Is our website CMS system bad for search?
Is Your CMS Hurting Your SEO?
The content management system (CMS) that you use to build and manage your website can have a significant impact on your search engine optimization (SEO) performance. If your CMS is not optimized for search, it can make it difficult for search engines to find and index your content, which can lead to lower search rankings and fewer organic visitors.
How Your CMS Can Affect Your SEO
There are a few specific ways that your CMS can affect your SEO:
- Content Structure and Organization: The way your content is structured and organized in your CMS can impact the way search engines crawl and index your pages. If your content is not well-organized, it can be difficult for search engines to understand the context of your pages, which can lead to lower rankings.
- Metadata Optimization: Your CMS should provide the ability to optimize your page metadata, such as title tags and meta descriptions. This can help search engines understand the content of your pages and rank them higher in search results.
- Backlink Management: Your CMS should also support the creation and management of backlinks, which are links from other websites to yours. Backlinks are a strong signal to search engines that your website is authoritative and trustworthy, which can boost your rankings.
- Mobile-Friendliness: Search engines now prioritize mobile-friendliness, so your CMS should make it easy to create and manage responsive websites that look good and work well on all devices.
Evaluate Your CMS for SEO Readiness
To determine if your CMS is bad for search, you need to evaluate it against the following criteria:
- Does your CMS support structured data markup? Structured data markup is a language that tells search engines what your content is about, making it easier for them to understand and index it.
- Can you easily create and manage meta descriptions for your pages? Meta descriptions are short summaries of your pages that appear below the title tag in search results. They should be informative and entice users to click on your link.
- Can you create and manage backlinks within your CMS? Backlinks are links from other websites to yours, and they are a strong signal to search engines that your website is authoritative and trustworthy.
- Is your CMS responsive and mobile-friendly? Search engines now prioritize mobile-friendliness, so your website needs to look good and work well on all devices, including smartphones and tablets.
If Your CMS Is Bad for Search, What Can You Do?
If your CMS is not optimized for search, there are a few things you can do:
- Upgrade your CMS to a more SEO-friendly version. Many CMS providers offer newer versions that have improved SEO features.
- Install SEO plugins or extensions for your CMS. There are a number of plugins and extensions that can help you optimize your content, metadata, and backlinks.
- Hand-code your SEO markup. If your CMS does not support structured data markup, you can hand-code it using HTML.
- Manually create and manage backlinks. If your CMS does not support backlink management, you can manually create backlinks from other websites to yours.
- Use a mobile-friendly template or theme. There are a number of mobile-friendly templates and themes available for most popular CMS platforms.
Your CMS can have a significant impact on your SEO performance. By choosing a CMS that is optimized for search and taking steps to optimize your content, metadata, and backlinks, you can improve your rankings and attract more organic visitors to your website.