Search Engine Optimization All-In-One For Dummies®

Chapter 5. Watching Your Backend: Content Management System Troubles

In This Chapter

• Meeting the content management system (CMS)

• Understanding why CMS-generated pages aren't search engine-friendly

• Rewriting URLs to eliminate dynamic URLs and session IDs

• Selecting a good CMS

• Making your CMS work with your search engine optimization (SEO) efforts

• Using Yahoo! Merchant Solutions effectively

Behind every Web page viewed in a browser is a host of technologies and services working to make the star performers look good: the backend. Just as a Hollywood blockbuster has a crew of people supporting the actors, your Web site has servers, code, shopping carts, and, most importantly, your content management system that all must perform at their best to turn out a superior experience for your customers. A Web content management system (CMS) is a software program that helps simplify Web site creation. A CMS uses a database (such as your database of products, if you have a store), and publishes Web pages in an orderly, consistent fashion. It pulls information from your database and builds pages dynamically. This means the pages don't actually exist until someone asks for them. If you have 10,000 products, you don't want to build 10,000 individual pages by hand. Instead, you use a CMS to build them dynamically on the fly.

In this chapter, you discover the problems inherent in using a CMS to build your Web site. For all of their advantages, content management systems can sabotage your search engine optimization ...