Best CMS for SEO: What to Choose?

Choosing the right CMS for SEO is crucial in the context of future website promotion and customer acquisition.

CMS is an abbreviation for the English "content management system". A CMS is software through which we can create, manage and publish content on a website without special knowledge or knowledge of programming languages. However, when implementing an SEO (Website Search Engine Optimization) campaign, each CMS provides a greater or lesser set of opportunities for these actions.

When choosing the best content management system, the site owner should understand whether this CMS will be able to optimize the added content and the site structure itself with the best impact on SEO and the position of the site in search results. Are you looking for the best CMS for SEO? We offer to compare.

A few words about SEO

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. In practice, this is a set of actions taken on a website to improve its position in search results. The higher a site is in the list of search results, the more likely it is to be visited by a potential customer.

We basically divide SEO into on-page actions, that is, those that are performed inside the site and related to its construction, and external SEO (off-page), that is, work performed outside the site. On-page search engine optimization activities include website code changes, so-called technical SEO, keyword optimization, link building, copywriting, and content placement. Off-page SEO involves activities to build domain authority, get external links, or promote on social media.

How to choose the right CMS for SEO?

When deciding on the choice (purchase) of a particular CMS, the site owner must assess whether its functionality will allow to optimize the content in accordance with the growing requirements of users and search engines.

A CMS can be of great help in implementing and implementing an SEO strategy as it helps to build a website from scratch. At this stage, search engine optimization is especially important because it is much easier to create a site that is well adapted to the requirements of search engines than to correct errors and make corrections later. So, choosing a content management system is a key step for the future success of an online business.

What SEO features should a good CMS have?

Pay special attention to the following features of the system:

1. Edit meta tags, including website title: The page title appears not only in the browser bar, but also in the list of search results. Other tags will not be displayed to users, but will allow Google to read the information contained, for example, in the form of graphics.
2. Changing the URL: A good CMS should allow you to make changes if you need them in the future, for example, due to the next updates to Google's search algorithms.
3. Admin panel, or admin panel: A CMS should offer simple and intuitive editing of basic elements and content.
4. Responsiveness: the chosen CMS for business should ensure the correct display of the site on different mobile devices.
5. Page Load Speed: A content management system shouldn't be a burden on a website. If pages take a long time to load, it can scare users away. Among the possible reasons may also be poorly optimized site code or an excess of graphic elements.
6. Modifications of .htaccess and robots files.txt. The latter is an important file that, among other things, tells search engines how to process and index individual subpages of a site.
7. Redirection: A CMS should make it easy to set up a permanent redirect from one URL to another.

More advanced users with experience in creating and search engine optimization of sites, especially employees of marketing agencies who work daily with different types of sites and content management systems, can pay attention to the following aspects:

1. Possibility to edit individual elements in the template to make changes in the field of technical SEO. This advantage is commonly found in an open source CMS.
2. Ability to implement specialized software solutions. In the case of SaaS, this is usually not possible.

The best CMS for website promotion and SEO

On the question of which CMS is the best, there is no correct and universal answer. There are many systems on the market that make life easier for owners of various websites. Some are better suited for classic company sites, others are designed for huge online stores. Below, we present some of the popular CMSs with an assessment of their SEO support capabilities.

WordPress

WordPress started out as a blogging platform, but has since grown into the most popular CMS on the planet. Its popularity is due to its transparency and ease of use – even a person who does not know the programming language will be able to create a simple site with an aesthetic appearance with the help of the WordPress community and publicly available educational materials.

Despite its ease of use, WordPress is a platform that provides users with a wide range of options. Its strength lies in the international community of users who not only provide technical support and help in solving a number of problems, but also create so-called plug-ins to expand existing features or add completely new ones.

How does WordPress affect SEO?

The basic version of this CMS includes some SEO-important features such as changing the URL, adding a title and alt image text. Almost all other aspects can get adequate support with plugins. Plugins will allow you to create a robots file.txt, a sitemap, set up redirects or carry out more advanced work with tags.

Note, however, that plugins are created by the community and are therefore not officially supported by WordPress. They should also be updated regularly, and their excess can heavily load the site, which will negatively affect load time and functionality.

Drupal

Drupal is another CMS that allows you to create advanced websites. Like WordPress, Drupal has a wide community of users who provide additional technical support and work on all sorts of extensions for the system. Drupal is an open source system, but a bit more complex and less user-friendly than WordPress.

If you want to quickly create a website for your business, Drupal will not be the best choice. Even people who have previous experience developing websites can take time to understand its capabilities and get used to them. However, users often compare Drupal to WordPress, so the question arises – which is better for SEO?

If you need to create a simple website or blog with a few pages and a small amount of content, WordPress is the obvious choice. However, if you need a CMS that will allow you to perform more complex operations (such as registering users, assigning different roles, authorizing or publishing rare types of content), then Drupal is an advanced tool that you are looking for.

Joomla

For people who are not convinced of either the simplicity of WordPress or the advanced capabilities of Drupal, there is another interesting alternative on the market – Joomla. Like WordPress has plugins, Joomla has extensions to change the functionality of the system at its discretion.

Although in the basic version, Joomla by default gives important SEO functions, such as the ability to create and edit tags and titles, extensions for Joomla allow you to really effectively use the capabilities of this CMS. Thanks to them, you will be able to create a site map, use some analytical capabilities for marketing. Joomla also gives the user the ability to create their own URL.

Among the advantages of Joomla is the ability to customize the site with the help of available templates and extensions. The choice is great, which allows you to develop interesting and unique sites. The flip side may be the small number of SEO solutions available in the basic version of the system. Owners have to choose and install numerous extensions. Joomla is much harder to learn than WordPress.

Which CMS is best for SEO?

As we have already said, there is no single correct answer to this question. It is important to choose a CMS that will be maximally adapted to a particular project. In addition to the most popular CMS, which we talked about above, there are dozens of other systems on the market that also have their supporters. All the most popular of them allow you to achieve more or less similar results in terms of SEO.

The system that we most often recommend for business is WordPress. It will be a solution for power users who are well aware of the needs of their business online and appreciate quality and functionality. WordPress allows you to very intuitively manage the site and SEO.

Which CMS to choose for a blog?

Choosing the right CMS is an important decision for bloggers, as it helps to expand the audience faster. A complex system can hinder the positioning process due to the lack of access to appropriate resources for development. WordPress is currently the most popular CMS in the world, and many popular blogs are based on it. This is no coincidence, since WP is simple, clear and completely free.

If, on the other hand, you're interested in building a more complex website that will allow you to publish different types of content or use different features, it's worth considering 1C-Bitrix or, say, Drupal. You just have to remember that the use of CMS data usually entails the need to outsource installation and operation to professionals, as these systems are more difficult to use.

Joomla stands somewhere between WordPress and Drupal in terms of complexity and capabilities, so it also finds its niche among popular blog owners who are looking for a reliable system with support for extensive SEO capabilities.

Which CMS to choose for online stores?

For e-commerce sites, especially for large online stores, Shopify is rightly considered the best solution. This CMS allows you to manage a very large database of products and offers advanced solutions for sales and marketing. For small online stores, you can successfully use Prestashop or the well-known Woocommerce plugin for WordPress.

Creating websites for SEO from scratch

We develop all our websites with SEO in mind, using the advantages of CMS. We prioritize the usability, security and efficiency of each site so that it meets our clients' business goals 100%.

A website is not an electronic business card! This is a powerful tool that should be profitable. Take advantage of our help and bring your business to a new level, as dozens of clients of the Vyacheslav Denisov Studio in Russia, Kazakhstan and other CIS countries have done.