How to Choose the Best CMS for SEO: Key Features and Requirements

A strong website presence, ease of discovery by search engines, and the ability to attract targeted traffic and potential customers are key indicators of your business’s success, achieved through a skilful SEO strategy. Choosing the right CMS will help make your website optimisation more effective. How do different content management systems differ from an SEO perspective? How do you choose the best platform from the many available, taking into account your requirements for a content management system? Our article will answer these questions and help you create the conditions for optimal website configuration at every stage of its development.

Why it is important to choose the right CMS for successful SEO

First of all, let’s take a look at what a content management system is and how it can help your website grow.

A content management system (CMS) is software that helps you create and publish content, such as blog posts or website pages. It also allows you to edit your website to improve its ranking, for example, by creating user-friendly URLs or optimising the site’s structure. With the right CMS, you can quickly and easily customise your website, even with minimal knowledge of coding and web development. Here’s what you get:

• speeding up the website creation process using ready-made templates and modules;
• a user-friendly website layout;
• a design that is easy to customise;
• expanding functionality using ready-made plugins and modules;
• protection and regular updates;
• the ability to integrate external services (CRM systems, payment gateways, etc.);
• the availability of built-in SEO tools;
• scalability;
• improving the website's search engine ranking;
• savings in time and money.

As we can see, using a CMS offers every opportunity to improve and simplify the running of an online business.

SEO requirements for CMS

Before you decide on a particular content management system, you should test it for SEO-friendliness. Here are the requirements for a website’s CMS, without which your site has no chance of achieving top rankings. Below is a checklist of the key features your chosen content management system must have to ensure your site is optimised for SEO:

• Fast page loading
• Mobile responsiveness
• Clean code and support for markup schemes
• Support for SSL and HTTPS
• XML sitemaps and redirect management
• Caching and CDN support to improve performance
• Editable meta tags and headings
• Customisable URLs
• Internal linking tools
• Image optimisation
• Multilingual capabilities
• Special features tailored to your type of business

The inclusion of these features in a content management system will help ensure good visibility and high search engine rankings for the website. Let’s take a closer look at each point.

Technical requirements

When choosing a CMS, make sure it has the necessary technical features from an SEO perspective. These are vital for search engines and for ensuring a positive user experience when visiting the site.

Fast page loading

A good CMS should help maintain your website’s speed, regardless of how much content or traffic you have. Fast page loading reduces waiting times for visitors and increases the likelihood of them engaging with the site before they feel tempted to leave without waiting for it to load fully.

Make sure the CMS offers plugins to improve page speed, such as those that allow you to clean up the database, compress images and utilise browser caching.

Mobile responsiveness

Search engines scan and index your website from a mobile user’s perspective. As the number of people accessing the internet via mobile devices continues to grow, optimising your website for different types of devices is becoming essential.

The CMS you choose should allow you to create a design that adapts to mobile screens of various sizes and provide a user-friendly and intuitive interface across all devices. To this end, many CMS platforms come with libraries of layouts and templates designed for mobile optimisation. Please note that some CMS platforms offer paid layouts, whilst others provide them free of charge.

Clean code and support for micro-markup schemes

Simple, well-structured code is easy for search engines to understand, reduces the time it takes for bots to crawl a page, and helps improve behavioural factors, as cleaner code means pages load faster. To ensure clean code, you should consider several factors when choosing a CMS:

• open-source;
• availability of templates;
• the use of modern web development standards and proven frameworks.

A CMS with built-in Schema.org structured data functionality makes it easy to add content to pages and helps ensure your content is displayed correctly in search results.

Support for SSL and HTTPS

One of the criteria for ranking a website is its security for visitors. If you ensure that users’ personal data (credit card numbers, email addresses or telephone numbers) is properly protected, your website’s position in search results will improve.

The presence of HTTPS (indicated by a padlock icon in the browser address bar) establishes a secure connection, encrypts all data and protects against hacking. When shopping online, users look for a secure connection; HTTPS has a significant impact on online sales

To switch from HTTP to HTTPS, you need to purchase a Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) certificate. It is important that the CMS allows for the straightforward installation and management of this feature, including redirecting the entire site to the HTTPS protocol. Sometimes, during the redirect, all content is assigned the correct URL, but the images remain on HTTP. This is very inconvenient and requires additional steps. Therefore, when choosing a CMS, it is worth paying attention to this aspect. As for the cost, some hosting providers offer the certificate free of charge. In any case, the cost of the certificate is not so high as to risk your shop’s reputation.

XML sitemaps and redirect management

An XML sitemap is a complete list of a website’s pages that search engines can see and use to crawl the site and index its pages. Choose a CMS that automatically generates and updates the site’s XML sitemaps. It is very important that the information in the sitemap is completely up to date and contains only the necessary URLs, so regular automatic updates are essential. Thanks to a handy redirect plugin in the CMS, you can easily and promptly notify search engines of a page’s move to a new address, which is particularly important if there are external links to that address.

Caching and CDN support to improve performance

The CDN feature ensures the website runs smoothly and provides fast access to content from anywhere in the world. It distributes resources (images, scripts, style sheets) across servers, reducing the physical distance between them and users.

However, caching plays the key role in improving a website’s performance and speed. This is the process of storing copies of data, which speeds up access to it when the same requests are made repeatedly. Taken together, these features are important for both user experience and search engines.

Content settings

Addressing one of the key tasks of an SEO strategy—filling a website with content—becomes simpler and quicker with a CMS, as most systems offer user-friendly tools for adding text, images, videos and other elements. Most CMSs use built-in builders or plugins to quickly create and publish landing pages, which requires no special technical knowledge.

Editable meta tags and editable headings

The Title, Description and heading tags play a crucial role in helping search engines understand the content of a website’s pages. They contain keywords that are used to identify the website’s subject matter and purpose. It is vital that your CMS allows you to edit these meta tags, as your website’s search ranking depends heavily on this. You can choose a CMS that has built-in, intuitive text formatting tools, as well as the ability to edit and apply meta tags to different types of pages — from product pages to blog posts. Other CMSs will offer you the option of installing additional modules or plugins to achieve these SEO goals. In the latter case, it is important to ensure that the site’s speed is not compromised.

Customisable URLs

URLs offer another opportunity to use keywords to improve your website’s search engine ranking. If your CMS allows you to easily edit URLs, add or change slugs to accurately reflect the content of your pages, you have every chance of expanding your target audience.

Який вигляд має ефективний URL? Він написаний за допомогою малих літер, містить цільове ключове слово, написане англійською або в транслітерації, слова відокремлюються одне від одного знаком "-". Наприклад: https://www.knowledgecity.com/en/learning-library/business-courses/leadership/ або https://mergelle.com/en/products/premium-apron-no-91-in-caramel-quality-leather.

Internal linking tools

Internal links help connect pages on your website, distribute internal weight, and improve navigation. Some CMS platforms come with plugins and modules that automatically suggest links to other pages on your site based on content and keywords. Many CMSs allow you to manually add links to other pages that are related in terms of content — for example, from a blog post to a product or category page mentioned in the blog post. This is particularly useful for online shops and marketplaces.

Internal links can be added within the body of the text, as well as in menus, sidebars or footers.

Most CMS platforms offer a range of tools to optimise the internal linking process, making the website more visible and boosting user engagement.

Image optimisation

To maintain your website’s speed and usability when it contains a large amount of visual content, CMS platforms offer tools that allow you to compress images without compromising their quality, which is crucial for page loading speed.

An important SEO feature of a CMS is the ability to specify alt attributes to describe images. This allows you to include more keywords on the page you are promoting and make it clearer to search engines. It will also help your page rank in Google Images.

Multilingual capabilities

If you are planning to expand your business across different regions of the world, you should ensure in advance that your CMS is capable of publishing content in multiple languages. The presence of the hreflang tag and multilingual functionality will help search engines understand the language and geotargeting of a page and offer users the correct version of the website depending on their language and location. Not all CMS platforms are equally suited to adding a second language. In some systems, this feature is easy to implement, whilst in others it requires significant financial and time investment. This fact should be taken into account when choosing a system.

SEO integrations and add-ons

To speed up processes and optimise website performance, CMS platforms offer not only additional features in the form of plugins, but also integration with various applications. Using an API, you can utilise analytics and other useful external services within the website’s admin panel without having to switch to other platforms. This saves you time and allows you to centralise all your data in one place.

Support for SEO plugins

Many popular CMS platforms provide users with custom-built plugins to automate the resolution of most SEO tasks, such as:

• configuring meta tags (Easy Frontend SEO for Joomla);
• creation of a sitemap (XML Sitemap for Drupal);
• keyword performance analysis (Yoast SEO for WordPress);
• faster page loading (Amasty Page Speed Optimisation for Magento);
• image optimisation (Smush for WordPress).

SEO plugins for different platforms have their own specific features and specialisations, which are worth familiarising yourself with before choosing the option that best suits your needs.

Integration with analytics tools

Generally speaking, CMS platforms easily handle the task of monitoring and optimising your website’s performance by integrating with various analytics tools and services. The most popular of these are Google Analytics and Google Search Console. These are free tools that allow you to assess website traffic and analyse search queries. Mixpanel tracks user actions in real time. Matomo or Piwik PRO focus on data privacy. These and other analytics tools are suitable for use with any CMS platform; the main thing is to find a developer who can set them up for you.

API capabilities for integrating external services

Small business owners—such as those providing consultancy services or working in the beauty industry—as well as those who are just starting out on their business journey, can skip this section and move on to choosing a CMS.

So what exactly is an API? It is a tool that helps you integrate with external services and mobile apps. It is available for all CMS platforms. Here are a few examples of the integration options for a website or mobile app that the API offers:

• payment processing within an app or on a website for online shopping and subscriptions (PayPal);
• signing in via social media or using the 'Share' button (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram);
• route or location (Google Maps)

If you need to use an API in complex applications where security, reliability or high data accuracy are essential, pay close attention to the quality and responsiveness of the technical support provided by the CMS developer.

Special features tailored to your type of business

When choosing a CMS, you should also take into account the specific nature of your business. Selling goods and selling services may require different CMS features. If we are talking about providing services, WordPress (WP) and MODX are better suited due to their relevant features. At the same time, there are systems designed specifically for online shops from the outset, such as OpenCart or Magento, and promoting services on websites using these platforms would be impractical, as it is difficult to create a user-friendly landing page for a service; however, they do offer a product catalogue feature, which is essential for a shop.

It is important to understand that WordPress and MODX each have their own limitations regarding the number of products they can successfully handle within the system. For instance, despite the wide range of plugins available, WordPress is only suitable for small shops, as expanding the product range will eventually slow down the system and the website. MODX, on the other hand, requires higher development costs, as there are few ready-made solutions for online shops, and much will have to be developed from scratch. However, thanks to its flexibility, it is possible to create complex and high-traffic projects, such as online pharmacies.

We recommend that online shop owners consider OpenCart, Magento and Shopify.

• OpenCart is a great solution for shops with up to 100,000 products; it offers a wide range of ready-made modules and features.
• Magento handles high-traffic projects very well, but its development and maintenance costs can prove too high for small and medium-sized shops.
• Shopify is a SaaS platform that imposes certain restrictions but simplifies the process of setting up and managing a shop.

Therefore, the choice of a content management system also depends on the scale of the project, the budget and the functionality requirements.

The best CMS platforms for SEO: key features

You already know what a CMS is and have an idea of its role in the successful SEO promotion of a website. So which platform should you choose? Depending on the features you need to implement and the specific nature of your business (an online shop, a translation agency or a design agency), select the CMS that best suits your needs. Also consider the following system features:

• ease and convenience of use;
• customer support to help you get the most out of your CMS;
• the platform’s suitability for the type of website: for online shops, the ability to integrate shopping baskets and payment gateways; for non-commercial projects, CRM systems; and for financial projects, a high level of security;
• operating costs.

Your SEO-friendly CMS should be fast, user-friendly and easy to customise. Here is a brief overview of the best CMS platforms.

WordPress

First and foremost, the best CMS for blogs and informational websites. Today, WordPress is the most popular platform for creating various types of websites of any complexity. WordPress is a free, open-source platform with a vast array of themes and plugins, and is user-friendly. Using popular plugins such as Yoast SEO, Rank Math and All in One SEO Pack, you can easily configure meta tags, analyse keyword density and optimise pages in line with search engine recommendations. WP offers extensive functionality for optimising content readability, supports integration with Google Analytics, and provides SEO management for WooCommerce. WP Rocket for caching significantly speeds up the site and improves the user experience.

As described above, this CMS is well suited to service-based websites and online shops with a small number of products. If you plan to significantly expand your product range in the future, a WordPress site may not be able to cope with this, which will undoubtedly lead to a slowdown. Therefore, for an online shop with growth prospects, a dedicated e-commerce CMS is the best choice.

Also, despite its many benefits, it’s important to install only the most useful plugins on WordPress. If you go overboard, you may encounter issues with your site’s loading times and performance. Overall, WordPress is a good CMS from an SEO perspective for both beginners and experienced marketers.

Shopify

Чудова CMS для електронної комерції. Вона проста у використанні, вирізняється хорошою продуктивністю. Shopify вважається дуже добре адаптованою для SEO просування сайту. Платформа бере на себе все: від хостингу до дизайну і шаблонів. За допомогою додатків SEO Manager і Plug-in-SEO Shopify надає можливість ефективної аналітики та управління SEO-параметрами для інтернет-магазинів. Також ви отримаєте рекомендації щодо підвищення ефективності SEO. Але якщо в майбутньому ви плануєте масштабувати сайт інтернет-магазину, вам необхідно заздалегідь прорахувати, чи зможете реалізувати всі ваші плани саме на Shopify, або ж потрібно переходити на повноцінну CMS, адже вона має низку обмежень під час реалізації складної структури сайтів.

OpenCart

An excellent CMS option for small and medium-sized online shops on a tight budget. The platform supports multiple currencies and languages. It offers a range of features and a user-friendly interface. However, if you want more customisation, or if the volume of orders and products starts to increase significantly (to 50,000 items or more), you will need to optimise the site and install additional modules. Thanks to regular updates, modules and the ability to integrate with various services, an Opencart shop can be significantly expanded and effectively promoted. However, it is worth bearing in mind that you will need to engage a specialist developer, as this content management system is not the simplest option from a technical point of view.

MODX

A CMS ranked among the top ten. An excellent free platform for creating informational, entertainment and corporate websites. Ideal for online shops and service-based websites. You can endlessly enhance it with the necessary add-ons and components. It is equipped with a multifunctional SEO module, which expands the possibilities for technical optimisation of the website to meet search engine requirements. A distinctive feature of MODx is the ability to integrate with other services and build a website of any complexity from scratch. This advantage is also a disadvantage, as it requires specific knowledge and skills, as well as specialists familiar with the platform, and consequently involves development costs. If you are prepared to invest time and money, you will undoubtedly end up with a high-performing, fast-loading website.

Prestashop

A platform designed for medium and large-scale online shops, but unlike OpenCart, it requires a significant investment in customisation and support. The core version of the CMS is free. It offers robust e-commerce functionality: product management, order processing and payment handling. It features excellent SEO support and tools to boost visibility in search engines. Mastering the platform will require a significant investment of time. Another drawback of this platform is the relatively limited number of specialists who are well-versed in the intricacies of configuring and programming this CMS.

Magento

The platform of choice for major online shops worldwide. This framework requires a financial investment and the involvement of specialist developers. Magento is incredibly flexible when it comes to customisation. You have the option to choose a free version of the CMS or a cloud-based solution that includes hosting. This CMS features basic built-in SEO tools and allows you to install additional extensions. Magento SEO Suite and Amasty SEO Toolkit effectively handle image and URL optimisation, generate meta tags, improve internal linking structures and speed up page loading. Magento provides all the necessary integrations for setting up checkout, accounts and shopping baskets.

The right CMS for SEO — the key to success

We have covered just a few of the systems and platforms that can help you implement your SEO strategy. We have outlined the key factors to consider when choosing a CMS. The most crucial factors are your business sector, your plans for scaling and expanding your business, and the budget you are prepared to allocate. We hope that our checklist will also help you gain a clearer understanding of what to look for in a CMS for your business and reduce the likelihood of any complications that may arise in the future.

Now that you have the essential information, you will be able to clearly explain your requirements to the developers and confidently oversee the development of your online project.