content management systems

[customle]

How do pages that are created/managed by content management systems fare with SE's?

I have never used one before because I am aware that any "?" or other symbol in the URL of pages would hurt ranking; however, I have over 100 sites that are related and it is becoming a management nightmare.

I have a sign business and I am writing separate sites for each product and each keyword/phrase of each product. It is working well as far as ranking very well with search engines; however, I am very tempted to try a content management system to keep them organized.

Is this a route you would persue and is there a content management system you would recommend or would you stay with the separate HTML pages/sites?

[TheWebDoctor(tm)]

True enough, there are many search engines that ignore anything beyond the question mark (?). The best way to remedy the situation is to use Apache mod_rewrite which will allow for creating search engine friendly URLs.

Apache mod_rewrite can be used on any server operating system to which Apache has been ported.

For instructions on Apache mod_rewrite please refer to http://httpd.apache.org/docs/mod/mod_rewrite.html.

Any dynamic site can be set up to provide search engine friendly URLs. Unfortunately, I haven't worked on Microsoft servers in over 4 years so I'm no help there unless you use Apache as the web server versus IIS.

[customle]

Thank you so much for the information. Unfortunately, I am moving to a Windows server running IIS.

Does anyone out there know how to set up dynamic sites to provide search engine friendly URLs?

Can anyone recommend search engine-friendly content management system for Windows server?

Also, on another subject, do you roughly know how many people browsing the internet that use pop-up blockers, percentage wise? I have a critical part of a program that gives information via a pop-up and it was brought to my attention that many of my visitors might be unable to use it if they use pop-up blockers.

[RDD]

I too am needing a URL friendly option for IIS & CMS drvien web sites.

As for the pop-up blockers: I disable pop ups in my IE options plus I use the Alexa toolbar that gives me the option to block pop-ups.

I make it a strict policy NOT to use pop ups in any of my web designs.

I also help all my family & friends learn how to block as many pop ups as possible.

I personally hope & feel that pop ups will go away one day. I see them as the graffiti of the Internet.

I don't think they will be going away any time soon though. :(

[StepForth_Jim]

I have recently run across major problems with three clients using Content Management Systems for their websites.

In all three cases, the code output by the CMS is just fine and should not prevent SE spiders from tranisiting through the sites but working within the often limited confines of the CMS drives me batty. Each CMS is somewhat different from the others, thus adding the time it takes to learn the system to the job.

I am having problems applying unique titles for each page in the 3 sites I am working on. For some reason, the programmers who designed these sytems seem to have assumed that one title cascading across all pages in the site is OK. There are other massive limitations in moving text around and adding different elements to the site but with a bit of work, most of them can be overcome.

Does anyone have any secrets to working with a CMS that I have missed? I am at the point of wanting to return my SEO work in NOTEPAD files to the my client's webmasters and instructing them to deal with it. (I don't think that would be very polite though)

thanks

[DanThies]

Jim:

If I had the choice, I'd rather work with a properly set up CMS for optimization, because you can structure documents so that they're optimized by the template.

For example, if you can translate a page topic into the <TITLE> and initial heading, force users to input section headings, etc. you end up with a lot of optimized content without having to tweak each page.

The biggest mistake I've seen is redirecting from www.domain.### to something like www.domain.###/default.asp, and that kind of thing that can prevent the site from getting crawled.

[jholcomb]

Most CMS systems that are widely distributed by sources like PHPNuke, PostNuke, YaWPS, XOOPS, are PHP based. I have personally worked with all of them and had no trouble getting an "index.php" page optimized and in top position. However Apache mod rewrite can be used ofr all of the above. As well most of the above systems support Microsoft servers. re-write is another issue but a good windows based web host should have a solution for you.

See a full list of CMS systems here:
http://www.opensourcecms.com/

The trouble comes in when you want other pages listed. Google (in my opinion) still does have MAJOR issues with indexing dynamic URL's. I have seen Googlebot hit dynamic pages repeatedly in attempts to read past the "?" and not be able to make it through. This is NOT a selective problem or a problem generated by webmasters who accidently "restrict" access to forums for example.

On good option is a PERL based CMS. Engines should have no problem reading these. See Slash Code:
http://slashcode.com/

Hope this helps!

[DanThies]

It's not the scripting language behind the system that's the problem, it's those darned question marks. Perl and PHP don't look any different to a search engine.

Using mod_rewrite or similar to put the slashes back in the URLs helps, but more for other crawlers than for Googlebot. Even then, you still can't use session variables in the URL, which may be the most common mistake/problem with CMS systems and forum apps.

Google has pretty much our entire "Inside Out Marketing" site, it's got question marks and ampersands in the URLs. It also runs on PHP, but the scripting language used doesn't have any impact on this at all.

[jholcomb]

The scripting language is the reason those additional characters are in the URL's in the first place.

And I'm glad to hear Google has managed to spider your site with dynamic URL's. Still I'm sticking to my guns saying that Google does not have this problem solved. Until my clients sites start being indexed properly by Googlebot then I'll have to maintain that stance.

[TheWebDoctor(tm)]

I've seen many attempts to create a viable CMS that will be indexed by the search engines. Many times the programmers make mistakes in their attempt to be fancy.

These are the mistakes I have seen. Some may not consider them mistakes while others may agree with me.

1. JavaScript links
2. urlencoded session variables
3. urlencoded links using ? and &
4. no site map
5. lack of adequate text links
6. Server load, response, incomplete page presentation
7. Database not repsonding correctly

That is not in any particular order of importance. But they are things I have seen that can stop search engines in their tracks.

If a search engine attempts to call the same page more than once during the same session/visit then there is definitely something wrong with the presentation/server response. It may also be due to the 'bot' finding the same link with "hash" (#) attributes in the links on a page.

Again, I hope this helps everyone.