I've read a few posts recently where people say what they think is the best CMS for search engine optimization but they don't say why. So I thought I'd start a post about what features are important. 1. Update content quickly. Firstly all CMS packages are generally better thanWYSIWYG sites. Google likes lots of good, regularly updated content and a CMS will make better sites easier to make. However, while larger CMS packages do have more features they can sometimes be slower to set up and manage content. 1a. Getting traffic is a numbers game and Black hat CMS systems can create hundreds of sites per day just from typing in the keywords. They do this by stripping and reworking text from existing sites. 1b. Others concentrate on letting people create lots of good content very quickly, possibly from existing company content sources such as spreadsheets or data files. 2. Well structured content. Each page must have well structured content so Google can tell what the site is about e.g. a text title, summary and description using the H1, H2, H3 tags. 3. Good Meta titles The CMS must allow different meta titles and descriptions on every page that explain what that page is about. Allowing these to be taken from page content can save time. The same goes for picture descriptions and link titles. 4. Good navigation Automatic menu generators ensure that links are constantly updated. Well structured text links also make sure the search engines can find all pages. 5. Doc types and web standards Not designing to modern standards won't impress Google and CSS clears the page and makes content easier for spiders to find. Old table based sites will also load more slowly. 6. Lightweight pages. When you've generated lots of traffic you need fast, low bandwidth pages to ensure the site speed is maintained. Some CMS systems create static pages rather than slower dynamic ones. 7. Content sharing Often CMS systems have built in RSS feeds for distributing content, tagging or promoting content in digg, stumble etc. Please add any other points you think are important or which ones your CMS has. No one CMS will do all of these things and these days it's mostly the off site and content that make the difference, however any optimized CMS should do most of the above.
OK so here's a few more I remembered Avoid database driven cms that don't have searchable menu links e.g. page names that search engines can find when spidering. Some people think it's useful to put keywords in page names with a'-' or '_' separating each word so that search engines will give more rating to the link. I'm not sure I agree but prefer systems that use consistent page names such as A B and C.htm, that way when content changes or gets significantly moved the pages remain index. When counting menu links it's good to use /subdirectory/ or subdirectory/index.htm but not both. More counts means it's more important.