CMS & SEO: These SEO criteria must be met by a good content management system

Content management systems (CMS) are convenient when it comes to creating and maintaining websites. But only if they also offer the possibility of active search engine optimization. Which SEO criteria you should absolutely pay attention to when choosing your CMS is what you will learn in this article.

Anyone who wants to be present in the World Wide Web with their own internet presence has to program a website. That is laborious and requires appropriate knowledge. That is why most websites – including blogs and online shops – are based on a so-called content management system (CMS for short).

A CMS is web-based software that makes the content maintenance of a website enormously easier, because no programming knowledge is necessary for it. Through page builders, themes and templates, even web design becomes child's play. As, for example, with the undisputed market leader among the CMS: WordPress.

Checklist: SEO criteria of a good CMS

	Überprüfe	Check
Technische Aspekte	Stabilität: Korrekte und saubere Programmierung nach Standards des World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) mit möglichst schlankem und optimiertem Code	⬜
	Gute Performance im Frontend und Backend (u. a. für eine schnelle Ladezeit)	⬜
	CMS-seitiges Caching (oder einfach erweiterbares Caching, z. B. über Plugin)	⬜
	Unterstützung moderner Web-Standards (HTML5, CSS3)	⬜
	Effiziente Behandlung von JavaScript (z. B. serverseitiges oder hybrides Rendering)	⬜
	Sprechende URLs: Möglichkeit zur Bearbeitung der Permalinks	⬜
	Automatische Verhinderung von Doppel- und Mehrfach-URLs	⬜
	Noindex-Tag: Möglichkeit Seiten von der Indexierung auszuschließen	⬜
	Festlegung Meta-Title und Meta-Description zur Optimierung des Snippets in den Suchergebnissen	⬜
	Canonical-Tag zur Definierung des Originalinhalts	⬜
	Hreflang für mehrsprachigen Content	⬜
	Einfache Integration von strukturierten Daten nach Schema.org	⬜
	Anlage und Bearbeitung der robots.txt um Crawling durch Bots zu steuern	⬜
	Verfügbarkeit eines XML-Sitemaps zur Hinterlegung bei der Google Search Console	⬜
	Automatische interne Verlinkung von themenrelevanten Seiten	⬜
	Automatische Weiterleitung per HTTP-Statuscode 301	⬜
	Absicherung gegen typische Hackerangriffe wie Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) und SQL-Injection-Attacken	⬜
	Wartungsfreundlichkeit und Zukunftssicherheit: Bereitstellung regelmäßiger Updates, Patches, Bugfixes, etc.	⬜
	Schnittstellen für die Anbindung weiterer Software und Tools (z. B. CRM)	⬜
	Anpassungsfähigkeit: Option zum individuellen Eingriff in den Programmcode und/oder zur individuellen Erweiterung (z. B. durch Plugins)	⬜
	Ausführliche Dokumentation	⬜
	Gut erreichbarer und schnell antwortender Support (Alternativ: große, unterstützende Community, wie z. B. bei WordPress)	⬜
	Backup-Funktion	⬜
Funktion	Barrierefreiheit	⬜
	WYSIWYG-Editor für intuitive Bearbeitung ohne Programmierkenntnisse	⬜
	HTML-Editor für den manuellen Eingriff in den Code	⬜
	Möglichkeit zur funktionalen Erweiterung, z. B. durch Plugins	⬜
	Breadcrumb-Navigation	⬜
	Gestaltung individueller Fehlerseite (HTTP-Statuscode 404)	⬜
Design und UX	Breite Auswahl an Templates und anderen Designvorlagen	⬜
	Responsives Webdesign	⬜
	Option für individuelle Designanpassungen, z. B. Eingriff in die Cascading Style Sheets (CSS)	⬜
	Hohe Benutzerfreundlichkeit von Frontend und Backend	⬜
Bilder SEO	Möglichkeit zur Bearbeitung des Dateinamens von Bildern	⬜
	Möglichkeit zur Bearbeitung des Alt-Tags	⬜
	Verlustfreie Komprimierung von Bilddateien zwecks Optimierung des Page Speed	⬜
	Erkennung und Unterbindung doppelter und mehrfacher Uploads desselben Bildes	⬜
Inhaltliche Aspekte	Auszeichnung der Überschriften mit Heading-Tags	⬜
	Formatierungsmöglichkeiten (Schriftgrößen, Schriftfarben, Fettung, etc.)	⬜
	Möglichkeit Links als „follow" bzw. „nofollow" zu kennzeichnen	⬜

CMS must offer the technical prerequisites for on-page optimization

But what is the use of an easy-to-manage website if no one finds it and it therefore has hardly any visitors? A content management system must consequently meet certain SEO criteria in order to be able to be the basis for a successful website.

The most important ranking factor is indeed the content, but for this to be able to take effect at all, some technical prerequisites for on-page optimization must be in place. In this article you will learn what you should pay attention to when choosing the CMS, so that nothing stands in the way of search engine optimization.

Speaking URLs

Content management systems generate URLs for newly created pages automatically. What at first sounds practical is unfortunately often a problem. Because many CMS assign cryptic file names, which represent a random string of characters. This is problematic because search engines read the URL in order to understand the structure of the entire website and the content of the individual page.

The URL should consequently describe what awaits the visitor in terms of content on the website. Many CMS cannot do this, or at least (still) not as well as an articulate human. That is why a CMS should always offer the possibility of creating speaking URLs.

Example



Bad, unreadable URL:



https://www.domain.tld/cms/public/post?id=63953&catid=a54378936&kw=jH98d0Ndtw



Good, speaking URL:



https://www.domain.tld/leistungen/praevention/zahnreinigung

In the settings, WordPress offers, on the one hand, the possibility of defining the permalink structure. In addition, the individual permalink can be adjusted for each post and each page.

Noindex tag

Via a meta tag, pages can be excluded from the indexing of the search engines. In this way it can, for example, be prevented that duplicate content, the imprint or search result pages are indexed. If the meta tag contains the attribute “index”, then the search engine is allowed to crawl and index the page. With “noindex” the page is not included in the index.

It actually happens surprisingly often that pages are set to “noindex” without the website operator being aware of it. That is why, for control reasons alone, it makes sense for a CMS to offer the possibility of manually controlling the indexing by means of “index” or “noindex” in the metadata.

Meta title and meta description

Together with the URL, the meta title and the meta description form the so-called snippet. This is the preview of your website in the search results of Google and the like. If you do not make any explicit specifications for the page title and the page description, then the search engine pulls the required information from somewhere in the content of the page – or, in the worst case, shows nothing at all.

This is bad because the snippet decides whether a search engine user clicks on your website or not. A good ranking without a click-strong snippet is therefore relatively useless – and, independently of that, also relatively rare.

Your CMS should therefore offer the possibility of being able to specify the meta tags for title and description individually for each page. If the CMS cannot do this out of the box, it may be possible to extend it with appropriate plugins. Every good SEO plugin offers this function as a basic.

Canonical tag

The canonical tag is, just like the title and description tag, a meta tag that is placed in the head area of the HTML page. With this tag, problems with duplicate content can be avoided. Duplicate content can impair the ranking and does not even have to arise deliberately. It is already enough for a page to be reachable via both “http” and “https”. Often duplicate content also arises through print versions or product variants with the same description.

With the canonical tag, the search engines are told which URL is the original source and should be listed in the search results. So, for example, the print version contains in the canonical tag the URL of the classic page. Reputable search engines like Google observe the specification and index only the canonical URL.

The canonical tag, too, is a classic example of a function that many SEO plugins offer. The more widespread a CMS, the more plugins with different feature sets are available. Many are even free of charge.

Robots.txt

The robots.txt is, alongside the noindex tag in the header of the HTML page, a further possibility for preventing the indexing of pages or even entire directories. It is a separate text file, via which the bots of search engines can be excluded.

A few CMS make it possible to edit the robots.txt via the backend. In many cases, an editing option can be created with the help of an SEO plugin, for example via the Yoast plugin for WordPress.

XML sitemap

Anyone who operates a website wants it to quickly attract many visitors. For that, the pages have to be found by the Google Bot as quickly as possible. Good internal linking helps with that. Even better is an XML sitemap. It is a machine-readable file that lists all pages that are allowed to be included in the search index.

This file can be submitted to Google via the Google Search Console.

Some content management systems create the XML sitemap automatically and make it available via a link. This link is stored in the Google Search Console. Google checks the XML sitemap regularly and as a result usually perceives new and changed pages faster than if the crawler has to laboriously work its way from link to link.

File name and alt tag for images

A good website cannot do without images. Nice side effect: images increase visibility on Google. Not only because images appear more and more often in the snippet, but also because you are found through Google Image Search this way. Provided you optimize your images for search engines.

Because search engines cannot always clearly recognize the content of images, it is important to give as many clues to the image content as possible. This can happen in various places, for example via a descriptive file name (similar to the speaking URLs) and via the alt tag. The alt tag is displayed when the image cannot be shown for technical reasons. The alternative text describes what would actually be seen at this spot.

By the way, it thereby also increases the accessibility of your website, which is at least an indirect ranking factor.

When choosing your CMS, make sure that you have the possibility of editing both. When uploading media, many systems change the file name into cryptic character strings. In the settings, this should at least be able to be prevented. Even better is if you can adjust the file name at any time, as for example with WordPress. The same applies to adding the alt tag.

Responsive design

Anyone who uses one of the many content management systems on the market often also works with design templates – so-called page builders and themes. Here it is important to make sure that responsive web design is supported. That means that the design is adapted fully automatically to the screen resolution of the respective end devices.

Many themes now support responsive web design by default.

However, due to the variety of end devices, there is almost always a need for manual reworking, so that the page builder should in any case offer appropriate setting options.

Heading tags

Search engines pay special attention to headings, because these reveal a lot about the content and its relevance. In Hypertext Markup Language (HTML), headings are put into a hierarchy from one to six, with the heading with the H1 tag being the most important and being most strongly observed and weighted by Google. In the headings of the top hierarchy levels, the keywords for which the page is supposed to rank should appear.

With the CMS, make sure that when adding content you have the possibility of formatting the headings from H1 to H6. Many text editors offer this possibility. Alternatively, there must be the possibility of being able to switch to the HTML editor in order to mark up the headings yourself with the respective heading tag.

Follow and nofollow attribute for links

Every link confers a value on the page it links to. That is why the external links, which are also referred to as backlinks, are so sought after in search engine optimization. With the nofollow attribute in the HTML instruction for links, the search engine is told that it should not follow the link in question. That means that this link does not pass any link juice (link power) to the link source.

Normally, the instruction “dofollow” is the standard. In recent years, however, many CMS have made the nofollow attribute the standard for outgoing links. Whether a link is supposed to carry link juice or not is, as a rule, a case-by-case decision. Because for both scenarios there are sensible use cases.

With the CMS, therefore, make sure that when setting the links you can ideally decide for yourself whether the link should be given the attribute “dofollow” or “nofollow”. This way you have maximum leeway and do not have to actively intervene in the source code.

SEO criteria for CMS systems with heavy use of JavaScript

CMS systems that rely heavily on JavaScript must take special measures to ensure that their content remains optimally indexable for search engines. Since search engine crawlers often have difficulty fully executing and rendering JavaScript, targeted optimizations are necessary:

1. Server-side or hybrid rendering
   One of the most effective strategies is the use of server-side or hybrid rendering. Here, content is already rendered on the server and sent to the browser as finished HTML. This ensures that search engine crawlers can capture the complete content without being dependent on JavaScript. Alternatively, dynamic rendering can also be used, in which a special version of the page is provided for crawlers.
2. JavaScript efficiency and loading times
   JavaScript should be designed efficiently and leanly so as not to negatively influence the loading times, since these are an important SEO ranking factor. Too many or unnecessary scripts should be avoided and asynchronous loading used in order to improve the rendering speed.
3. Keep links visible
   It is crucial that all links in the HTML document remain visible and accessible. JavaScript should not be used to hide important links or to show them only after interactions such as hover or click. Search engine crawlers often cannot recognize such hidden links, which can lead to poorer indexing and a limited crawling depth.
4. Structured data and semantic HTML
   CMS systems should implement structured data (e.g. Schema.org markup) in order to convey the context of the content to the search engines better. Here it should be ensured that this data is accessible independently of the JavaScript execution. In addition, semantic HTML should be used in order to present the meaning of the content clearly.

Conclusion: SEO aspects are just as important with the CMS as user-friendliness

When you have to decide on a CMS, you should not only pay attention to the user-friendliness and the look of the themes. The possibilities offered for search engine optimization are at least just as important, because they ultimately decide on the success of your website.

Therefore make the SEO criteria mentioned above decisive selection criteria. This way you avoid having to later intervene manually in the system with great effort, or even having to switch it. After all, the aspects mentioned here are the fundamental prerequisites.