Choosing the best CMS for SEO
There’s a long list of features that a CMS needs to do to tick the boxes across technical and on-page SEO, but choosing the right CMS also depends on your business needs. Scalability, community support and ease of content management are all important, too.
The search landscape is ever-evolving. Whether it’s an update to the algorithms, or a new addition to the SERPs, there’s always something to keep up with. And that means, to keep improving SEO performance, your CMS needs to evolve at the same pace.
There’s a long list of features that a CMS needs to do to tick the boxes across technical SEO and on-page SEO, but choosing the right CMS also depends on your business needs. Scalability, community support and the ease of content management are all important, too.
Important features for an SEO-friendly CMS
So, how do you choose a CMS that does it all? These are the features that you should look out for to make sure that your new CMS meets your SEO requirements.
- User-friendly content management system.
- Strong technical foundations.
- Flexible technical SEO features.
- Built-in on-page SEO fields.
- Opportunity for scalability.
- A community and collaboration.
1. An easy CMS for content editors
There are lots of great CMS’s out there that make content creation and management simple. Look out for intuitive interfaces which make it easy for content editors to create and upload SEO-friendly content, without needing heaps of technical SEO knowledge.
Our client’s content team at South West Water are big advocates for Optimzely’s user-friendly CMS. The flexibility in the CMS to pick and choose components, whilst ensuring that on-page SEO features, like heading mark-up are preset to meet SEO best practices, means that they only have to worry about adding in the right copy.
2. Strong website foundations for technical SEO
If you’re considering upgrading to a new platform, the overall technical performance is arguably the most important aspect of SEO. If the foundations are technically tidy, then you can build on all other aspects of SEO, like on-page. But if you’re working with an outdated, or low-performing platform, you’ll always be a step behind competitors.
Responsive design, good page speed, HTTPs support should all be offered as standard. The ability to connect automatic image compressors will help load time. Core Web Vitals has become ever more important for SEO, so solutions where CDN can be used to minify HTML, CSS and JS and the source code to be customised will help to follow Core Web Vitals best practices.
3. Handling technical SEO in the CMS
SEO is an ongoing practice, so your CMS needs to make updating technical SEO features simple and efficient. Website owners should be able to control permissions so that certain content editors can make technical SEO changes without needing developer input. A CMS that can do all this would be a real win for many SEO-ers who know the hurdles of getting SEO tickets prioritised.
Any feature that’s related to website crawlability and indexability, like URL redirect management, sitemap.xml and canonical tags are important for SEO too. It’s important that the CMS offers different levels of permissions so that there is full control over who can access technical SEO features.
We suggest Umbraco if there are a large number of stakeholders who have CMS access. Our client, TCMM Shutter Group, re-platformed one of their brands, California Shutters, to Umbraco, which gave them the flexibility to control who can make changes to certain features, minimizing any accidental risk.
4. Built-in on-page SEO features
Choosing a CMS that makes SEO easier for your team is important for efficiency, especially if your content editors aren’t the most SEO-savvy.
Most CMS’s have built-in features for elements like metadata and image alt text, all of which can be easily managed within the CMS. But where some CMS’s outperform others is through personalisation.
We particularly like Umbraco for this, because you can set up your own character limits and add internal tips so your content team always has recommendations to follow, meaning that SEO best practice should always be followed, regardless of who’s making the changes.
5. A CMS that offers scalability
As your business grows, your website is probably going to need to also grow. Your CMS needs to be capable of expanding, without compromising on performance. Look out for high-performance CMS’s which combine sophisticated architecture with additional optimisation tools. Combining the two means that your website can scale with your business, without needing to worry about it hindering SEO.
We recommend Optimizely and Umbraco for ambitious clients who are looking for a CMS with the ability to grow.
After the success of re-platforming our client, Aardman, to Umbraco, they soon wanted six new fan sites, for the likes of Shaun The Sheep and Wallace and Gromit. With the main site already using Umbraco, the opportunity to scale was straightforward and efficient. All of Aardman’s seven websites are now hosted in the same CMS, sharing the components and technical optimisations which had already been completed for the main Aardman site.
6. A community to share advice and support
It’s not a necessity, but it’s a great opportunity for your technology team if a CMS has a community and support network. Our technology team are active members of Umbraco’s community, and they regularly attend meet-ups, sharing updates and contributions, which help to shape the future of the platform.
This means that SEO best practices, and updates to Search Engine algorithms are accounted for as the platform evolves, so SEO never gets left behind.
Our recommendations for an SEO-friendly CMS
Finding the right CMS really comes down to your business requirements, but there are a couple of CMS’s that we recommend to our clients because they truly solve all of our client’s needs in one platform.
From E-commerce brands and financial services, to a complex multisite project, we’ve found that Umbraco and Optimizely have been the perfect match for our clients, and the CMS’s have helped to evolve the website’s SEO performance.
If you’re looking for a CMS that can do all of the above, then get in touch with our team at info@truedigital.co.uk. We’ll be more than happy to discuss your requirements and recommend the best solution for your business.
