Content Management and Search Engine Optimization

Content Management and Search Engine Optimization

http://www.nonlinear.ca/

Thursday, April 20, 2023

Conference Brain

» If your brain is already full, then look for these:

» There will be five of them


Agenda

» Introductions

» Search Engine Marketing 101

» The Role of Content Management

» Brief Case Study

» Resources

» Q&A


About non-linear creations inc.

» Founded in 1995

» NLC is an e-business integrator that

delivers online success to our clients

» More than 800 completed projects

» Offices in Toronto and Ottawa

» 60 + full-time specialists

» Privately held company, profitable &

stable

TECHNOLOGY PARTNERS


What We Do


Our Clients


Search Marketing 101


Questions for the Room

» How many of your are engaged in search engine marketing today?

» How many people feel comfortable with terms like SEO, SEM, search topography?

» Who has a CMS implementation:• Being planned?• In progress?• Recently completed?


What is Search Marketing?

» What are we talking about here?• Getting ‘found’ in the search engines• Ensuring your stakeholders find you when

they need you• Improving your search engine ‘visibility’

» How is this accomplished?• Through “Search Engine Marketing”!

» SEM, SEO, PPC – aren’t they all the same?• Heck, NO! (See right)

Definitions

SEM: Search Engine MarketingA generic term that encompasses both SEO and PPC.

SEO: Search Engine Optimization

Optimizing a website for the free (organic) search listings

PPC: Pay-Per-ClickBuying your way into the sponsored (paid) search listings


What Is Search Marketing?

pay per click

pay per click

organic

results


The Role of CMS in Search Engine Optimization


Search Topography

» How do people search?

» AOL released data in late 2006:• 20,000,000 search queries • 650,000 searchers• Collected over 3 months

» Unfortunately, the data they thought was anonymous, wasn’t.


The Topography of Search“Health”

“Health Care Georgia”

“Health Care No Insurance Clemont Georgia leg”


Ranking Higher

» The $ million question – How do I get Google to rank my page number one?

» Factors we believe influence rank:

• Site-wide factors

• On-page factors

• Negative factors

• Off-site factors


The Role of CMS

» On-page factorsFactors that vary with each page on the site, such as the title of the page.

» Site-wide factorsIssues that can be addressed for the entire site, such as the creation of a site map.

» Negative factorsA wide variety of issues can lead to search engines reducing the ranking of a page – these range from unreliable site uptime to the inappropriate use of redirects.

» Off-site factorsSearch engines are increasingly relying on factors such as the number of external sites linking to a page and behaviour of visitors on a given site to determine rankings.


VISIT US AT: WWW.NONLINEAR.CAOTTAWA: 613.241.2067 TORONTO: 416.203.2997OTTAWA: 613.241.2067 TORONTO: 416.203.2997

Embed These Tactics

» There are a lot of factors that influence search engine rankings

» Our whitepaper discusses 22 elements

» www.nonlinear.ca/seo-cms

» I’ll talk about five today



Title Tags

» SEO Best Practice:• Unique, keyword rich title tags are

single most important on page factor.

» CMS Best Practice:• Enforce unique title tags• Use Major Heading on page as the

Title tag• Build a plug in that forces author

to choose three target terms and adds these to title.



Reduce Code Clutter / Validate Code

» SEO Best Practices:• Reduce code search spider sees• Validate XHTML

» CMS Best Practice:• Move code off page using

cascading style sheets (CSS)• Enforce CSS based design;

prohibit modification of this design• If using javascript, ensure code is

incorporated into the site as an “include” file rather than in the body of the page

• Enforce at the template level

» Homeland Security Index Page:

» US Citizenship and Immigration



Use the ALT Attribute

» SEO Best Practice:• Search engine spiders cannot

read images.• They can parse and process

alt tags (short text description) associated with an image.

» CMS Best Practice: • Incorporate instructions into

the CMS interface• Make it mandatory



Avoid long, ugly URLs

» SEO Best Practice:• Avoid multiple parameters in

dynamic URLs• Use real words in the URL• Where appropriate, incorporate

targeted search terms

» CMS Best Practice:• Select a CMS that generates static

URLs; or• Explore options publishing

dynamic pages with static URLs• Require authors to create URLs –

not the CMS

» http://www.uscis.gov/portal/site/uscis/menuitem.eb1d4c2a3e5b9ac89243c6a7543f6d1a/?vgnextoid=02729c7755cb9010VgnVCM10000045f3d6a1RCRD&vgnextchannel=02729c7755cb9010VgnVCM10000045f3d6a1RCRD

» http://www.nasa.gov/audience/forstudents/k-4/home/index.html



Automatically Create XML Sitemaps

» SEO Best Practice:• Sitemaps.org specifies XML

structure for search spider friendly maps

• Publish and update XML map

» CMS Best Practice:• Select a CMS that automatically

generates a Sitemaps.org-compliant search map; or

• Develop a plug-in or CMS extension to generate the map; or

• Use Google Mini or GSA

Inside the Sitemaps.org Protocol

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?><urlset

xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9">

<url> <loc>http://www.example.com/</loc> <lastmod>2005-01-01</lastmod> <changefreq>monthly</changefreq> <priority>0.8</priority> </url>



What to Do, When

Before you Select a CMS » Engage SEO expertise when defining RFP requirements

» Benchmark current traffic from search engines

When You Deploy the CMS

» Embed SEO best practices in CMS templates

» Incorporate SEO information in author training

» Create a 301-redirect strategy for key pages being moved

Post CMS Deployment » Monitor policy compliance

» Track traffic against benchmarks


Very Quick Case Study

» NLC redeployed an existing site in a content managed environment

» Employed many best practices, including those discussed here

» Reindexing of content by search engines took one week to six months depending on the engine

» Results after one year are clear


Monthly visits up 700%


Page Views per Visit up 32%


Topic Driven Visits Skyrocketed


Resources / Q&A

» Our Guide to SEO and CMS• www.nonlinear.ca/seo-cms

» SEOMOZ.org Search Engine Ranking Factors V2• http://www.seomoz.org/article/search-ranking-factors

» Sitemaps Protocol• www.sitemaps.org

» The NLC Blog• www.nonlinear.ca/blog

Questions? (and, ideally, answers?)


Contact Info

» There’s always someone who counts the Stars

Randy WoodsEVP, [email protected] 241 2067

Content Management and Search Engine Optimization

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