Are you considering Implementing a Web Content Management System (CMS)?

Does it support search engine optimization without modifications and programming?

Does it allow you to do your own search engine optimization?

A CMS without search engine optimization (SEO) abilities can be a disaster because most CMS systems were not designed for search engine marketing. 

Lots of systems now advertise that they are "search engine ready" or "search engine friendly", but be sure to look at the fine print --- what they often mean is that a programmer can modify the system with add-ons (e.g. the Apache "mod-rewrite" extension) to not damage search engine results too badly.

Some specific problems that CMS generated content has in being indexed by search engines include:

• Dynamic URLs.  Search engines are programmed to limit the number of dynamic pages they index, and the primary way they determine pages are dynamic is through page URLs with special characters (%&=).
• Bad meta tags.  Many CMS systems do not allow users to assign unique, relevant TITLE and DESCRIPTION meta tags to content,  and these are very important to search engines.
• Keyword poor URLs.  Even systems that do not use dynamic URLs often do not let you create URLs that include keywords.  Keyword-rich URLs are an important step in optimizing your pages to rank well in search engines.
• Using third party SEO tools with most CMS systems is time consuming and repetitive.  At the very least, users will need to be in one tool to create content and another to analyze it.  In most cases, the SEO tools cannot optimize content until the pages can be viewed live from a URL on the Web, so content that has not yet been published can not be optimized.
• Most CMS users are not knowledgeable about SEO.  Paying SEO professionals to learn your CMS and then use it to optimize all your content can be cost prohibitive.

Using a CMS for "do it yourself" SEO

In order to get the best of both worlds --- the convenience and management advantages of a CMS and the site promotion advantages of SEO --- you need a search engine friendly CMS.  At a minimum, the CMS should not create URLs and content that engines refuse to index because it looks dynamic.  The system should also allow you to create relevant, per-page meta tags and titles. And, the system should present content using navigation menus that search engines will follow. 

To really make the most of your content in reaching better search engine rankings, your CMS users must easily be able to optimize content as they create it.  For this, you need a CMS that allows non-technical users to easily specify keyword rich URLs, title tags, descriptions and image alt text.  The system should provide feedback on these elements in terms of how they will impact the page's performance for selected keywords.  This kind of CMS allows users to create and optimize content in one tool rather than having to switch back and forth between a CMS and a set of SEO tools.

This is exactly the approach that iData's Synapse Publisher CMS and Synapse Search SEO Toolkit take.  Synapse Publisher CMS^TM is a Web-based tool that lets you develop, publish, and maintain rich Web content. Synapse Search SEO Toolkit^TM extends the Synapse Publisher CMS to include tools that let web content authors do their own search engine optimization as a seamless part of the content authoring process.

To learn more about these software solutions and how iData can help your organization, contact iData or view a demo of Synapse Publisher and Synapse Search.