Balancing WCMS capabilities for the best search results
Optimizing Web content for search engines such as Google and Bing, has become a critical part of
the everyday task of the marketing team. However, while Search Engine Optimization (SEO) has
really transformed from the old meta-tag and static HTML heavy placement of yesterday, to the
content quality focused strategy of today – there are still gaps where many content management
systems often fail to connect for SEO optimized content.
Author: Robert Rose
Get in touch with Hippo: [email protected] North America: +1 877 414 47 76 (toll free) Europe: +31 20 522 44 66
Best Practices for Search
Engine Optimization
In today’s fast moving and social Web, the marketing team has no desire to be bothered with the intricacies of knowing the science of meta-tags and the weight of keywords. The marketing team just simply wants their content to rank higher against prioritized searches than their competition. Therefore, these teams absolutely need a content
management solution that automatically gives them a leg up and empowers their end-users to create search optimized content without worrying about the details. But of course, we must also weigh the “mechanics” of producing search friendly content with the developments earlier in 2011, when Google released its “Panda” (or Farmer)algorithm updates. As we come into 2012, marketers really have to focus on the quality of their content. It’s no longer good enough to just produce a lot of content – marketers now have to make sure that they are producing high quality content.
This too means that if we are going to truly optimize our content for Search we must have close alignment with our Web Content Management solution. More than just producing clean, readable and usable content with the appropriate meta tags – it must be capable of optimizing engagement and “shareability” across social networks. A well implemented and capable Web Content Management tool can help organizations to strike a good balance between the quality and technology sides of Search Engine Optimization.
In this whitepaper, we’ll first address the top best WCMS practices in Search Engine Optimization (SEO) from a business and process perspective. Then, we’ll provide some best WCMS practices on the technical/mechanical side. And, finally, we’ll conclude on how Hippo CMS can help to solve some of these challenges.
Top four content best
practices for SEO
So, much has been made of the technical aspects of SEO (meta tags, HTML, etc..). But really, SEO is just simply the practice of improving the quantity and quality of your traffic
to your web site through optimizing the overall relevance of your web site from the perspective of search engines. Said more simply – Search Engine Optimization is just simply two things. One, making your web site more friendly for Search Engines to find and index content (what we covere in the next pages underneath). And two – producing quality content that encourages people toshare and link to it on other highly ranked web sites - thereby improving your “importance” or relevance in search queries performed on search engines.
So, with these tips – here are some best practices for that piece of the puzzle:
1.
Quality content – yes – but still a lot of it While the focus on quantity has gone down – it’s still safe to say that – assuming a level of quality - the more of it you can produce – the better. You should publish a lot of good, quality content. Google loves content - and big sites are (in general) loved better than small sites. So a good WCMS focuses on helping you optimize your content and facilitate great content by providing easy to use interfaces and a manageable workflow.2.
Manage a SMALL number of keywords and keyphrasesYou will never be all things to everyone - and you’ll never, ever be #1 against everything you want to be. So, you will want to prioritize what keywords and key phrases that mean something to you. Ask yourself what are your customers looking for? What are the most popular search terms that people are using to come to your site. Where do you rank on those key words?
This is where a good WCMS can help. If you can integrate with Google Analytics or Google WebMaster Tools – you can pull in the data of how your customers are finding you and use that to prioritize your keywords that you want to rank for.
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Don’t write for Search engines – write for peopleCertainly the density of key words can help you rank higher for them – but if you focus too much on this then you’ll start to create unreadable content. So for example this sentence:
“open source software is good software for you because it is open source and open source is good.”
Would theoretically rank higher than this sentence:
“Open Source software is good for you because it provides a number of benefits”
However, one doesn’t read well to humans. And, with so much focus on quality and engagement – the best practice is to avoid stuffing your content full of key words, and instead maximize the readability for users. This ultimately will encourage your readers to share and link to your content. Now, no WCMS will help you be a better writer – but a good WCMS should be able to provide you with some insight into keywords and phrases through their reporting – or integration with third-party tools.
4.
Do some odd stuff too!!In addition to all the more mechanical things – it’s always good to experiment and try new things. Try setting up a YouTube channel and funneling some links to content in there. Or, consider setting up micro-sites that focus on different keywords and phrases that you may want to rank higher on – and that are separate from your main concern.
Top Ten WCMS technology
best practices for SEO
From a mechanical perspective, a good Web content management solution should simply “get out of the way” of a search optimization process. In other words, there are best practice functions that any good Web content
management solution should just facilitate without requiring the marketing team to focus on them. These best practices are:
1.
A capable CMS should provide the ability to control ALL tags for content – and especially TITLE tags and the structure of any auto-generated titleA good best-practice for optimizing content for search engines is to ensure that you have clear and optimized TITLE tags on your content. Further, if titles to documents are automatically created by the CMS – then the structure of those auto-generated tags should be optimized for search (e.g. automatically truncate to less than 70 characters). This also includes other page tags – including the ability to insert (manually or automatically based on your requirements or page type) the “noindex” or other types of tags that will affect which content is indexed by Google.
2.
Full control over the URL construction is a must for any good SEO optimized WCMSTo focus on both quality and key word phrases, the ultimate URL of any piece of content produced by the CMS should be manageable as part of the content within the CMS. This includes the ability to create shortened and/or boutique type URL’s. In short – the CMS should allow for full customization of the URL used.
3.
A good WCMS should help you manage 301 redirects301 redirects are the best way to ensure that Google gives credit for content that has moved – and doesn’t penalize for any content that is deleted. The WCMS should not get in the way of your management of 301 redirect for any piece of content that is moved or changed. And a good WCMS should have a tool that allows end-users to create those 301 Redirects if necessary.
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Full control over HTML headers and formatting should be part of the WCMSHTML and its quality is still a large part of how Google determines good, quality content. So, ensuring that the WCMS provides for full control over H1, H2 and other formatting tags is a crucial piece of any good web content management solution.
5.
ALT text on images should be just another piece of contentFor both searchability, as well as accessibility – providing for alt tags on images is a best- practice. With any good SEO optimized WCM – users should have the ability to add ALT meta tags to any asset – including images. Additionally, the CMS should provide for the ability to have default “auto text” for images – that can be overridden by the end-user.
6.
The WCMS should avoid duplicate content While the issue of being penalized for duplicate content on your site has been overhyped – it’s still a best practice to avoid duplicate content where you can. This is especially true when search engine indexes pull in the entirety of the content – including HTML elements.A CMS should completely separate these concerns and only index the content – and not the HTML container within it. Additionally, the CMS should also allow the ability to set the canonical URL for any piece of content – informing Google that this is the version that should take precedence.
7.
XML sitemaps are important for GoogleA key best practice for ensuring that Google indexes ALL of your content is the creation of an XML sitemap. In this way, you can create a standard way for Google to index and present your content through its search engine. A well implemented SEO optimized WCMS will facilitate this best practice by automatically creating and publishing an XML sitemap – as the content is managed.
8.
Manage multiple language through best practicesBest practices suggest that the management of the same content in different languages should be presented through subdirectories or through different main or sub-domains.
A well implemented and SEO optimized WCMS should be able to manage content in a way that makes sense to the organization (e.g. by section, or product or even department) but publish the content to the best, and most optimized, method of language hierarchies.
9.
Social Media integration is criticalContent that is shared has become a critical piece of how search engines are ranking content. Making sure that your WCMS has the ability to integrate with social networks – and publishes content in a way that manages your social channels – or that facilitates the sharing of the content on your site is an important best practice.
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onehippo
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1) (meta) description 2) sitemap. xml Figure 1: Hippo xml and example of
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10.
Speed Speed SpeedOver the last year Google has made more and more adjustments to their algorithm – and speed of your Website is more critical than ever. It’s clear that faster sites don’t just improve your user experience, they can also increase your search rankings 1.
So, ensuring that your SEO optimized WCMS can deliver your site with absolutely no delays – no matter how big or busy it gets is a key best practice in determining a good search optimized content strategy. Hippo has a detailed whitepaper available on “High Performance Content Delivery“ 2.
Those are just some of the key technology features that a good Web Content Management Solution should provide as part of a search optimized content strategy.
The bottom line
With Hippo, both sides of SEO – the technical and the quality can be managed in an optimized way. As the roles between content author/editor and SEO specialist begin to blur – it becomes important that the optimization of content happen BEFORE it is published to the web site. A good WCMS tool helps to facilitate that process. Hippo can certainly help across all of this.
Hippo CMS in practice
Just recently, the Media agency iProspect (which used to be the Search Engine Media agency Checkit) investigated the online findability of the 100 largest advertisers in the Netherlands. The results were quite impressive for Hippo. The website of ANWB – which is the Dutch Travel organization, and the website of the Ministry of General Affairs (the Dutch Government) scored first and second place in the “Best Findable Website” of the Netherlands. Both organizations leverage organic search substantially in their work. ANWB reaches 86 % of its target groups through search engines, being the only online advertiser
who reaches more than 80% of its target audience with the use of search engines. The Ministry of General Affairs reaches 64% of its target audience through online search. Adriaan de Jonge of ANWB said well when he said:
“we give a lot of attention to online findability by search engines. This goes way beyond buying Adwords. For instance, readable URLs with keywords influence search results. Hippo CMS gives our editors the possibilities to choose their URL themselves. Also external linking, metadata, good performance of the website and of course good content are part of our SEO-strategy.”
And this was not the first SEO related prize won by clients using Hippo CMS. As it turns out, research from Edwin Meijer (from Bratpack Internet Services) showed that the website of the Nierstichting (Kidney Foundation), developed with Hippo CMS, also is very well findable. Hippo generates these good results in the field of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) among others by making use of Meta word, URLs with key words and the use of links to and from other relevant website.
For more information about Hippo and its Search Engine Optimization capabilities – we hope you’ll schedule a personalized demo – or download a free trial of our community edition and try it for yourself.
1) http://www.onehippo.com/en/resources/blogs/2012/03/seo-and performance-%E2%80%93-are-you-faster-than-the-99.html
2) Blog Tjeerd Brenninkmeijer: http://blogs.onehippo.org/tjeerd/2010/07/ performance_does_Whitepaper “High Performance Content Delivery”:
Figure 2: Before & after page performance after minbuza.nl migrated to Hippo cms (out of hunderd)
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About Hippo
At Hippo, we believe, digital is here to make our lives a little bit better.
Hippo sets the standard for how organizations can bring real-time relevance to their audience and is the foundation for personalized communication across all channels: mobile, social and web. Our purpose is to facilitate innovation so our customers can create digital miracles. We serve our customers, by creating a platform that is fun to use, easy to implement and open for innovation. Hippo CMS is a powerful, enterprise-class foundation to deliver outstanding Customer Experiences based on Enterprise Agility and Innovation Power.
Hippo CMS is open source, 100% Java and convinces with its lean product architecture that is built for uptime, security and performance.
Our dedicated, Certified Partner Network delivers Hippo Awesomeness around the globe to our valued customers. Hippo is proud to serve organizations such as Disney, British Telecom, Dolce & Gabbana, Max Bahr, the Dutch Police, Thomson Reuters and Crédit Agricole.
Hippo is headquartered in Amsterdam, The Netherlands and Boston, USA.
Curious for more? Visit www.onehippo.com
