 tags, keyphrase density, meta tag optimization, link analysis and the like. These are all key aspects of a good search optimization.

Breaking the Myth About Page Rank (PR)
The most difficult challenge most web designers face is getting traffic to your site. There are plenty of companies who promise to send traffic your way. Sadly, most of this traffic is not qualified. Yes, your hit counter will move higher, however, if its not qualified, you may find you have unhappy visitors to your site. Unhappy visitors will not click on your ads or purchase your products.

Googles New SEO Rules
Google has recently made some pretty significant changes in its ranking algorithm. The latest update, dubbed by Google forum users as "Allegra", has left some web sites in the dust and catapulted others to top positions. Major updates like this can happen a few times a year at Google, which is why picking the right search engine optimization company can be the difference between online success and failure. However, it becomes an increasingly difficult decision when SEO firms themselves are suffering from the Allegra update.

Its All in the Title
Unfortunately, we don't live in a perfect world. You may be the most intelligent writer in the world, and have breaking information, which, if people actually read it, would benefit them and their business.

Page Rank - A Quick Overview for Beginners
Page Rank (PR) is a specific value for a website page given by Google. It is Google's measure of the importance of a certain site page. The scale is between 1-10. Google gives your website high PR if it is popular. It's based on the number of votes other websites give for your website.

?Google Friendly? Solutions to Graphic-Intense Sites
We all know that the search engines can't "see" or "read" the graphics on our pages. We also know that we need to provide text on a page, so the spiders will have something to crawl and index.

What is the Google Dance?
As with any good web developer, the ability to time the changes Google will update your website and refresh the content for better SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is in your favor. Welcome to the world of "Google Dance". The Google Dance is simply that the predetermination of when the actual update will commence.

What is Your Sales Message?
So you built a website, you have a product, but it's not selling. What's your sales message? Does your site scream out to potential customers "BUY ME!!" or does it simply say "Hi, we're here, we have a product, if you want one...well you could buy it here...or go...YUCK!

Search Engine Optimization - A Beginners Guide
Getting your site listed in the top search engines, such as Google, Yahoo, or MSN is no small job. There is lots of work that needs to be done to guarantee the highest placement possible, and even more work is needed to keep your ranking for any period of time. Here are some simple tips and strategies to keep your site listed, and listed well, without spending any extra cash on pay per clicks.

Search Engine Optimization Tips For 2005 - Part Three
Welcome to part three of our series of articles on search engine optimization. In the third and final part of our series of articles on search engine optimization we cover the topic of links, the types of links and what makes them so important.

Determining the Value of Your SEO Service
Every once in a while--and probably more often than we should--we find ourselves reviewing our SEO pricing models. Pricing SEO has always been a real sticking point for me because there is no one-size-fits-all pricing metric. As I began our most recent review of our pricing something really starting to become quite obvious; search engine optimization is requiring more and more research and analysis than it ever did before.

Search Engine Optimisation: The Soon to be Impossible Dream!
There are today search engine and internet marketing services, in fact a new industry has materialised to exploit the fear of low search rankings.

Link Swapping - How to Win the Website Marketing Game in 3 Easy Steps
If you are a webmaster, chances are one of your main concerns is the ranking of your website with the major search engines. Since you are concerned with this, you are probably involved in acquiring links to your websites on the Internet to further increase the link popularity or your site. The reason gaining links to your website is important is because many of the large and popular search engines focus on the amount of links there are to your site when they begin ranking your site. The more links you have, the higher your website will rank. So, if you are not familiar with how to increase your marketing by acquiring links then you need to learn. Fortunately, it is not difficult and will not take a lot of effort, but you will need to be open minded, patient, and always play fair. Consider the following suggestions when you are beginning your link swapping or reciprocal linking campaign.

SEO Expert Guide - Proposition Development (part 2/10)
It is literally amazing how many people start their online business presence by buying a domain name (close to their business name) and building a brochure-ware page. Only later do they turn their mind to optimizing their site for (i) their audience and (ii) the way their audience find them. Fewer still take a long, hard look at what their competitors are doing first.

Is Reciprocal Linking Dead?
I just read an article at SitePro News that really rings my bell.

Google: The Ultimate Web Writer?s Style Guide
Indulge me for a moment.

What is Search Engine Optimization?
It is no secret that search engines are the number one traffic generating method for driving visitors to the different web sites. Search engines are very useful in helping people find the relevant information they seek on the Internet. The major search engines develop and maintain their own gigantic database of web sites that can be searched by a user typing in a keyword or keyword phrase in the search box.

Submitting Your Site To The Open Web Directory: Some Dos And Don?ts
One of the most important steps in any site's publicity campaign is the submission to the Open Web Directory (http://www.dmoz.org) as this directory provides search results for many of the most important search engines and online portals. This directory is not a robot driven spider, but a human edited directory and you must observe a few important points if your submission is to be successful.

10 Minutes to Your Google Sitemap
Google's calling your name...

What are My Chances to Get the First Place in Search Engine Listings?
You must have heard the stories how people became rich and famous with their websites. How could they achieve this? Their websites took a first position in search engine listings targeting popular keywords. Sounds easy, right? Wrong! To be honest, chances for a regular small business website to get to the top of the search engine listings are close to zero and each day they become smaller and smaller as a number of new and old websites grows.