How Content Management Systems changed SEO forever
The web has changed a huge amount over the past 5 years but the one thing that seems to be getting worse is the number of sites that lack any kind of basic search engine optimisation.
Years ago only those of us with the ability to code html were able to create web pages and we created them by hand, one carefully constructed page at a time. Next time you see a website last updated in 2002 take a look at the code and 9 times out of 10 it will be optimised better than any Wordpress blog. When was the last time you saw pages of duplicate content on a hand crafted website? Unless somebody takes the time to cut and paste an article on to several pages its just not going to happen.
Look at a site like this one. Do you think the author had ever heard about SEO? She just wrote each page and added a title at the top along with a description of its content. Why 5 years later are webmasters still unable to grasp this concept?
A few years ago along came database driven websites, content management systems and blogging platforms allowing people to publish pages and pages of content without having to think about page titles and descriptions. Lazy programmers created duplicate pages and site wide titles without thinking about the implications on useabilty let alone search engine rankings.
Most CMS platforms these days do offer the ability to easily make changes page by page but the damage has already been done. Millions of blogs get hardly any search engine traffic thanks to the poor optimisation of early Wordpress installs. Unless the blogger suddenly learns SEO or hires a consultant the situation isn’t going to change.
Think of the ecommere websites created back in 2004 using poor quality content management systems. How much more money would these sites have earned if they had been created by hand or optimised from the start?
According to rumours, search engines are no longer taking META keywords in to consideration - I’m not too sure if any META data is used anymore (Can anyone comment on this?)… but there are a lack of CMS systems that consider completely unique page content and meta data.
One CMS system I’ve found that does give the full options page by page is XPOR… however there’s a lot more to SEO/SEM. I truly believe it should remain a task for consultants or specialists in that area. Businesses usually (or at least should) have a seperate budget for online marketing.
The bigger problem arising with CMS systems now is the new Payment Card Industry’s strict E-Commerce guidelines. I know Webree have already begun modifying their CMS for that, I’m sure more will follow suit.
Comment by Anonymous — October 5, 2007 @ 2:11 pm
Well, I can comment on this, but first let me state: I totally agree that CMS is the lazy approach to web publishing, but even blogspot and wordpress are CMS systems. Sure, their purpose is different and you were talking about small sites that should be actually static. But this doesn’t change the fact that we are all using CMS.
Now back to the meta keywords: Yahoo! still pays attention to those. Period. And if you are in doubt about Google paying attention to meta data, I suggest the official google blog with a theme on this very topic.
Comment by Mihaela Lica — November 3, 2007 @ 12:54 pm