Choosing a CMS is one of the most important aspects in web design and development. Choosing the wrong CMS can be costly and can result in a lot of upheaval work or in a worst case scenario a change to whole new CMS. The following is a quick checklist to take into account when choosing a CMS in today’s search driven market.
CONTROL OVER TITLE TAGS
What is it?
- Titles are what appear in the top left of your browser window
Why?
- Page titles are one of the most major ranking factors
- All titles need to be unique to every page in a site to avoid issues with duplicate content
- Descriptive titles can aid with click through rate in the search engine results page
What Should You Be Able to Do?
- Must be able to have unique titles across your site the targeting pages primary keyword (a must have!)
- Be able to add keyword modifiers such as “buy”, “cheap” etc. to aid long-tail visibility
- Be able to bespoke titles across the site without use of a template to enable additional keyword modifiers (nice to have)
CONTROL OVER META DESCRIPTIONS
What is it?
- META descriptions are the snippet of text that is shown in the search engines results pages that describe what your page is about.
Why?
- A good description can increase the click through rate to your site
- Each page should have a unique and descriptive META description to aid with CTR and avoid duplication issues
What Should You Be Able to Do?
- Be able to create unique descriptions for all pages across your site
CONTROL OVER HEADING TAGS (H1-H3)
What is it?
- Page headings that are used to structure a document
Why?
- Targeted phrases in heading tags can improve natural search ranking via increased page relevancy
What Should You Be Able to Do?
- Be able to create unique headers for all pages across your site
- Be able to create bespoke header tags for all pages across the site (nice to have)
CONTROL OVER IMAGE ALT ATTRIBUTES
What is it?
- An alt tag is an alternative text description for images
Why?
- Although possesses small weight in terms of ranking factors alt tags can be useful for generating extra traffic via image search verticals
What Should You Be Able to Do?
- Generate alt tags for images across the site with targeted keywords
- Be able to create bespoke alt tags for all images uploaded to the site (nice to have)
KEYWORD RICH URLs/CUSTOMIZABLE URL STRUCTURE
What is it?
- Keyword rich URLs contain the keywords within the URL and are structures in a logical way that mimics the site structure
Why?
- Aids with CTR in the search results pages
- Are easier to remember than non descriptive URLs
- Allow you to easily spot problems with your site (duplicate content/404 errors)
- Adds to keyword relevancy on a given pages thereby helping it rank better.
- Search engines can have trouble indexing URLs with too many parameters
What Should You Be Able to Do?
- Create keyword rich URLs that use targeted keywords for given pages. For example http://www.yoursite.com/shop/widgets/blue-widgets/ instead of http://www.yoursite.com/cgi-bin/gen.pl?id=4&view=basic
BESPOKE ROBOTS META TAGS
What is it?
- Robots META Tags are used to control what you want search engines to index.
Why?
- Can stop duplicate content issues that hinder site rankings
What Should You Be Able to Do?
- Apply appropriate robots META tags to all pages across the site
BREADCRUMB NAVIGATION
What is it?
- Navigation on a site that allows users to keep track of their location within a site and their path to their current location
Why?
- Allows you to interlink your site together with keyword rich text which helps spread link equity and relevancy throughout your site
- Increases usability which is vital for god user experience
What Should You Be Able to Do?
- Be able to incorporate breadcrumb navigation within your site
- Be able to tweak navigation text within the breadcrumb to improve keyword relevancy
XML SITEMAP
What is it?
- An XML Sitemap gives the search engine spiders a point of reference as it links to all pages within your site.
- This allows search spiders to find and index a site quickly by gaining access to deeper pages within your site.
Why?
- XML Sitemaps are an effective way to get deeper pages of your site indexed by the search engines
What Should You Be Able to Do?
- Auto generate XML Sitemaps whenever new pages are added to the site
- Automatically ping sitemap to the search engines once Sitemap is updated
301 REDIRECT FUNCTIONALITY
What is it?
- A 301 redirect is the most search engine friendly method for redirecting a webpage.
Why?
- 301 redirects are valuable for expired content and pages that have newer versions
- Passes link equity from old URLs into new
What Should You Be Able to Do?
- Be able to 301 redirect pages easily instead of the more common non-search engine friendly 302 redirect