|
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 tools, Robots.txt and
Meta Tag Management. Other CMS's, such as PostNuke.com, are
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 served
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.
|
