Sphinn - How Content Management Systems changed SEO forever

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How Content Management Systems changed SEO forever

Went Hot: October 4, 2007 - 5:45 am
Posted By: kevgibbo 641 days ago
Topic Type: News Story (Jump to http://blog.seoptimise.com)
Category: SEO

"The web has changed a huge amount over the past 5 years but the one thing that seems to be getting worse is the number of sites that lack any kind of basic search engine optimisation."

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from Noobliminal 641 days ago #

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I'll drink to that! I hate CMS. Get a coder, do a custom quality job.

PS: The site used as example might not be the most appropriate as that person seems to have a world full of problems. SEO if the last of her concerns.

from tappingcreativity 641 days ago #

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I agree with the sentiment in this article. But large CMS manufacturers who pitch to business don't even go near mentioning SEO. They offer a product that is quicker than handwriting a site, which means more done in less time, which means money saved.

Of course, the inherent problem is that it is also likely more money lost in sales to companies who are optimizing and more visible to searchers. Still, it gives SEOs another reason to pitch SEO.

Good find. Worth mentioning for sure.

from g1smd 641 days ago #

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Duplicate content issues (multiple URLs for same "page"), non-optimised titles and descriptions, poor internal navigation, paginated content
(where what is on "page 1" today is on "page 2" tomorrow), lack of use of external files for CSS and JS, and presenting bots with millions of "error. you are not logged in." pages, means that most forums, blogs, carts, and other CMS products perform very badly compared with what they could do if all of those factors had been sorted out at the design stage.

Heck, if just vBulletin were to fix the "you are not logged in" error pages from attempting to be indexed, and fixed the Duplicate Content issues caused by the *nextnewest and *nextoldest links, and by having multiple duplicate URLs with inconsistent parameter ordering, Google would potentially have at least a few hundred million useless URLs less to spider each month.

from OsmanP 640 days ago # - show/hide this comment

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I couldn't agree more with the previous comments. I had trouble working with a site which had implemented a CMS system which churned out uncessary code, page download was slow also, a nightmare!!

One thing for certain when you choose a CMS, if there was such a system which takes SEO into equation then dupe content and code bloat is something which needs to be addressed.

from jgoddard 640 days ago # - show/hide this comment

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I agree that most CMSs are bad, but the problem is that people start building a web site with the CMS in mind, rather than the other way around. You need to build a web site, then integrate a CMS with it. I've worked on a lot of sites that use CMS and work really well with search engines... the problem, also, is that so many people use wordpress or blogging systems for non-blog web sites just for the cms. That's not a good idea.

from Gamermk 640 days ago #

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Honestly, I don't care if sites don't have proper SEO. I care about the content. The emergence of the CMS has allowed actual writers to create and run websites. That's better for the internet than SEO. In fact, I think you should see this as a blessing. There is all kinds of SEO business out there as a result and sure it might be a pain to work around a poorly designed CMS, but guess what... you don't get paid for doing nothing.

I have to completely disagree with the sentiment of this article. I'd rather see bad SEO and good content than the reverse.

from JamesOmdahl 640 days ago #

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Hey jgoddard, could you (or anyone) elaborate a bit more on why using WordPress as a CMS system is "not a good idea?"

Thanks!

from g1smd 640 days ago #

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*** Honestly, I don't care if sites don't have proper SEO. ***

Really? Some of the issues inherent in the site design of some systems stop those sites from being indexed or "treated seriously" by search engines.

*** could you (or anyone) elaborate a bit more on why using WordPress as a CMS system is "not a good idea?" ***

I provided a list of some of the most common problems near the top of the page.

from Gamermk 640 days ago #

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"Some of the issues inherent in the site design of some systems stop those sites from being indexed or "treated seriously" by search engines."

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See too many of these posts come from the point of view of "I'm the one building the site" instead of "I'm the one reading the site". If sites that I don't own/control want to build them so they are hard to find, I'm not really concerned. If they build them so I do find them, but there content sucks... well then I'm annoyed.

from Lani 639 days ago #

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Contrary to popular belief, not many website owners care about SEO or want to worry about it. We would like to believe that the entire internet world exists on SEO alone, but it doesn't. In fact - the industry itself is very small compared to the number of websites online.
CMS have created a way for people to get online easier, with that comes our part to deliver education on the importance of SEO and how it relates to delivering sales and results for the user. I enjoy clients who call me with commercialized CMS websites, I'm a software developer, network administrator, Search Engine Optimizer, Search Marketer etc.. etc.. etc.. it's much easier for me to go in and request a larger budget for the entire system to include proprietary CMS optimized specifically for SEO to deliver results I have a 99% closing with these types of clients, and they eventually become even larger clients - my oldest client is now 7 years.
I'd much rather grow a client from nothing - They are who seeds my future, not the ones who already know everything.
Sometimes, you just gotta work to find that diamond.