Search engine optimization (SEO) is not rocket science. Most of the time SEO is just common sense and making sure your Content Management System (CMS) supports you in your endeavor to achieve SEO goals.

Most commercially available CMS systems tout a lot of search engine optimization (SEO) capabilities in their marketing brochures and whitepapers. They talk about everything from URL aliasing with keyword-based URLs to metadata mining engines to make the most of your content. The question, then, is what can you do to make sure your CMS is really aiding your organizational goals of search engine optimization? What follows is a quick checklist to help you understand how you and your content contributors can directly impact SEO, and how you can make sure the CMS is working hard to support you.

• Step 1 Use a Keyword-based URL Structure--Search engines partially determine search ranking and relevancy based upon keywords in URLs. To determine whether your site uses a keyword-based URL structure is simple. Navigate to the 'Corporate News' section of any business website, and the URL should be something along the lines of "/corporate-news". If that is not the case and you see a complex string of session variables, directory paths, and other unintelligible text, then chances are good that this is a good area to focus on. Most modern CMS packages offer a way to create keyword-based URLs.

 

• Step 2 Use Context-Driven Title Tags--Ensure that your CMS is generating context-driven title tags within your rendered website pages. In particular, you want to make sure the CMS is never duplicating titles. Each rendered page should have a unique title generated, and that title should ideally contain keywords that would lead search engines to the content of the page.

 

• Step 3 Use Metadata in Web Pages--Effectively utilizing metadata tags within pages is another great strategy for increasing your relevancy in search results. The most commonly used metadata tags are keywords and descriptions. Keyword tags play a very important role as a search engine crawls over a website. Much like the title tags, these should be context-driven and should lead search engines to the content within the page. Many CMS packages offer user-editable metadata fields, and some of the more enterprise-level systems even offer complex data-mining engines to auto-generate these metadata fields.

 

• Step 4 Use Heading Tags Available through XHTML Markup--Each page should have a single "h1" tag that appropriately labels the main headline for the specified page. This tag should also be placed relatively high on the page. Additional sections of content should then fall under this headline directly, or under a subsection heading, like an "h2" tag. A corollary example would be in applying titles and section headings to a word-processor document that will then have an auto-generated table of contents.

 

• Step 5 Separate Visual Display from the Markup on a Website--Almost all modern CMS systems allow for an abstraction of content from the visual treatment that is applied at a template level. Make good use of these available systems and keep your content free from extraneous markup.

 

• Step 6 Ensure Your CMS Supports the Creation of a Sitemap--Search engines are partial to hierarchy and keyword-based structures. To that end, you will want your CMS to support you in creating a sitemap. This sounds simple, but it can be one of the most challenging aspects of managing a website. Many CMS packages offer the ability to reuse content in different areas of a website. Non-linear taxonomies are a great example of this practice. It may be difficult to create a hierarchical map of your content, but it can help enhance your search relevance. Recently, some of the major search engines have made tools available to website administrators so that they can upload specially formed sitemaps. These help the search engines determine website structure, page relevancy, and the relative importance of specific pages within a site. A good CMS should be able to help you develop both the human-readable, and search-engine specific sitemaps.

 

As you evaluate your website, your content management system and your search engine optimization goals, keep in mind the mantra that SEO is not rocket science. Maintain a watchful eye on the content being delivered by your CMS, the metadata being supplied with that content, and the overall structure of your site to ensure that it conforms to the guidelines above, and you will be on your way to SEO success.

To learn more about the Siteworx approach to Search Engine Optimization, view our SEO Services or contact us today.