Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Best SEO-friendly CMS platform?
-
I have been tasked with rebuilding a small e-commerce website using a CMS, but I'm not sure which one has the most SEO compatibility. One SEO company recommended Squarespace. Another warned me against Squarespace because of its limited SEO features and instead recommended Wordpress with the WooCommerce toolkit. I've also heard Drupal and Joomla mentioned. Are certain CMS platforms more SEO-friendly? If so, what are the best ones that can also handle e-commerce?
Thanks!
-
I'm also going to recommend WordPress. It's big, battle-tested, and relatively easy to set up and use. They also get security updates out quickly, and your site will auto-patch itself if the security update is critical enough. Non-crucial updates are also very simple to install, (click a few things in a web interface).
For the E-commerce part, WooCommerce is the big guy in the room. I'm also happy with WP e-Commerce, (disclosure: I contribute to its development sometimes), if Woo doesn't work for you. Shopify just launched WordPress integration as well, if that's more up your alley.
As for SEO: Yoast SEO will do a ton. Also, if you really like code you can make WordPress output markup in pretty much whatever way you want without sacrificing the upgradability I started with, so if you're willing to go deep enough, it's, (to me, a WP fan), the perfect CMS.
-
I'd have to 3rd the wordpress suggestion, if you had a big site with lots of pages and a involved user portal then Drupal would be the goto suggestion. But if it's a smaller site, no need to deal with the issues of a huge site if you don't need to.
Joomla isn't bad, and can be managed but unless you're a webdev you'll want access to info and scripts and by far the most popular choice is wordpress.
Just make sure you do a thorough product audit so you can reduce the overall amount of product before you put them online, this will help SEO drastically, since you'll have less pages that users would draw attention to that don't work too well.
-
I suggest WooCommerce, which is a free WordPress plugin and one of the fastest growing shopping carts. Many small business used WooCommerce for their online store. They recognized that it allows them manage site with simplicity and SEO friendly. It is difficult to say that WooCommerce is the best SEO friendly CMS platform. However, I think it is a good solution for small business because of cheap cost and effectiveness.
If you are sure about WooCommerce and WordPress, you should try WooCommerce migration tool by Litextension to convert to new site with keeping SEO URLs. Check it: http://litextension.com/woocommerce-migration-tools.html
-
By far the most SEO-friendly platform overall is going to be Wordpress.
While other platforms can be made to do what Wordpress does, almost a quarter of websites online are powered by Wordpress which gives it a huge community to draw resources and information from.
I don't mind Joomla (i'm the one guy, I know) and I have friends who prefer Drupal or other things for security reasons (the biggest always gets attacked most, right?) but Wordpress has Yoast SEO plugin and that is a huge help.
I have a few ecomm stores online and I use Woocommerce with Wordpress for most. I have a Magento store but ... shew. It's so much harder, it's so much more resource intense and it's not as good for anything unless you're a developer.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Does too much inline CSS impact SEO rankings
Hello, Does implementing a lot of inline CSS have a negative impact on SEO rankings? I imagine it could affect page speed, but any other issues I might run in to?
Web Design | | STP_SEO1 -
Woocommerce SEO and Product attributes
Hi friends! I have a question that is advanced Woocommerce and seo-related.
Web Design | | JustinMurray
I'm seeing http://www.mywebsitex.com/pa_keyword/indexed in Google, but it cannot be properly optimized, and I would prefer to have a WordPress Page indexed for that keyword instead, which also lists those products and can be fully seo optimized. Woocommerce SEO plugin by Yoast lacks documentation and I have no clue if that would even fix this. I do have the Taxonomy (pa_keyword) set to not include these in the sitemap, but there doesn't seem to be a way to noindex/nofollow product attributes.
1. How can I best accomplish this?
2. Why are product attributes indexed by default?0 -
Internal Linking: What is the best practice for pages not included in Nav bar?
I never quite understood why internal linking was such a big deal for SEO, but now I'm having second thoughts and perhaps understanding it more. I always thought since most websites have a navigation feature--usually the menu bar located at the top and often another one in the footer--that internal navigation was usually already built in to most websites and therefore, a silly topic to make a fuss over; however, I may be the silly one after all. I am now creating pages that are not included in the navigation so.... What is the best practice for this? If I am creating say, pages for certain locations and those location pages begin to number in the hundreds, it makes my navigation bar a little too cumbersome to have all those pages in a drop down menu. So I made a Locations page and just link to all those pages from that page (and from nowhere else). But now I'm wondering if this could be a bad internal linking practice and perhaps hurt my online visibility as an SEO ranking factor. Is this a crawl problem? And if so, is there a better option that provides a good visitor experience while appeasing the search engines.
Web Design | | Dino640 -
SEO strategy for UK / US websites
Hi, We currently have a UK-focused site on www.palmatin.com ; We're now targeting the North American market as well, but the contents of the site need to be different from UK. One option was to create another domain for the NA market but I assume it would be easier to rank with palmatin.com though. What would you suggest to do, if a company is targeting two different countries in the same language? thanks, jaan
Web Design | | JaanMSonberg0 -
Does having a Blog link in the top level navigation provide any better SEO value, or would having it in a footer or top navigation work just as good?
Trying to decide on whether placing a link to the blog in our top level navigation would have a better SEO value than just placing it in top or footer navigation. I have an ecommerce site.
Web Design | | RPD0 -
Do pull quotes affect SEO positively or negatively?
I like the design element of a pull quote to ad interest and highlight an important point. If I use an exact quote from the page in a pull quote on that page, does that negatively affect SEO as duplicate content? Are there formatting or tagging methods that could help pull quotes to boost SEO? For clarity, by "pull quote" I mean a stylized bit of text that floats on a page in such a way that the body text wraps around it. It is actual text (not text embedded in a graphic) but it behaves like an image with text wrapping around it. Here's an example (in red on the right side): http://www.21ct.com/resources/news-room/21ct-announces-its-latest-us-patent-for-advancing-big-data-security/
Web Design | | kyle21ct0 -
Should I Remove URL extentions for SEO?
We are having a developer design our website with Magento. I noticed the main pages such as About Us have no file extention in the URL. But the product pages have a .html file extention. I was once told to remove the file extentions. Are there benefits to removing the .html file extension and if so, is there a way we can do this using Magento?
Web Design | | hfranz0 -
Where is the best place to put reciprocal links on our website?
Where should reciprocal links be placed on our website? Should we create a "Resources" page? Should the page be "hidden" from the public? I know there is a right answer out there! Thank you for your help! Jay
Web Design | | theideapeople0