You have to wonder about those Content Management Systems.

In Aisle #8 of my series, “SEO Is NOT a candy Store” I look at major issues you can encounter with a CMS.

CMS technology can be a delight to any web site developer.  And why not?  It sure makes it easier to start and manage a website.  But how likely is it that creating and a website is the only objective as a business tries to market on the Internet?  Several other factors should not be neglected.  A key one is search engine optimization.

People implement a CMS and they are hurt by their own ignorance.  You might think a CMS will help you rank with search engines (it can), but in reality they can actually hurt you.  If you don’t want a CMS  to work against you, learn what you’re going to play went before you get too involved.

For example search engines may not be able to find all of your pages because of the way that the CMS works.  In other words, you may be hurting your leads or sales.

As a web site marketing company, I recommend that you look at companies that are using a CMS and find out how well they do on search engines.  You could go to Google, for example and type site:www.nameofthewebsite.com.  You will be able to see many of the pages that are indexed on google.  Does it look like decent pages have been captured by the world’s most popular search engine?

A downside to using a CMS is that it’s often not setup for search engine optimization.  For example, in the best scenario, you would want independence between the page title, the page header and the navigation.

I’ve seen systems with the same words in the navigation also appear in the header and in the page title.  That’s ridiculous.  The keyword you target in the title often is similar but not necessarily identical to the page header.  And you can’t fit all keywords into the navigation.  Take a look at the CMS that you’re considering and see how flexible it is for your needs.  Ask the right questions.

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