maine web development, web design, internet marketing

Last night I attended a great presentation and discussion called “Search Engine Optimization for Drupal Sites” at TechMaine. Much of what we talked about revolved around website elements that are important for SEO. The CMS tool we used to discuss implementations of SEO solutions was Drupal, but any other CMS or static site would also benefit from an SEO upgrade. When choosing a CMS for your site or evaluating your current system, keep the following “CMS SEO Friendly” checklist handy.

1. Allows Editing of Meta Information
It is important for SEO that each page on your site has a unique title and description. The title is what appears at the top of your browser window and should be a brief and targeted statement about the subject of your page. The meta description is not visible to users on the page, but is used as the brief summary that appears on the search results page.

Both the title and description should include keywords that you have selected for your website. Make sure your CMS gives you the ability to edit these on each individual page so that you can customize them and make sure there are no duplicates.

2. Has Friendly URLs for Content
Often when a CMS is installed the urls will have page id numbers and other system information in them. The ability to have useful urls that reflect page content is a must. Some CMSs allow you to specify what you want in each page url while others automatically use the article name. For example hallme.com/my-great-article is much better than hallme.com/articles.php?id=6054. Just make sure it is informative for both users and search engines.

3. Only One H1 Tag Per Page
The H1 tag is the header that appears in the page content as the title. It is important to have an informative and keyword rich header because this tells visitors what they are about to read and is also one of the first things that spiders crawl on your website. Some CMSs allow for multiple h1 tags or will automatically put the tag around your logo in the header. Others do not use h1 tags at all! You may need to configure your template so that it uses one h1 tag and then uses other tags (h2, h3, etc.) for the rest of the headers.

4. Ability to Edit Page Content
This should be an easy one to check off because if a CMS does not allow you to edit your content then it is really not a CMS. I have included this though because of how important it is to make sure that you use your CMS to create quality content using keywords.

Before even beginning development on your website you should be thinking about what keywords will be used throughout your site. Think about your target audience and what people will be typing in to search engines to find your content. Base your content on those keywords so that visitors see that you have what they want and stay on your site.

Last night the presenter told us that you do not want “false traffic” because you will have a higher bounce rate, so make sure your content is relevant. If you change your web strategy at any time, make sure to go in and edit page content so that it continues to reflect your keywords and calls to action.

5. Easy Site Map Generation
There are two types of site maps; an xml site map that is generated for Google and a site map that is a page on your website with links to all of your content. It is important to have an xml site map submitted to Google so that it is easier for robots to crawl your site. There are programs to create these for you and some CMSs include modules to create xml site maps, which can be handy. Having a visible site map on your website is also important so that users can find information quickly. It can be a pain to update the site map every time a new page is added so try to find a module for your CMS that automatically creates a site map.

6. Access to 301 Redirects
Use 301 redirects on your site to point any old urls to new pages on your site if you are doing a redevelopment. These are also used to point a www domain to a non-www domain or vice-versa. For example www.hallme.com and hallme.com both go to the same page, but if you look up in the url you will notice that the www is always there, even if you typed in the latter. It doesn’t matter which one you use, as long as you pick one and make sure that people can type in both to get to your page. Some CMSs allow you to make that redirect in the system while with others you have to use a .htaccess file. Find out what your CMS does and make sure you are comfortable with it.

How Does Your CMS Rate?

If you were able to check off each point for your CMS then you are doing great! If not, you may not have to dump your CMS, but you should do some research to find out how to apply these important elements. Just remember if your urls, headers, content, and site usability are good for the people who visit you website, then it is good for SEO!

Photo Credit: geishaboy500

More and more these days I am finding that clients are coming to developers with requests for using specific content management systems for their new site before they even think of what they want on their site. For example, “I would like a WordPress/Joomla/Drupal site because everyone uses them and I heard that there is a great community around it.”

Any of those may be the perfect tool for many, but did that person think about what will happen if his site changes direction? What if that person wants to add community management or other custom tools? The original CMS choice may not be the best solution after all. There are many great CMSs out there to get any job done, but they are all essentially just tools.

Before you even begin to think about which system you want to use, make sure you have a solid goal for your website and a strategy in place to reach it.

Get Your Goals in Order

The first step to creating your new website is to think of your goals, both for the site launch and in the future. Why do you want a website? What will it do for your business? Consider your target audience and why they would want to visit your website. Spend time thinking about what you want your visitors to do once they are on the site and what impression they will get from your site. Don’t just put up a website because everyone has a website now-a-days and you just “need” one to survive. Make sure your website is up on the web with a purpose!

What is Your Strategy?

Once you have determined what you want to achieve from your site, plan a strategy to get there. Decide what type of content you will be putting on the site and come up with action items that will get visitors to interact with your company in the way that you want. Think about how will you be highlighting your products and services so that visitors will complete the action you have intended for them. Don’t get caught up in the details of “how” yet, figure out what you will be communicating and the response you want first.

Find that CMS!

Now that you have determined your website goals and overall strategy you can start thinking about the tools you intend to use to reach those goals. Create a list of requirements for your website. Did you decide that you are going to use images to display your product? Then make sure a photo gallery is listed as a requirement. Will customers be contacting you through the website? Add a contact form to your list. Think carefully about all the tools you will need to achieve your goals. If you are not sure what the best tool will be to help you with your strategy then brainstorm what you would envision on the website. Your web team can help you determine what tool will best fit your vision.

Of course picking the best CMS for your site is quite a process in itself. But if you know exactly what you need it to do for you then you should be able to select one that will work perfectly. Having the correct tools will be a great help in achieving your web goals, but no matter how great the CMS is, it can not make up for a poor web strategy.

Photo Credit: Shenghung Lin

When you first got a CMS (content management system) it was probably really exciting to suddenly have control over your content! Or maybe I just think it is because I am into that stuff… Regardless, you probably did a lot of updates and added plenty of content at first. And then maybe you got busy with other things, and the updates happened less often. Now the CMS is lonely and the content on your website is getting old. What happened?

It is important to plan for the future when switching over to a CMS. Adding content is easy, but this flexibility goes hand in hand with time management. Here are 5 tips to help you make good use of your CMS and to keep your content fresh.

1. Schedule The Time to Update: With a CMS, updating your website is essentially a new job responsibility that you never had before. Make the time to add content on to your site by scheduling a block dedicated to your site content, whether it is an hour once a week to write a new blog post or 10 minutes at the beginning of every day to update products and add the latest news and events. Choose something realistic that will fit into your schedule.
2. Task Out Editing to Others: Most CMSs allow you to create multiple users who can have different permissions and access to certain parts of the website. Find people in your company who are interested in updating the website and give them an account that allows them to maintain a section of the site. Extra users can also be helpful for coming up with fresh ideas or for adding any content that you may have forgotten about.
3. Integrate Your Website with Traditional Marketing: Your website is an important element of your marketing strategy. Whenever you do any traditional marketing, reflect it into your website. For example if you send out a mailer, create a landing page and provide the link in the mail piece. If you put out a TV ad find a way to link to it or include it in you website.
4. Add New Photos: Start keeping a camera near by and take pictures around the office or at events that members of the company attend. These pictures will make a great addition to a news or event item and will also help break up content on your site.
5. Update With New Products and Services: This may seem like an obvious one but don’t forget about your website when you update a product or service. Make sure your website always has the most recent information on what you offer. Also, be sure to remove any old information so that viewers are not misled.

Utilizing your CMS to its full ability is not always as easy as it sounds. You need to make the time and effort to get new content up on your site. Just a couple of updates a week can make a big difference in keeping you content fresh and your visitors coming back for more!

If you use a Content Management System (CMS) to control your website you are in a great position! Instead of having a basic static site you have the power over a fully dynamic system that allows you to update all your web content, which is important. If you currently have a static site the 7 perks below may have you reconsidering how you manage your web content.

1. Update and Add Content as Often as You Want
If you come out with a new product or service, you can add a new page about it on your website just by logging into your administration and creating a new article or post. With the ability to add and edit all the content on your site you are able to keep it fresh, giving visitors a reason to return. Why would visitors have a reason to come back to your site if the content never changes?

2. Instantly Update Content
It’s Saturday morning, you’re just about to go out for your morning run and you suddenly realize that you never removed the service you discontinued on Friday. Not a problem if you are near a device that is connected to the internet! A CMS is an internet application that allows you to make instant updates to your site through any computer.

3. Reduce Maintenance Costs
With the ability to update all your content through your CMS administration login there is no need to call your web maintenance provider to make costly updates. Spelling errors, address changes, and staff updates can all be done on your own through the CMS.

4. SEO is Easy to Add for Each Page
When you add a new page or make updates to an existing one it is easy to add the proper SEO elements. Most CMSs have areas to add the title, description, and keyword meta tags in addition to search engine friendly URLs and header tags. This gives you full control over how search engines find your content.

5. You Don’t Need to Know Code
The administration area of a CMS has an interface that allows you to update content through a WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editor. Edit and add content just like you would through a word processor. The system will then save the information in a database and you can publish it to your site, never having to see a bit of programming code, phew!

6. You Can Have Multiple Authors
A CMS often gives you the ability to add multiple administrator user accounts. These accounts can be assigned to have different permissions and access levels so that administrators can have different roles. Also, when someone is editing a page other users can not open it, so they can be in editing other content at the same time without worrying about overwriting each other.

7. Maintain Consistency Throughout All Channels
With a CMS you can place automatic feeds throughout your site that pull in your most recent news articles, Tweets, or blog posts. You are also able to maintain consistency from something mentioned through another channel by updating related content on your pages. For example if you mention a sale through Twitter you can link to the product page that you have edited to include the sale information. You can also link to these channels in your content giving website visitors a new perspective and branching them out.

Using a CMS to run your website allows you to keep your content fresh and consistent with your brand and all channels. This will help you maintain a professional appearance and also give visitors a reason to return to your site. Make sure that you use your CMS to its full potential by adding SEO elements and using feeds. Ensure a good balance of new content; adding too much or too many pages can overwhelm visitors and they may have a hard time finding what they are looking for. Keeping everything consistent and creating quality content is key!