The CMS choice seems to be one of the most important factors in the whole website life. If you start with good CMS which enables you to expand your capabilities and possibilities, then you will be step ahead from your competition. In this post I’ll explain what your options are starting with the most popular Website Content Management Systems. I will emphasize on each SEO possibilities with existing free plugins in therms of their SEO and Marketing capabilities.
The most popular CMS on the planet is not other than WordPress itself (even this blog is powered by wordpress). It is said that it is “The easiest managed website” offering unlimited expansions with the use of custom plugins. It is also very well structured and offers thousands of free WordPress pre-designed themes (web design templates). With most of which you can customize the visible area using the Widget Manager, and the internal content using various administrator tools.
The second most popular CMS is Joomla with its newest version Joomla 1.5. This CMS seems to be primarily used for Company Websites compared to WordPress which is mainly used as Blogging Software. Joomla 1.5 comes with standard website structure and navigation, and offers powerful Administrator Section. Again compared to WordPress its a bit more complicated, but in the hands of experienced web developer it can offer virtually limitless possibilities. The unfortunate parts are that it is much more CPU intensive (the pages load quite slowly compared to wordpress) and it has tons of Security Exploits which can cause serious problems from hackers, viruses, worms and so on. It seems that the WordPress plugin architecture is not really secure which makes bad or not well written code a potential hazard. Don’t get me wrong, its not a bad CMS if you use Joomla Approved plugins, just the same as WordPress.
The third option – Drupal – seems to take only a fraction compared to the WordPress and Joomla users, but seems to be the option most Web Professionals prefer. From my own experience I can confirm that it it much better in terms of Security as well as its flexibility for expansion. In terms of work difficulties its much harder to configure and its options for free Themes and Plugins is quite limited compared to WordPress and Joomla. Unfortunately this is primarily explained by its low number of users.
In terms of built in SEO functions, WordPress seems to lead with its numerous customizable SEO plugins followed by Joomla and finally Drupal. Following is the list of more important ones:
- All-In-One-SEO-Pack – for keywords, description and few other metas.
- XML Sitemaps – with build in new post Search Engine Pinger.
- Redirector – for safe URL movement
- Web Directory – Automatic reciprocal Links Exchanger
If you know any good SEO plugin woth mentioning then please feel free to post here. I’ll soon update you with a new plugin that I’m working on, which will enable you to track individual URL SEO stats. See below:
If you want to test the alpha version of SEO Lab plugin for WordPress please click here
Hi,
Yeah that’s right, wordpress is the best CMS, Google love it, and it has a lot of amazing plugins, for seo, rss, … name it 🙂
WordPress definitely leads the way. I like the Automatic reciprocal Links Exchanger pluggin.
CMS like Joomla is the best for articles, ok… But not for a normal website, at least if you know what you are doing….
I’m also agree that WordPress is best CMS
I use WordPress for all my sites and recommend it as a CMS to clients looking for something easy to work with as well as allowing for a lot of expandability.
However, while I don’t like the fact that Drupal is no where near as friendly/easy to work with or has as many free resources as WP, I do tend to recommend it for corporate clients who have in-house PHP developers available or will have multiple content producers.