SEO your CMS

How to SEO your CMS - Beginners guide. Search engine optimization for your content management system. by Chris West

In a new age of websites, PHP and ASP based 'Content Management Systems' or CMS's are replacing many websites. The difference between a regular website and a CMS is that regular websites are made in a desktop program by coding, or wysiwyg design. CMS's are made by having the websites internal code generate pages instantly by filling in forms in an administration area (which includes the content for that page). CMS's are extremely simple to use, dont require any website knowledge, and many are open source, and free.

Meta Tags

Most content management systems have an option to set Meta tags. Meta tags help describe your websites content, and keywords to some search engines. You will want to set your websites description, title, keywords, and author. Use your major keywords as many as 2 times each, per Meta tag, while still making it sound natural.

Adding menus to specific pages

Some content management system allows you to add 'menu' containers to the left or right side of the site. If your site allows for you to put a menu ONLY on certain pages, you can use this as a major advantage on search engines. Make a new menu to show on a page you want to optimize. Put it on the left hand side of your site, at the top of the column. In the menu, add content with HIGH keyword density. This menu is what search engines will read first on your site. Make sure it uses the keywords ONLY for that page, as you are only optimizing that page. If you want, add a heading tag, or some bold text with keywords in this. Search engines love that.

Editing the themes image alt tags

If you are more PHP/ASP savvy, or more daring you can edit your websites files to add keywords to your site. Search engines cannot read images. They CAN however read image 'alt' tags. This tag tells search engines, and text based browsers what an image is about. These image tags should have the keywords for the page the image is on.

Putting menu on right side of site, and other menu organization

Search engines read the left column of your site first. You want this to be the highest keyword density, and be page-specific information if possible. The main menu for most sites has a lot of code, cluttering what search engines see with information that isnt about the page it is on. Putting the menu on the RIGHT side of the site allows your users to still see a menu, while search engines look at it as 'less important' text. At the same time, move your important, or page specific menus to the left side of site, making the most relevant text the first for search engines to read.

Content: (prominence, density, clustering)

The higher to the top your site certain keywords are, the more impact they have on what search engines think your site is about. Try to make the TOP of your site have high keyword density (the whole page should be 4-7% density for your keyword). Also, try to cluster your keywords. Just like in a video game, when you get the combo score, it adds more value to each of those keywords that are part of the combo, or cluster of keywords.

Robots.txt

This is a file that allows, or disallows certain folders, and files to be searched by search engine's bots. You should disallow all folders that make your CMS work. I disallow all pages that are not part of my content, and I do not want to show up in search engines.

After you follow this, your Content Management System will be properly optimized. Check your rank in MSN (they work faster than other search engines), and check it two weeks later. Another method of optimization not included in this article is link building. Getting links from many sites is very important for all sites to be popular,and indexed by search engines faster.