Switching to a CMS = Loosing in SEO?

#1

I tried a content management system yesterday, called Mambo.
It seems easy to use and fits my purpose well. I own a site, which
is growing and it's getting more and more complicated to make
updates. And I will move to a new domain this year, so I thought
switching to a CMS would be smart.

However, I noticed that the HTML code that Mambo produces doesn't
contain any <h1> and <h2> tags (well no headings at all). On my current
site I have my keywords in h1 and h2 tags, at least 5-6 on the main page
and IIRC on all the sub pages as well. I haven't checked in detail.
Perhaps I can customize the code and add heading and change the
style sheet, but that kind of stuff was what I wanted to avoid by using
a CMS :-)

Do you think I might loose the position with say Google if I switch to the
Mambo CMS, but keep all the text as is, but minus the headings? The
rest of the text is heavily optimized though. The CMS adds some extra
(not too beautiful) HTML code as well, such as JavaScripts and so on.

What's your advice?

/Mike
MHC Synthesizers and Effects. http://www.mhc.se/software/plugins/

#2

"Mike H" <mikael.nospam (AT) mhc (DOT) nospam.se> wrote in
news:Eb9Lb.45438$dP1.185566 (AT) newsc (DOT) telia.net:

Quote:

Do you think I might loose the position with say Google if I switch to
the Mambo CMS, but keep all the text as is, but minus the headings?
The rest of the text is heavily optimized though. The CMS adds some
extra (not too beautiful) HTML code as well, such as JavaScripts and
so on.

What's your advice?

If SEO is very important to you, either get a custom CMS written/write one
yourself, or stick with what you are using now.

I have yet to see an off-the-shelf CMS that is written with SEO in mind,
and many of them seem to have been deliberately written to make the site
search invisible.

Not that I don't respect the writers of CMSs. They have to do an awful lot
of stuff, and often they are originally writing for situations where SEO
isn't that crucial.

Victoria
--
Clare Associates Ltd
http://www.clareassoc.co.uk/
01822 835802
--

#3

"Victoria Clare" <victoria (AT) markpoles (DOT) org.uk> wrote:

Quote:

If SEO is very important to you, either get a custom CMS written/write one
yourself, or stick with what you are using now.

I have yet to see an off-the-shelf CMS that is written with SEO in mind,
and many of them seem to have been deliberately written to make the site
search invisible.

Not that I don't respect the writers of CMSs. They have to do an awful lot
of stuff, and often they are originally writing for situations where SEO
isn't that crucial.

Victoria

Oh darn. Well well, I guess you're right. I really need a better way to handle
updates and the Mambo templates looked great. Perhaps I could
just use the CMS' templates and layout? Or perhaps that's forbidden...

#4

"Victoria Clare" <victoria (AT) markpoles (DOT) org.uk> wrote

Quote:

"Mike H" <mikael.nospam (AT) mhc (DOT) nospam.se> wrote in
news:Eb9Lb.45438$dP1.185566 (AT) newsc (DOT) telia.net:

Do you think I might loose the position with say Google if I switch to
the Mambo CMS, but keep all the text as is, but minus the headings?
The rest of the text is heavily optimized though. The CMS adds some
extra (not too beautiful) HTML code as well, such as JavaScripts and
so on.

What's your advice?

If SEO is very important to you, either get a custom CMS written/write one
yourself, or stick with what you are using now.

I have yet to see an off-the-shelf CMS that is written with SEO in mind,
and many of them seem to have been deliberately written to make the site
search invisible.

Not that I don't respect the writers of CMSs. They have to do an awful
lot
of stuff, and often they are originally writing for situations where SEO
isn't that crucial.

Victoria
--
Clare Associates Ltd
http://www.clareassoc.co.uk/
01822 835802

Sounds like a "niche" market that has yet to be developed. A call to all
programmer types :-)

James Taylor
http://www.AICompany.com
http://www.SEO-highrankings.com

#5

James wrote:

Quote:

"Victoria Clare" <victoria (AT) markpoles (DOT) org.uk> wrote in message
news:Xns946A700449CFDvictoriamarkpolesorg (AT) 195 (DOT) 8.68.207...

"Mike H" <mikael.nospam (AT) mhc (DOT) nospam.se> wrote in
news:Eb9Lb.45438$dP1.185566 (AT) newsc (DOT) telia.net:

Do you think I might loose the position with say Google if I switch to
the Mambo CMS, but keep all the text as is, but minus the headings?
The rest of the text is heavily optimized though. The CMS adds some
extra (not too beautiful) HTML code as well, such as JavaScripts and
so on.

What's your advice?

If SEO is very important to you, either get a custom CMS written/write one
yourself, or stick with what you are using now.

I have yet to see an off-the-shelf CMS that is written with SEO in mind,
and many of them seem to have been deliberately written to make the site
search invisible.

Not that I don't respect the writers of CMSs. They have to do an awful

lot

of stuff, and often they are originally writing for situations where SEO
isn't that crucial.

Victoria

Sounds like a "niche" market that has yet to be developed. A call to all
programmer types :-)

Actually, I am trying to get a demo site set up for the CMS that I
use/developed. It makes use of heading tags just about everywhere that I
thought was appropriate. It even gives you the ability to customize the
tags used in many of the page types. (As well as allowing HTML to be
used where you see fit.)

It's under constant development, but I have had some good luck with it
over the last 8-10 sites that I programmed.

Some sites that use it include:
http://www.wafisherinteractive.com/
http://www.wafishermn.com/
http://www.superiorbyways.com/
http://www.mesabitrail.com/
http://www.canadianwaters.com/
http://www.ironworld.com/

The first site is probabally the only one that does anything for
SEO-concious editing. The others don't do anything with it at all, but
have the oportunities to do so.

The interesting part of the CMS is that The entire website design is
located in one file which allows for site-wide design changes very
quickly without having to customize the programming.

Anyway, if I can get some kind of demo site set up, I will post a link
here for others to try it out.

--
Justin Koivisto - spam (AT) koivi (DOT) com
PHP POSTERS: Please use comp.lang.php for PHP related questions,
alt.php* groups are not recommended.

#6

"Justin Koivisto" <spam (AT) koivi (DOT) com> wrote:

Quote:

Actually, I am trying to get a demo site set up for the CMS that I
use/developed. It makes use of heading tags just about everywhere that I
thought was appropriate. It even gives you the ability to customize the
tags used in many of the page types. (As well as allowing HTML to be
used where you see fit.)

It's under constant development, but I have had some good luck with it
over the last 8-10 sites that I programmed.

Some sites that use it include:
http://www.wafisherinteractive.com/
http://www.wafishermn.com/
http://www.superiorbyways.com/
http://www.mesabitrail.com/
http://www.canadianwaters.com/
http://www.ironworld.com/

The first site is probabally the only one that does anything for
SEO-concious editing. The others don't do anything with it at all, but
have the oportunities to do so.

The interesting part of the CMS is that The entire website design is
located in one file which allows for site-wide design changes very
quickly without having to customize the programming.

Anyway, if I can get some kind of demo site set up, I will post a link
here for others to try it out.

Justin, that sounds very interesting and the sites looked good. So please post the link.
Is it open-source and PHP?

/Mike
MHC Synthesizers and Effects. http://www.mhc.se/software/plugins/

#7

Mike H:

Quote:

However, I noticed that the HTML code that Mambo produces doesn't
contain any <h1> and <h2> tags (well no headings at all).

Most CMS's don't produce HTML by themselves, they use templates that need
to be designed and customized by the site designer.

What you have to watch out for is the URL structure. Many CMS's use the
page.ext?content_id=123&context_id=456&user_prefs= 67821 style, which SE's
don't like. Zope (and CMS's based on it) is a noteable exception, with
clean URLs.

--
René Pijlman

Wat wil jij leren? http://www.leren.nl

#8

"Rene Pijlman" wrote:

Quote:

Most CMS's don't produce HTML by themselves, they use templates that need
to be designed and customized by the site designer.

What you have to watch out for is the URL structure. Many CMS's use the
page.ext?content_id=123&context_id=456&user_prefs= 67821 style, which SE's
don't like. Zope (and CMS's based on it) is a noteable exception, with
clean URLs.

OK. Good post René. I didn't know that. I had a look at Zope. It's written in Python
and I don't think my ISP allows anything else than PHP and Perl scripts. Any
other recommendations? Do you know if Xoops uses real URLs or the type
you mention above?

Maybe I should do what someone else recommended, to roll my own content
management system. The problem is to get time for it though...

#9

Mike H wrote:

Quote:

"Justin Koivisto" <spam (AT) koivi (DOT) com> wrote:

Actually, I am trying to get a demo site set up for the CMS that I
use/developed. It makes use of heading tags just about everywhere that I
thought was appropriate. It even gives you the ability to customize the
tags used in many of the page types. (As well as allowing HTML to be
used where you see fit.)

It's under constant development, but I have had some good luck with it
over the last 8-10 sites that I programmed.

Some sites that use it include:
http://www.wafisherinteractive.com/
http://www.wafishermn.com/
http://www.superiorbyways.com/
http://www.mesabitrail.com/
http://www.canadianwaters.com/
http://www.ironworld.com/

The first site is probabally the only one that does anything for
SEO-concious editing. The others don't do anything with it at all, but
have the oportunities to do so.

The interesting part of the CMS is that The entire website design is
located in one file which allows for site-wide design changes very
quickly without having to customize the programming.

Anyway, if I can get some kind of demo site set up, I will post a link
here for others to try it out.

Justin, that sounds very interesting and the sites looked good. So please post the link.
Is it open-source and PHP?

It is PHP/apache mod_rewrite that I use for it. Right now, the system is
owned by the company I work for, but I have been thinking of making it
available somehow - either through the company for cheap or open source.
It really depends on how my boss and I decide to go about it. Afterall,
I do have to think of job security and such.

In any case, I will try and get something up for the system soon
(hopefully before this thread expires on my news server). I will post
the link when it is ready, but as a warning, it will be a development
copy, so not all features may work properly, but testers are always
welcome in that situation!

--
Justin Koivisto - spam (AT) koivi (DOT) com
PHP POSTERS: Please use comp.lang.php for PHP related questions,
alt.php* groups are not recommended.

#10

Rene Pijlman wrote:

Quote:

Mike H:

However, I noticed that the HTML code that Mambo produces doesn't
contain any <h1> and <h2> tags (well no headings at all).

Most CMS's don't produce HTML by themselves, they use templates that need
to be designed and customized by the site designer.

What you have to watch out for is the URL structure. Many CMS's use the
page.ext?content_id=123&context_id=456&user_prefs= 67821 style, which SE's
don't like. Zope (and CMS's based on it) is a noteable exception, with
clean URLs.

The CMS I have developed is also done in this way by using mod_rewrite
for apache. I have also been told that my CMS will work with
ISAPI_rewrite on IIS. Anyway, when I get stuff set up, I will post a
link with more info.

--
Justin Koivisto - spam (AT) koivi (DOT) com
PHP POSTERS: Please use comp.lang.php for PHP related questions,
alt.php* groups are not recommended.