A CMS Can Raise Marketing and IT Synergy for SEO Success

Optimizing a company’s Web site for search engines such as Google and Yahoo!, is a critical task for marketing professionals. However, while Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is becoming increasingly important, the Webmaster and his army of technical personnel often fail to connect with the vision of the marketers.

While the business person or the content owner does not want to be hassled with the intricacies of knowing the science of meta-tags and the weight of keywords (essentials in an SEO initiative) – the Webmaster on the other hand, does not want his role to be confined to just modifying and posting content. You thus have a situation where both technical and business owners are not happy with the nature of their work. This inhibits decision making, and creates a situation where content is prevented from publishing because the Webmaster does not have the inclination or the time to manage all the content updates. What is the way out?

A Content Management System (CMS) can help organizations strike the balance between the technical and business sides. Here is how a CMS can help both the business and technical sides manage content effortlessly:

• Effortless Publishing
  By enabling even non-technical users to create and publish content effortlessly, a CMS can provide all the standard tools that marketers need for SEO. With a familiar, easy-to-understand interface, users can quickly publish and deep-link content without worrying about back-end inconsistencies. Considering that organizations can have large Web sites with thousands of links, a CMS can save the Webmaster a significant amount of time – and effort – by automating and simplifying the process.
  
  
• Quick Posting and Updating of Content
  Key to an efficient content process is the workflow. The path that content follows starting from the creator all the way to eventual publishing has to be cleared of process ‘roadblocks’; these obstacles typically being associated with ownership and verification. An effective CMS usually has built-in hierarchies with powerful workflow features. Content can be posted by any author, and verified by the respective authority before it gets posted. This reduces dependence on the Webmaster, and allows business owners to quickly update existing content or publish new content. Search engines thrive on fresh content; making a Web site consistently show up in the first few results requires frequent content updates that can be facilitated by the CMS.
  
  
• Demystifying Search Engine Techniques
  Many search engine terms, such as meta tags, anchor text, keyword density and more, can be unfamiliar to non-technical users. With limited understanding of these essentials, the generated content can be far from optimal. A good CMS can demystify SEO techniques, and give business owners the power to fully make their Web sites search engine friendly. With a well planned and easy-to-use interface, subject matter experts can quickly create page titles, URLs, meta tags and ensure inclusion of relevant keywords.
  
   
• Navigation is Everything
  Just as human beings like being given directions, search engine spiders too are fond of Web sites that are structured well, and make finding content an easy task. A CMS can automatically create navigation paths, helping search engine spiders to go deep into Web sites to find and index relevant content. The more web pages search engine spiders find, the greater are the chances of the Web site being ranked higher.

A CMS can also enable organizations to maintain World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) compliance for enabling a good structure for their Web sites. The W3C provides the guidelines by which Web sites and Web pages should be structured and created. Compliance helps ensure that your Web site functions the same when accessed from any browser or device. It also ensures that proper use of standards which in turn, helps search engines interpret content easily. Further, a CMS helps create a comprehensive sitemap which ensures that search engines can follow and index each link.

The Bottom Line
With a CMS, the roles of both the business owner and the Webmaster change for the better. Both sides can focus on core issues without being bogged down by making operational changes, which are necessary but time consuming. A Webmaster for instance, can focus on how they can work together with the campaign managers to analyze Web trends, and build a more streamlined and high-performance Web site. A Webmaster could also look at integrating the CMS with third party analytics tools, to gauge surfing trends.

Similarly, the business owner does what he knows best – create quality content, with speed and accuracy. When both technical and business sides combine and complement each other – a premier Website rank can’t be too far away.