SEO friendly CMS tools
2nd June, 2010 - Posted by gabe.francis - No Comments
Content Management Systems are the building block of any modern website. They make it easy for non-IT people to post blogs, edit pages, uploads photos, and generally modify the website without getting their hands dirty in the code. Many CMSs have many hundreds of thousands of man-hours already built into them by the open-source development community. Whether you’re a guy in a garage, a medium size start-up, or a fortune 500 you can leverage a CMS to get a head start.
Making your site easily accessible by search engines is surely top of your mind when planning a re-design or starting a new website. (And if it isn’t, you’re doing things backwards.) Where do you begin when starting a-new? For those of us who don’t have an entire IT staff at our disposal, or even if we do, selecting a pre-built Content Management Systems, or CMS, is the essential starting block.
Our rule: Select a system built with seo as key forethought in system design, not an afterthought.
Once considered a novice blogging platform, Wordpress has evolved into a fairly substantial CMS. With a intuitive administrative interface users can edit pages, themes, or even the raw php code with a few clicks of a button. Plus, Wordpress supports a plug-in architecture that makes adding SEO friendly tools a few clicks away. Ever heard the phrase practice what you preach? Well, this website is built using Wordpress.
The CMS du jour for modern websites is undoubtably Drupal. Although it’s not as easy to use or install as Wordpress, Drupal is much more robust. What makes Drupal so powerful is it’s army of open-source contributers and diverse array of plug-ins. The plug-in community is so strong that many small firms have even started business built off providing plug-ins for the Drupal eco-system. If you’re looking for an SEO friendly CMS that has room to grow, Drupal is an excellent choice.
Plone is a ready-to-run content management system that is built on the Python programming language. Although we haven’t used it ourselves users claim it is easy and flexible to use but requires some advanced programming knowledge to install. Like the others recommended here Plone has a plug-in architecture for adding SEO and SEM friendly features.
A new entrant on the CMS scene Joomla! is easy to use, set up, and maintain. Unlike Plone it can be installed in a basic shared hosting environment without many additional configurations. The administrative interface looks much like a desktop program which reduces the learning curve for users. While not as robust as Drupal, Joomla has a rapidly growing developer ecosystem of plug-ins.
Okay, it’s not a traditional CMS, but Django’s Python framework is creeping closer and closer with each release cycle. For example, the auto-mated admin framework gives an easy to use interface for site admins to update content without touching code. Django is for advanced programmers ready to get their hands dirty in Python code. For webmasters, Django is SEO friendly by default- making it easy to add SEO friendly URLs, redirects, site-maps, and plug-ins.
We’ve never used it but the web consensus is Mambo is the new kid on the block. There is something for everyone to love: it’s open source, easy to install, easy to use, and highly customizable.
One you have chosen a CMS, be sure to check out our recommended SEO and SEM friendly plug-ins.
Do you have a favorite CMS that is missing from our list? Share it with us in the comments below.
Posted on: June 2, 2010
Filed under: Chapter 11: Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Google Analytics
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