A Content Management System (CMS) has traditionally been regarded as bad when it comes to Search Engines. In many cases, its still true.

Content Management systems were not designed for Search Engines. The objective was to allows the site owner to edit his website easily (usually just the content and images). The content is stored in a database and the webpage is generated on the fly when a user requests for one.

Why CMS became search engine un-friendly?

The restrictive approach caused a lot of problems. From dynamic urls that contained special characters and no keywords to common meta tags for all pages, the content management systems became more of a roadblock than a help.

Search Engine Friendly CMS

Today, most Content Management Systems have improved drastically. They are user AND Search Engine friendly. The open source CMSs had much more support and came through faster. However, many implementors still have trouble setting up the CMS is a search engine friendly way. Its very important to ensure that your CMS has all the required plugins/contributions installed to make it search engine friendly. There are lots of content management systems available today. But you need to look for one that:

1. has valid and clean HTML
2. maximum flexibility
3. allows you to customize it
4. can be integrated with other applications
5. is modular
6. gives you freedom over the pagenames
7. is tested for all browsers

This will be a good start.

Search Engine Optimized is More Than Just Search Engine Friendly

Don’t confuse search engine optimized with search engine friendly. While a Search Engine friendly CMS may help you get indexed, it may not help you get ranked well. In order to rank well, you need to ensure that you are catering to the needs of your end user first.

And it all starts with a keyword search.

Search Engine Rankings or Website Traffic? Remember those days when you found companies giving “SEO Guarantees”? Top 5 rankings across top 10 keywords for $$$… you may just find a few now as well. If you have ever come across a guarantee that promised xxx figure for search engine traffic through rankings, please send me the link!

While search engine rankings may seem important, and I am not saying they are not, what matters more is how much traffic you are getting. Of course, you’re not going to see traffic if you’re not ranking well.

But, its not necessary that you see good traffic on your website if you are ranking well for a few keywords.

Keyword popularity is the key factor here. The end objective of an online marketing plan should not be to rank well on Google or Yahoo or MSN. The objective should be to bring as many qualified visitors to the website as possible. Good search engine rankings should be one of the means of bringing the traffic, not the end objective.

When we start with the SEO process, the first report we create is really a Ranking Capacity Score Card of a website.

The ranking capacity score card is an indicator of the website’s status in the ranking system of Search Engines. The report consists of a list of ranking capacity indicators with certain scores. The scores tell us how far ahead or behind a website is viz-a-viz its competitors and what kind of improvement is required in the scores so that the target audience can find it on Search Engines.

The score card not only lists the scores of the website, but also that of the competitors to find out the ranking capacity indicators for which they score well.

The ranking capacity indicators are responsible for the rankings in SERPs. By assessing the gap between the ranking capacity indicator scores, an online marketing plan for a website can be outlined effectively.

While the report is generally defined as a ranking capacity score card, it also acts as a record keeper. Because the ranking capacity score card is created at the begining of the Search Engine Optimization (SEO) plan, it helps in measuring the impact of the SEO plan when its recreated at the end of the SEO plan.

So if you’re about to launch the SEO plan for your website yourself or have hired a company to do that for you, have the ranking capacity score card created!