Background What is SEO? SEO Recommendations Key Requirements Search Engine Index Friendly URLs Metadata...

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1 Search Engine Optimization with a CMS Hannon Hill Corporation 950 East Paces Ferry Road Suite 3300, Atlanta, GA o: f:

2 Table of Contents Background... 3 What is SEO?... 3 SEO Recommendations... 3 Key Requirements... 3 Search Engine Index Friendly URLs... 3 Metadata... 4 Site Maps... 4 SEO Enhancements... 5 Recurring Publish... 5 Keyword Dense Pages... 5 Conclusion... 6 About Hannon Hill... 6 Partial Client List... 7

3 Search Engine Optimization with a CMS 3 Background Search engine optimization (SEO) is an incredibly important part of your organization s web strategy and search engine marketing (SEM). When choosing a content management system (CMS), you should ask your potential vendors for how their product fares with SEO campaigns, and ask for them to include examples. In my experience, companies issuing RFPs, RFQs, and RFIs are getting much better at asking about SEO, and the last half-dozen RFPs I ve seen had included a question about SEO. This article addresses the role of SEO with a CMS. What is SEO? SEO is a combination of tips, tricks, and search engine recommendations for maximizing the placement of a web page in a search result. When you perform a search on Google for a fairly generic term such as legal thriller books, the search engine returns a list of results based on its own internal algorithms and ranking methods. The goal with SEO is to achieve the highest possible search ranking for targeted keyword terms. SEO Recommendations There is an endless number of sites online offering resources to improve your search engine ranking. I have read and implemented many of them over the years. Some of the most common recommendations include: Make descriptive page titles Include important keywords in the URL Use targeted keywords in the page content Ensure that the page is accessible by the search engines Maintain ALT attributes for images Request links to the site from other related sites Some of the more advanced techniques for SEO include: Make a comprehensive site map with direct page links and short titles Maintain a ratio of the keyword phrase to eight other words in the page content Provide targeted keyword dense pages with unique content Keep page file timestamps current and give a last modified time in the page Key Requirements Search Engine Index Friendly URLs One of the first questions to ask is if the CMS produces search engine index friendly URLs. Search engine index friendly means that the web page address produced by the CMS can be spidered or cached in their database. For example, a URL produced by a search engine index friendly CMS looks like Alternatively, a URL produced by a CMS that is not search engine friendly may look like

4 Search Engine Optimization with a CMS 4 The key problem with the unfriendly search engine index CMS URL is that search engines have a more difficult time following links with variables in them. Many, but not all, search engines ignore everything after the? in the URL and thus do not index all the pages on the site. This leaves valuable content hidden to the would-be search engine robot. In addition to being more difficult to index, the URLs with the question marks in them do not take advantage of search engine algorithms that give points for search terms found in the actual URL. A URL like will receive extra points over a generic URL like when searching for John Grisham books as the keywords searched for are included in the URL. You should make sure that the CMS easily produces search engine index friendly URLs by default, and does not require extra work. Many CMS vendors claim search engine friendly URLs, but a closer examination will reveal that they provide work-arounds in their software, adding complexity to the system. A quick test to see if the CMS products you are evaluating are search engine index friendly, comes from looking at the CMS vendor s existing website. It tells the truth every time. The search engine index friendly URLs are also important when using site analysis and click-through software like Web Trends. With a search engine index friendly CMS, Web Trends works without any additional configuration. With a unfriendly URLs, integrating a program like Web Trends to work with dynamic URLs can be difficult, if at all possible. Metadata Most CMS products have adequate metadata support from a SEO point of view. The most important metadata item is the title field. The value of the title metadata field is given significant weight by the search engines in determining a page s ranking. In addition, the title appears in the top bar of the web browser, as the default value when someone bookmarks a page or adds it to their favorites, and is the value in bold on the results page from the search engine. The title is given tremendous importance by the search engines and should be carefully crafted for each page on a site. After the title field, two other commonly used fields are description and keywords. These two metadata fields were much more important several years ago before people started putting irrelevant content in these fields in an effort to bolster their search engine rankings. It is widely regarded that Google does not even take these two fields into account anymore. These two fields are very important for internal or site specific search engines such as Verity Ultraseek and Microsoft Index Server. (Site specific search engines take into account the description and keywords values because they assume the pages were built by reliable sources.) Metadata about system assets is critically important for SEO. Site Maps More advanced CMS products automatically generate site maps based on system assets. There is usually a metadata field entitled display name or short name, which represents a concise name for the page. This value is especially useful for the link generation in the site map. A site map and automatic generation of navigation menus in general, is important for SEO purposes as they ensure whenever new content is created a

5 Search Engine Optimization with a CMS 5 link will be created to it. As long as a link is available and the content is publicly accessible, the search engines will be able to find it. A complete site map is almost more important to search engines then to people. Search engines, when indexing a site, crawl each and every page storing the page content and creating a queue of the page link. The queue of page links are then traversed, first checking if the page has already been visited and, if not, going out to that page and repeating the process. The site map is important in that a comprehensive list of links on a site will be provided directly to the search engine. SEO Enhancements Recurring Publish With a CMS you should be able to have your content published out on a recurring scheduled. Search engines, when indexing a site, check the file timestamp on the web server in addition to the metadata date/time stamp optionally placed in a page. Sites that update their content, and therefore their timestamps more frequently are re-visited more often by search engines. Search engines always look for the most pertinent and current content and give credence to sites updated more often. An example tip to improve your SEO performance with a CMS is to have your site published out nightly (e.g. at 1 AM do a publish of the most important pages regardless if they ve changed). When the content is republished make sure the metadata date/time stamp is current and that the files are overridden on your remote server(s). Now, when a search engine visits your site, it will find files modified within the last 24 hours and it will find current timestamps in the metadata. Keyword Dense Pages Keyword dense pages are unique pages of content on your site with a specific search phrase reiterated throughout the page content. Other aspects of the page are modified to this specific search phrase including title and resulting file name. So, for example, the keyword dense page might be about your companies weed killer product. The URL for the product overview page is Now you pick out a specific aspect of the product e.g. that it works well with Bermuda grass and create a completely new page with original information centered around weed killer for Bermuda grass. The URL of the keyword dense page is This new keyword dense page is linked to by a hidden link from the original page and is not found in the site map or other system navigation structures. With the targeted keyword search phrase reiterated throughout the page in the file name, the title, and numerous times in the actual page content, the page will receive a higher ranking for the specific search term when compared to the original page. Keyword dense pages are legal practice as they represent new, unique content and are not search engine spam representing just copied content (which is discouraged).

6 Search Engine Optimization with a CMS 6 Conclusion Search engines are the most important avenues for driving visitors to your site. By understanding how they operate and taking advantage of known tips, tricks, and techniques higher rankings can be achieved. Common best practices including search engine friendly URLs, content metadata, and site maps provide an infrastructure for a search engine to completely index a site. Taking the SEO to the next level with a recurring publish process and keyword dense pages drives additional visitors to your site. A CMS makes it much easier to incorporate SEO enhancements and deliver more traffic to your website without spending more money exactly what you wanted. About Hannon Hill Founded in 2001, Hannon Hill is a leading provider of powerful web content management software. The award-winning Cascade Server application provides advanced solutions for online information management and has been a recipient of the Best of Show Award, from Internet World Magazine. Most recently, Hannon Hill was recognized by Inc. Magazine placing 247 th amongst the prestigious Inc. 500, representing the top 500 fastest-growing private companies in the nation. Hannon Hill continues to accelerate its customers online success. Located in the high-tech capital of the South, Atlanta, GA, Hannon Hill continues to deliver high-quality content management solutions. Its products enable users to easily update their websites through an easy-to-use web interface. Hannon Hill's content management solutions allow users to maintain up-to-date, accurate, and meaningful website content while decreasing associated costs. Hannon Hill s WCM solutions provide core content management capabilities for management of online information. Our solutions have been implemented in all types of industries, including higher education, health care, real estate, energy, hospitality, and publishing. We provide a comprehensive tool set that provides all the necessary modules to manage the complete content lifecycle. Hannon Hill is now in its ninth year of operation. Product sales and overall revenue have increased steadily in each year of operation. Currently, approximately 60% of our revenue is generated from software licenses, 10% from maintenance contracts and 30% from professional services associated with integration and training. Most of our annual revenue is re-invested in product development. The majority of our business is generated through strong client references and by offering numerous informational resources; we do not conduct expensive advertising and marketing campaigns. Our customer acquisition costs remain well below average, enabling us to focus above average resources on research and development. Hannon Hill is large enough to be completely financially secure, yet small enough to ensure a high degree of personal attention. We pride ourselves on superior customer service and satisfaction, and believe this approach is the best way to ensure our continued long-term viability.

7 Search Engine Optimization with a CMS 7 Partial Client List Education (125+ Higher-Ed Clients) Belmont University Bowdoin College Brandeis University Campbell University Carnegie Mellon University Clemson University College of William and Mary Cornell College CSU- San Marcos CSU-Chico Duke University Earlham College Eastern University Eckerd College Gardner-Webb University Gonzaga University Harding University Heinz School of Public Policy Hofstra University McMurry University Reed College The Juilliard School UC Hastings College of the Law UC-Irvine University of Alaska - Southeast University of Detroit Mercy University of Houston University of Maryland AGNR University of Miami School of Business University of Missouri (Mizzou) University of Richmond University of Texas at Arlington Vassar College Government and Non-Profits City of Irving, TX County of Charleston, SC Delaware Dept. of Education US Department of Justice Federation of American Scientists Henderson (NV) Libraries NV State Office of Employment Working Today Freelancers Union YMCA General Brand Atlanta British Petroleum Costco Travel Cummins Marine European Investment Bank IT World Canada Milliman Okemo Mountain Resort Perillo Tours SCOREGolf Strang Communications Universal Air Travel Plan Waste Connections Technology Adaptive Microsystems Beacon Technologies China Mobile Computer Sciences Corporation FileMaker.com Iona Technologies MediaGrif PGP Corporation Servigistics, Inc Silverpop, Inc The North Highland Co. Healthcare American Thoracic Society MCG Health System Noland Health Emory Healthcare ProHealth Care St. Joseph's Hospital of Atlanta Texas A&M Health Science Center University of Utah Healthcare