What’s the best Content Management System (CMS) for SEO?
That’s a very common question we get asked all time.
A content management system, also known as “CMS,” is a complete blessing for those who don’t have any technical background or idea of coding.
Most content creators, copywriters, and editors are not tech-savvy. So it becomes tough for those people to publish and edit the content on a custom-made website.
Even if your website developer has created a custom CMS for you, it probably won’t have all the necessary features needed for SEO.
That’s where CMS platforms come into the picture.
CMS platforms not only help you to publish, edit and manage your content efficiency, but it also comes with a lot of additional features for SEO too.
However, not all CMS platforms have these features.
Some have better SEO features, while some platforms keep it very minimal.
And if you’re new to this space, it can become challenging for you to pick the right CMS platform for yourself.
That’s why, in this post, we’ll show you some of the best CMS platforms for SEO that you can use without any hesitation.
Along with this, we’ll also discuss the things you should look for in a CMS platform before choosing it.
So ready to dive in? Let’s go.
What Makes a Good CMS for SEO
Most custom-made CMS has little to no features in terms of SEO.
You can’t do much beyond optimizing and publishing your content (Especially if you don’t have any technical knowledge).
Even if you have a developer helping you, it would still take so much time to properly optimize your content from scratch.
Here’s why CMS can be a life-saver for you.
It can save your time, help you manage your content effectively, and improve your SEO performance.
But there are plenty of CSM platforms available on the market.
Have you ever thought, what makes a good CMS for SEO?
You have to know this answer before you even pick a CMS platform because if you don’t know what makes a CMS best for SEO, you won’t be able to choose the right platform for yourself.
That’s why before giving you the list of best CMS for SEO, we wanted to address this question so that you don’t have any doubts.
Generally, whenever you’re choosing a CMS platform, you should go a bit deeper and look into the features the platform provides.
We mostly don’t pay much attention to the features and just pick the one that our friend or an online review recommends.
But you should never make this mistake.
Look at the features and find out whether the platform has all the features you need for SEO optimization or not.
Another question arises here: What are the key SEO features that a good CMS platform should have?
We can literally count hundreds of those features, but a CMS should have some specific essential features.
Let’s have a look at what exactly those features are.
1. Custom URL Settings
So this is probably the most crucial feature that a good SEO-friendly CMS should have.
URLs have a massive impact on SEO performance.
Having a clean URL structure not only helps your user to understand better what your content is about, but it’s also very healthy from the search engine’s point of view as well.
Most custom-made CMS use the title of the page as the default URL structure.
And it makes the URL too lengthy and appears to be spammy.
That’s why having a custom URL setting allows you to use a custom URL structure (You can use your primary keyword as your URL).
However, this feature is included in almost every CMS platform nowadays, so you won’t have to worry about this.
2. Ability to Change The Page Elements
A good CMS platform should provide you the ability to change crucial page elements like Page title, meta description, image alt tags, title tags, and sub-headings pretty effortlessly without the need for any sort of programming changes.
If you want to make your content SEO friendly and rank higher on search results, these are the most essential elements you have to customize.
Because just like the default URL, default image alt tags, meta description, and title tags can pull you down out of the race.
It’s simple: if any CMS doesn’t allow to change these elements, you should not even consider that platform in your list.
3. Great Loading Speed
Page speed is one of the most crucial ranking factors for Google.
In fact, in 2018, Google ramped up a “page speed update“ and made it official that Google will now use page speed as one of the top-ranking factors for mobile search.
In 2021, Google again introduced another update called “core web vitals” based on the user experience of websites.
And page speed will affect this update too.
If you’re running after ranking your site on the top of Google search results, but your website loads terribly slow, you probably have to drop the idea.
Without a fast-loading website, it’s going to be very hard for you to rank and maintain your ranking on Google in the long run.
That’s why whenever you’re choosing any CMS, make sure it doesn’t slow down your website loading speed.
4. Easy Redirection
Many times, we have duplicated or deleted pages on our site. Having duplicate content or 404 pages on your website can only not hurt your SEO performance but will also impact your site’s reputation.
That’s why for a better user experience and SEO performance, it’s recommended to redirect those pages into an existing page.
However, redirection is a massive problem in many CMS platforms.
Generally, a good CMS platform provides easy 301 redirection options.
If the CMS you’re going to choose has this option, you’re on the safe side.
5. Easy XML Sitemap Generation
The XML sitemap is basically an XML file that lists and stores all of your website’s most crucial page link so that Google crawlers can go through your website’s most important pages pretty quickly.
On some CMS platforms, your sitemap gets automatically generated, while on some platforms, you have to create the sitemap by yourself using some plugins.
However, some CMS does not provide either of these options, and you have to create your XML sitemap manually.
6 Best CMS For SEO in 2023
1. WordPress
WordPress is the most popular CMS platform on the market and has a market share of 60% in the CMS sector.
Whether you’re a non-techie, web developer, or business owner, WordPress is the ultimate solution for everyone.
WordPress is so popular that it powers more than 14% of the world’s top websites, including websites like Techcrunch, Microsoft news, TED blog, skype, and many more.
It’s not like any other typical CMS platform. It’s a complete website building suite that not only helps you to manage your content but also helps to build stunning hybrid websites without the need for coding.
This CMS platform is a perfect solution for those who don’t want to engage in coding, bloggers, eCommerce stores, and small & mid-size businesses.
Overall, it’s the most versatile and feature-loaded CMS platform you’ll ever find on the market.
Key SEO features:
- Easily change the URL structure.
- Generating an XML sitemap is super easy with the help of plugins.
- SEO plugin add-on helps you to optimize your pages for better search ranking.
- Option to add alt text on images.
- Simple and lightweight code makes the loading speed blazing fast.
- Easy redirection options.
- Can easily change any elements of the page without any limitations.
- Set a link to do-follow or no-follow.
- Option to add canonical tags.
2. Joomla
Joomla is another popular CMS platform that you should definitely check out. It has nearly two million+ active websites on the web and has a market share of 6% in the overall CMS market worldwide.
It’s a perfect CMS platform for you to build, edit, manage and publish your content without any technical knowledge.
Whether you have a small business or a large corporation website, you can use Joomla on any type of website without giving a second thought.
Of course, it doesn’t come with as many features as WordPress, but it has all the basic SEO features that you would need to rank on Google.
Now let’s have a look at what are the SEO features this CMS platform comes with.
Key SEO feature:
- Option to enable search engine friendly URLs.
- Option to remove index.php from your URL.
- Edit the meta description and title tags.
- Add alt tags in your images.
- Options to make links do-follow or no-follow.
- Mobile friendly.
- Features to improve page speed.
- Create a sitemap for your site using free extensions.
- Add canonical tags for any URL.
- Add structured data markup.
3. Wix
Wiz is not just a CMS platform, but it’s a complete website builder equipped with so many advanced features that will enable you to build websites and manage your content from a single place without having any coding knowledge.
And unlike other CMS platforms, Wix comes with plenty of search engine optimization features that you can use to rank higher.
Even though the main USP of Wix is a great design, they still don’t compromise on the site’s loading speed.
Wix has received a lot of criticism over the past few years because it used to have some serious SEO issues like poor URL structure, no alt tag option for images, and many more.
However, they took this criticism as a challenge and built out some really fantastic SEO features inside the platform.
Let’s look at some of those SEO features that Wix provides:
- Wix automatically generates and maintains an XML sitemap for your site.
- Structured data markup is automatically added to the product pages and blog posts.
- It automatically generates a Robot.txt file for your website that you can also edit pretty easily.
- Easily customize or modify your meta tags, including your meta title and meta description.
- Add canonical tags to pages.
- Easily create 301 redirects for multiple pages.
- Mobile-friendly.
- Optimize your images and add alt tags.
- Built-in SSL certificate.
- AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages) enabled for the blog section.
4. Drupal
Drupal is an open-source content management system that you can use to easily publish, manage, and SEO optimize your content.
However, unlike other CMS platforms that we’ve discussed earlier on this list, Drupal is not that famous.
Still, with over one million+ active drupal sites and a 2.4% market share, you just can’t underestimate this platform.
Whether you’re from FinTech, sports, eCommerce, or media, no matter what industry you’re from, you can use Drupal without any hesitation.
This platform also comes with pretty good SEO features too (although not better than the CMS platforms mentioned above).
Let’s have a look at those features:
- Automatic XML sitemap generation.
- URL customization.
- Edit and modify your meta-data.
- Redirect your dead pages easily.
- Plenty of useful add-on modules for SEO.
5. Weebly
Weebly is a free website builder and CMS platform that’s powering more than 50 million websites worldwide.
It’s one of the most popular website builders and CSM platforms out there in the market.
Even if you’re new to this CMS space and don’t have any technical knowledge, you can use this platform pretty easily, thanks to its beginner-friendly user interface.
It’s generally a best-suited CMS platform for small businesses that have a very targeted and small audience base.
Of course, it can’t compete with WordPress in terms of SEO features, this has some basic SEO features that would be enough for a small website.
Let’s look at some of the SEO features of Weebly.
Key SEO features:
- SEO-friendly clean HTML formatting.
- Edit your meta title and description.
- Add custom URL.
- Include Alt tags in images.
- Mobile responsive design.
Conclusion
So these are the best CMS platforms for SEO that you’ll find on the market.
No matter which CMS platform you choose, you should always look for the five key SEO features that we’ve discussed earlier in this post.
However, our top CMS platform recommendation for SEO would be WordPress because of its versatility and ocean of SEO features.
We hope you found this post useful and got a clear understanding of which CMS platform you should choose for better SEO performance.
Now it’s your turn:
What CMS platform you’re currently using on your site? Let us know in the comments below.
