Selecting a content management system

[Chris Douthit]

Many websites today use a content management system; there are good and bad content management systems. A good content management system will help your SEO efforts a bad one will not.

For example, let’s say you want to buy a new hot tub cover. In your search engine efforts to located a quality cover you find the following 2 websites

www.website.com/hot-tub/covers.html

-and-

www.website.com/dis/product.php?=35934&id=847

In both cases these URLs are generated by the website’s content management system. It’s pretty easy to tell, the search engine friendly one also happens to be the user friendly one as well.

If you select a good content management system you can address both site and individual page issues that have an effect on the search engines capability to crawl though your website. Although there are a lot of things to consider when selecting a content management system, search engine optimization should be one of those things.

[lanta99]

+1 to the above post.

Although I personally haven't used WordPress for product launches and such, I've experimented with it a lot and it seems to be one of the best (and free) platforms out there.

Oh and for the people who do want to know what I use, I use WHMCS.

[webincomestream]

Yes, I agree about content management systems, however a lot of the SEO is your hands,; espe4cially with Wordpress. The BOMB with Wp is of course it's thousands of plug-ins. For SEO, one of the best is of course "All in 1 SEO Pack". With it installed, the SEO friendly links referenced in your thread actually becomes automatic. Regards, Ed

[John Taylor]

While I agree that Wordpress is very user friendly
and when set up properly can be search engine
friendly, I'd also suggest that you consider Joomla.

Many of my sites based on Joomla have achieved
better results than Wordpress based sites.

John

[darrenc@telus.net]

I manage a small hosting company and I can tell you right now, stay the heck away from Joomla. It is a quick ticket to being hacked.
One of our clients put it on our box and we have had nothing but trouble from their sites since. Twice the ISP has threatened us with a 24 hour shutdown notice due to the clients Joomla being hacked and attacking other sites.

While Joomla can do some nice things, it is not worth the hassles.

If you do use Joomla, then like Wordpress, stay on top of the updates. Patch often!

The problem a lot of people make is they install wordpress or joomla and then set and forget it.

[ianternet]

you just need to use wordpress. wordpress is one of the best and most easiest ones out there

[brandondrury]

I'm surprised that seo friendly link is still even an issue. Back in 2004 it was more of a problem, but even a low level programmer will have little trouble setting up mod rewrite.

Then again, I too have been using Wordpress for pretty much everything for nearly five years.

Brandon

[Antony Le]

I own 100's of websites... Wordpress is by far the easiest and by far the most efficient CMS i have come across. Very versatile as there are a ton of plugins, plenty of themes and much much more (Excellent for SEO). Give it a try

[Tony Marriott]

I must agree with the general opinion in the posts above. I use Wordpress extensively and learned it well enough in 1 day to put a site up. It fixes every issue of on page SEO with only a small amount of configuration and a few pluggins.

Tony

[Bill Ross]

Obviously the consensus here is Wordpress. I have to agree! But be careful with the standard HTML editor that comes with WP. Its horrible! Make sure you install another one before you start building your pages, etc.

Two I use and like are Dean's FCKEditor For Wordpress and Foliopress WYSIWYG. But there are lots of them available!

Hope that helps,
Bill