8 Key Factors to Consider While Choosing a Content Management System

Choosing the right content management system (CMS) is one of the most crucial decisions that you need to get right in order to achieve your website’s performance on search engines. This blog underlines seven important factors that you need to consider while choosing a content management system (CMS).

What is a content management system (CMS)?

A CMS (Content Management System) is software that allows an individual or a team of users to update and manage content on their websites. It is the driving force behind your website’s content and improvesmanagement efficiency.
There are so many options available in the market that it can be quite challenging to choose the right one. Even though there are lots of benefits, not every CMS provides an exceptional user experience and you need to consider a number of factors before choosing the one that fits your needs.
One reason why it’s important to do your due diligence before going for a CMS is that it’s going to be a headache to migrate your website from one CMS to another once it’s set up and running.
Around 47% of the total websites use WordPress and it is indeed a good solution when it comes to search engine optimization as well. However, it has its own challenges and bigger companies need a more robust and powerful CMS that is customizable as well. Moreover, WordPress comes with its own challenges and vulnerabilities along with integration issues with third-party plugins, etc.

Why Do You Need an SEO Friendly CMS?

Simply put, an SEO-friendly content management system (CMS) improves how your content is displayed in search engines. If you use a CMS that’s not SEO friendly, then you risk having your important content being displayed worse than your competitors or even incorrectly. This means fewer views and traffic to your site.
SEO is a crucial component of an online presence, and it is important for your website to be in the best shape possible. With things such as load time and user experience being essential points to consider when evaluating a competitive edge, having your CMS as SEO-friendly as possible will have a significant impact on your website's performance.

What to Look for While Choosing an SEO Friendly CMS?

To begin with, you will want to make sure the CMS you choose is SEO-friendly. That means it was designed to help search engines understand your content. Considering all the ranking factors, we can safely say that on-page SEO factors are still highly relevant.
Elements such as title, URL, meta descriptions, images, and headings, etc. are the keystones of a website’s ranking criteria. That is why you have to make sure that your code is as clean as possible.
Here are the top factors you should be looking for while choosing an SEO friendly content management system (CMS)

1. WYSIWYG – “What You See Is What You Get”

First and foremost, you need to make sure that the CMS is manageable by all the users. Usually, marketers are aware of the basics of coding and are capable of using CMS but you need to make sure that it’s not overly complicated for anybody to use.

2. Loading Speed

Whether you’re developing a blog, a big portal site, or an online store, you probably know that one of the most important aspects of what you are building is the user experience. If your loading speed is slow, you might lose your users or they simply won’t wait long enough to give you the chance to prove yourself.
However, it seems that many do not pay enough attention to the topic and only focus on other things (flashy designs for example) but the fact is that you cannot afford to ignore loading speed because Google has always put emphasis on loading speed and we all know that every second on increase in loading time costs you a significant percentage of conversions. It won’t be wrong if I say that a fast-loading CMS is the keystone of all other on-page speed optimizations.

3. Collaboration Efficiency

Your CMS needs to have a smooth workflow. It should allow you to track revisions and manage collaborations so that you don’t have to waste your time managing all that is some other software.

4. Mobile Optimization

This one goes without saying. This is the age of mobile and most of the transactions happen via mobile nowadays and Google understands that. After the mobile-first indexing update back in 2019, there is no way a site with a CMS that is not mobile optimized is going to rank high on Google. Furthermore, it has to be user-friendly for all the people accessing it via mobile devices.

5. Crawlability

Canonical tags, meta robots control, automatic RSS creation, and security protections should all be standard features in your CMS to facilitate crawlability and indexing.

6. Purpose-built features

These features will differ depending on the nature of your website and your specific requirements. If you're selling online, for example, you'll need an e-commerce CMS that allows you to bulk modify product groups, add hundreds or thousands of products, and define the features buyers use to search your inventory.

7. Content optimization

Your content management system (CMS) should have inbuilt features for content optimization. This would allow you or your team to update content regularly depending on the market demand.
It would allow greater flexibility and you won’t have to get into coding in order to make content changes on the website.

8. Future Proof Your CMS with AI

As aforementioned, you don't want to be forced to migrate your site if your CMS is unable to keep up with your company's growth and the changing search landscape. If your current CMS fits your demands but lacks the potential to serve you in the future then there are other options.
The future of SEO is Dynamic Content. We humans cannot simply collect and analyze vast amounts of customer data across hundreds of touchpoints. Artificial intelligence (AI) has revolutionized several aspects of marketing, including content management.
AI is revolutionizing the CMS industry by assisting marketers in bridging the customer experience and optimization gaps where standard CMS solutions can’t cope up. For example, AI may be used to do real-time SEO research and insights, which can then be utilized to provide intelligent content optimization recommendations or even apply improvements that tailor the user’s experience.
There is no one-size-fits-all when it comes to choosing a CMS. AI-driven CMS options are the future and you should consider this when looking for options. This would save you a lot of trouble later on when you grow and you need advanced features.

This is it for today’s blog. I hope you liked reading it and that you learned a thing or two to consider while choosing a Content Management System (CMS). Do share your feedback with me and reach out to me if you have any questions. I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.

If you’re a business owner who needs a robust CMS to meet your business need, contact Prism Digital, the best Web Development Agency in Dubai, and our expert developers will help you build one that is perfect for you. I’ll see you in the next blog. Goodbye.