CMS for SEO: 7 Factors You Need to Consider

Here are the 7 Factors to Consider When Choosing a CMS for SEO:

• Page Title, Meta Tags & Description
• Page Templates
• Plug-ins, Modules, and Add-ons
• URL Structure Customizability
• Alt Attributes Utilization for Images
• Page Speed
• Mobile-Responsiveness

Now, before we dig deeper into each of these factors to choose the best CMS for SEO, let’s make sure we’re on the same page when it comes to CMS.

What is a CMS?

CMS stands for Content Management System – a software that will help you create, manage, and modify the content on your website even though you don’t have some specialized technical knowledge.

A CMS is a tool that will help you build your website despite not being a coding-savvy, and even if you don’t know how to code at all.

Your content management system basically handles all the basic infrastructure for you, such as storing images, creating web pages, and all other functions that can be done on your website.

However, don’t fall victim to how easy-to-use a website is – if you want your website to be ranking on top of the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs), especially on Google, you should pick an SEO friendly CMS by considering the following factors:

Page Title, Meta Tags & Description

These three basic HTML elements will help you improve your website’s search visibility and organic traffic even if you don’t have a strategic SEO plan yet.

You see, when the search engine “spiders” crawl your website, they are not just considering the content on your page, but also HTML as it performs a massive role when determining your ranking on the SERPs. Your page titles, for example, signal your web pages topics to the search engines.

Plus, remember that your page title and meta description are the first things that a website visitor will see on the SERPs. So, they definitely play an essential role in click-through rates (CTR).

This may sound too simplistic, but the ease of creating h1 tags, titles, and meta descriptions must be your primary concern when choosing a content management system for your website.

Page Templates

The best SEO friendly CMS is the one that allows you to customize your template for each page. So, when selecting a CMS for SEO, make sure that it will enable you to change one page when necessary without affecting the templates of your other web pages.

You see, your website’s template is necessary for your users’ experience (UX) and brand consistency, but not every page on your website should stay the same – some web pages may need slight changes, especially those pages that you need to include some custom side navigation which is essential for the internal linking and click-throughs on your website.

So, the most SEO friendly CMS you can get is the one that allows you to adjust your web pages without messing up the site-wide template.

Plug-ins, Modules, and Add-ons

Various content management systems have different terms for these enhancements – website plug-ins, or modules, or add-ons. So, when considering a CMS for SEO, you have first to explore the plug-ins that have been created for that particular CMS.

Pro Tip: The best CMS for SEO comprises of an XML sitemap creation, page speed tools, automated SEO-tagging, keyword management tools, markup tools, among others.

Remember that if your website add-ons can help you ease the methods of optimizing your website for visibility, load-time, and conversion if they are correctly set up. You may need to tap some CMS for SEO experts to make sure your modules are not too clunky.

URL Structure Customizability

The URL is the address of your web page, and it is one of the most important signals that the search engine “spiders” and even your website visitors will read on what your website is all about – it is one of the main components that will help you get indexed for the right keywords and help you rank on top of the SERPs.

However, some content management systems will still auto-generate a URL for your web page depending on the title tag, or the H1 tag, or even the page location on your website – sometimes, this is OK. Still, you would rather have better control over your URL, especially when you’re targeting for a long-tail keyword or need to do some multiple changes on the page.

An SEO friendly CMS allows you to create keyword-focused URLs rather than having to use automated words and numbers, such as the date when the post is published.

Pro Tip: use hyphens ( – ), not underscores ( _ ) to separate the words in your URL, and remove unnecessary conjunctions and prepositions unless they are included in the exact keywords you are targeting.

Alt Attributes Utilization for Images

Images on your content help keep your website visitors engaged. So, it’s important to throw in a few photos, especially if you’re publishing a blog post. Did you know that the search engines, especially Google, index and rank your images too? They do this by reading the alt texts and other alt attributes you associate with your pictures.

That’s why an SEO friendly CMS grants you the ability to use alternative attributes or alt texts for your web images.

Pro Tip: when adding alt texts on your images, keep it descriptive, and add your keywords as natural as possible. Also, don’t forget that adding other alt attributes in your web page images is a manual thing that you have to do – your CMS can only do as much as allowing you to add and customize them.

Page Speed

This factor may be the start of digging into the more technical side of CMS for SEO. You see, your website load speed should be one of your top priorities because a slow-loading website can massively impact your SERP ranking, and your content management system may be the primary thing to blame.

Pro Tip: Aim for a well-written code and optimize your images by compressing them without sacrificing the image quality.

Mobile-Responsiveness

Did you know 57% of search traffic now comes from mobile devices? Plus, it is expected to increase gradually as time goes by because more and more people around the world are getting access to the Internet on their mobile phones and tablets.

Therefore, you should choose a content management system that offers templates with a responsive layout to optimize your website for mobile-first indexing– making the mobile version of your website as Google’s starting point when they index your site.

Final Thoughts

While it’s true that the best CMS for SEO contains all the factors mentioned in this blog, you have to know that these are not the complete SEO advantages or features a content management system should have.

We thought that the seven we mentioned above are one of the essential factors to consider. However, there’s a lot more at stake.

Now, if you’re planning to build a website but unsure of which CMS to choose – I tell you, there are hundreds of them, you need to talk to the CMS in SEO experts. But if you already have a website and you’re not ranking too well than your competitors, take advantage of a website SEO audit to see where you are missing and what you can improve on your website, and tap the