Rewritten & Updated on 4/01/2011
One of the most important things that people consider when looking at content management systems (CMS) is their viability in the SEO market. In fact, it’s becoming so important that people are sometimes afraid to choose a CMS on the basis that it may not be optimized enough for their needs.
To help fend off the confusion, we’ve put together a list of what we feel are some of the most SEO friendly open source content management systems on the market today.
MODx
MODx is arguably one of the best content management systems out there when it comes to SEO performance. What makes it different is that you do not need to make theme alterations to make a site perform well, nor do you require plugins. It’s summed up best by the MODx team and holds true:
MODX allows you to control 100% of what is output with virtually no effort. Unlike other systems that require learning complex theming engines, in MODX you work with HTML and as many custom variables for the site you need. It takes minutes to build a site that performs amazingly well in Search Engines and because site builders are in total control and can change the output at any time, making tweaks is just a few clicks away.
Website: MODx CMS
Concrete5
Concrete5 is a relative newcomer to the CMS space but has become increasingly popular based on it’s ease of use and functionality. Concrete5 sites perform quite well in the search engines and pages can be edited to include all of the necessary metadata by default. Couple this with nice clean URLs and caching and you’ve got yourself a good setup for a successful site.
Website: Concrete5 CMS
Joomla
In previous versions of Joomla (1.5 and lower) I would have excluded them completely but since 1.6 has come out, they have turned things around and introduced a ton of SEO improvements. Search engine friendly URLs, custom meta data per page (section, article, etc) have made Joomla a force to be reckoned with. It also goes without saying that it must perform well otherwise their main site wouldn’t have a page rank of 10/10 would it?
Website: Joomla CMS
WordPress
There is an incredible number of plugins that can be used to extend WordPress with regards to SEO. It’s only fourth on the list because the other systems above it include these functions natively and do not require plugins. With the right selection of plugins and proper permalinks selected, WordPress is a true powerhouse when it comes to SEO.
Webstie: WordPress
Drupal
Drupal, like WordPress, relies heavily on plugins (known as modules in this instance) to enable SEO functionality at its fullest. Drupal sites typically perform quite well by default but with the addition of the right modules, it too becomes a powerhouse.
Website: Drupal
Do you agree? Disagree? Let us know your favorites and experiences in the comments below. We updated this article on 4/1/2011 as it had become rather outdated so please, do share your thoughts.
About Mike Johnston
Have you tried SEO Samba?
How is any of the solution mentioned above superior to the SEO Samba web marketing and integrated CMS platform?
I have to say I have been impression with the SEO functionality in magento, this is a great ecommerce solution with SEO built in.
If you're interested in a Ruby-on-Rails CMS check out Refinery CMS… it is really easy to use and SEO-friendly.
I recommend seotoaster for this SEO Friendly CMS list, as it in fact is "made for" SEO in the first place. It is also free and open source. You can demo its very easy user interface and seo capabilities on the website. Some of seotoaster capabilities include: Automated 301 redirects, Deep linking, link sculpting with javascript link siloing. Also worth noticing is the new "Inline management" technology that lets you update your site without any complicated admin area. I hope you will appreciate the hard work we put in this.
In my openion Datalife Engine is the best SEO cms, and then joomla and after this all other cms that author has described.
This blogpost about SEO & (Hippo) CMS might be interesting:
http://mathijsbrand.blogspot.com/2010/08/little-secret-about-search-engine.html
There area lot of content management systems out there are are very SEO friendly. LightCMS and Radium3 have built in SEO functionality built into the system without having to download any plugs or do any work to have it up and going.
I have have tried to build my own CMS for the projects I do, well it does lack a lot of the cool adding things (unless I want to build them) . Its fund to get in to the code and know just what is going on.
But for my next big project I am thinking of giving ModX a try.
MODx sounds very interesting. I have only used WordPress though, is it just as easy to learn? Thanks for sharing. Mike
I have a long time build website with wordpress, build a new website, migrate website or redesign website. As my experience, wordpress website is light but powerful. My new website is indexed by google just in two days, without submit it. yes, wordpress is need any plugin to increase functionality, but in WordPress we can customize theme code and function so in some case, no need a plugin.
I Think wordpress is best on seo cms.
I’ve used Joomla! cms for a long time and I guarantee this tools can brings you the satisfaction. I’ve used wordpress, drupal and other cms as well and all is good.
My opinion is ” SEO is not only comes from CMS what you use but from how you manage your web page, how you create content and linking them with the great keyword, link building and many more”.
Why not Datalife Engine?
The same could be said for any of the others not included. Quite frankly it doesn’t have enough of a userbase to be included nor has it been tested for SEO.