WordPress blog software is presently the most popular blog authoring Web application and arguably the most prolific. Being open source, the coding is open for developers and hackers to improve and customize for their own needs. When you hire us, you pay for the WordPress design and not the application. Unless you need custom PHP programming, you pay nothing for the software. WordPress is free though the purpose of “open source” is collaboration and supporting the programmer developers and its community is advised.

Like the Internet itself, blogs are another example of the collaborative nature of the Web. Basically speaking, an article (POST) is written which starts a threaded discussion (COMMENTS) that is usually written in response to the original article. The topic can be anything that fancies the author, who is usually the editor and Administrator of the blog with full permissions to assign different levels of control to various users. The permissions based framework allows Editors, Authors, Contributors and Subscribers to work in collaboration with each in order to maintain an active WordPress blog.

Written in PHP, it’s dynamically driven using MySQL as its primary database. The blog’s content is stored in a database and retrieved by the PHP scripts to display as required on the Web pages. There is no special programming knowledge needed to add new content. A WYSIWYG editor is built into the administrative interface that resembles a word processor, so you can style the text without HTML experience.

The User Interface Design of WordPress can be designed to resemble a traditional Website without any clue to the visitor that beneath the beautiful design is a powerful Web application.

Web site design is not a one-size-fits-all practice. As web sites can serve a number of different purposes – supply information, attract new sales, create a community, etc – it only makes sense that web design possibilities be just as varied. One of the first considerations in creating a web design is whether a content management system, or CMS, makes sense. There are some situations when a CMS is clearly the best choice, while it may be an unnecessary collection of bells and whistles at other times.

What is a content management system?

In a nutshell, a CMS is software that organizes, powers and monitors a web site. It includes a “front end” viewable by any web user and a password-protected “back end” the general public does not see. Management of the site is centralized from this back end. Depending upon how the site is built, a content management system could include features for archiving older content, entering new content, accessing traffic metrics, managing navigation, banner rotation, polls, streaming media uploads and shopping carts, for example. The possibilities are limited only by the content management system’s configuration and capabilities.

How are traditional web designs and content management systems different?

Unlike a CMS, “traditional” or basic HTML-based web design does not include a front and back end. Effective management of these sites requires knowledge of good coding practice, the ability to create new or integrate pre-written scripts to add functionality as needed and the creation of an efficient file/directory structure to accommodate growth.

A content management system, on the other hand, does not require specialized technical skill to use. Managing or expanding the web site is a centralized process. More advanced coding knowledge would only be required should installation of additional functionality be desired.

Major benefits of a content management system

* Coding skills are not required – A good CMS back end will be as complex to use as basic word processing software. Adding content is a simple matter of entering and formatting the text. Accessing features should be no more complicated than using a pulldown menu.

* Convenience – A content management system provides a centralized administration area from where a wide range of features from archiving to metrics may be accessed. Consequently, multiple users can manage their respective areas of the site or a single user can run the site in its entirety.

* Scalability – A properly configured CMS can accommodate the management needs of a growing website as well as accept “add-on” components to power new features as necessary.

When is a CMS unnecessary?

Despite its convenience and options, a content management system is not always the best choice. Web sites created to act only as a point of contact for a brick and mortar business, for example, may have no need for CMS functionality. Similarly, small informational web sites with no plans for future growth would not benefit from a content management system’s scalability. If the benefits of using a CMS do not speak to the purpose or scope of a site, it really can be an unnecessary choice.

Choosing the best web design

Whether or not a web design should be CMS-based or not depends entirely upon the site’s purpose, plans for growth, functionality, and the availability of a webmaster or technically-savvy personnel to manage the site. A CMS would be the ideal web design choice for a business seeking to offer its customers the convenience of Internet orders, but not for a business only wishing to inform it customers of its location and hours of operation.

Content management system or CMS as it is popularly known would be of a numerous benefit for a website containing hundreds of pages which need continuous updation in the web host and written by multiple authors. CMS will make it easier for people to create, edit and publish content on the website without even any technical knowledge like HTML, DHTML etc, of the user. It eases the technical difficulties in the publication of content and reduces the time-to-publish.

A CMS web site is database driven as it allows one to create and store thousands of pages in the database without the need to update each one of them. As the design of the site template is separate from the content, this allows one to change the design any time without affecting the content stored on the site.

Problems created by inaccurate or contradictory content, can be easily overcome by automated approval procedure as it ensures that the content is correct before publication. By using user-definable workflow to notify assigned approvers of changes to content, Publication is automatic once approval has been signed-off.

A CMS makes it easier for the Web Manager to locate the creator, editor and the publisher of the content, as it allows defining and allocating specific publishing rights to various individuals. Multiple user access can be set up in the administration panel. More over authors and editors can access the site from any computer with an internet connection and can update the site at the same time from any location in the world. Publishing content can also be controlled by creating a draft first then publishing it later. This is very useful when one needs to coordinate content from multiple authors and editors.

Some CMS website design automatically generates the Meta Tags for each web page, which will ultimately help them to be listed by the search engines. It not only generates pages that are search engine friendly but can produce many links from the new content that is added.

A CMS site attracts visitors because of the frequency of updation. This causes generation search engine friendly pages which can produce lots of links from the new content that is added and syndicated.

Really Simple Syndication or RSS is integrated automatically into many CMS sites. Every time you create a post or make a comment, it creates a feed for it. This allows visitors with RSS Feeders to read the post at their own convenience.

Concisely, a content management system is a powerful tool for an e-commerce businesses that want to present lots of content from multiple authors and attract more visitors along with the capability to expand as the business grows. A Content Management System establishes the design philosophy and ensures it is applied consistently throughout the site to maintain corporate identity and branding and protects the value of content by accelerating and automating publication processes.

So, you have finally decided to build yourself a website, but really have no idea where to start. The following 10 steps will give you some insight into what you need to address when creating a search friendly website from the ground up.

While this article is not an exhaustive líst of everything you need to know, it does touch base on many of the important aspects of creating a new website.

Step 1 – Keyword Research
Even before you choose your domain name, you should put a little time into some keyword research. Research all the possible keywords that will fit your industry and the website you plan on building. Having a clear idea of what your end targets are will make the rest of your job much easier and help things to just fall into place. Take a look at Keyword Research for SEO, written earlier this summer, for more help on this.

Step 2 – Domain Selection
If you already have an established brick and mortar business and the website will be an extension of that business, using your company name as the domain name is in most cases the best idea. If your company name is either irrelevant, or simply unavailable, you may want to consider a domain that has your target phrase listed as part of the domain.

A great example of this is if your site is focused geographically. Using the location as part of the domain when possible will give you a little extra juice with the search engines and help draw people to your site as they instantly can see the relevance in the domain.

Let’s say that you are building a website focused on your home town, “Somewhere USA”. A domain you may consider could be “Somewhere.com”; however, this would probably be already taken. Other options such as “SomewhereInfo.com” or “SomewhereGuide.com” may be good alternatives. The same goes for retail stores. “SomewhereCameras”.com or “SomewhereBakery”.com would also be good choices.

Avoid excessive use of hyphens; sometimes it is appropriate to use one, but if you can help it, avoid more than that as it can appear messy and even spammy in some cases.

Step 3 – System Back End
If you plan on having a large scale website that will grow and change constantly then you may want to consider a content management system (CMS) such as Joomla. If you decide to go this route, you want to ensure that whichever CMS you choose is search engine friendly and offers items such as unique title tags, custom URL’s, and full control over content, heading tags, image alt tags, etc.

Starting a website using a non-friendly CMS is like buying a car without an engine. Sure it may look great, but it won’t get you anywhere.

Step 4 – Site Structure & Navigation
This is really one of the most fundamental aspects of your site creation. If the structure of your site does not work well, then your site may be doomed from the very beginning.

Take a look back at your keyword research and brainstorm all the areas of your site that you may want to develop content for. In some cases you may find valuable keywords that would fit perfectly into a few pages of content for your site. If the phrase and the content would be a good match for the theme of your site, go ahead and note them as pages to create. Get a líst, or flowchart, of all the content you plan on adding and sort those pages into relevant categories.

Be sure your site files are saved in a way that makes sense – this includes both the file name, and the complete path to the file. Save files, including similar content in a relevant subdirectory, with simple file names representing each. Let’s take an example of an informational site dedicated to a specific geographic location. If you have a series of pages dedicated to recreation, you may save them as:

/recreation/parks.html
/recreation/trails.html
/recreation/beaches.html

Keeping your URL structure clean and tidy can not only help with search engine rankings, but it will give a good visual impression to the site visitor as well. Often, using each of these categories as main points for your primary site navigation may make the most sense.

Also be sure to keep your site relatively flat, with as few layers as possible. Don’t make the search engines follow a dozen links to get to the deepest levels of your site. Unless the site is literally tens of thousands of pages, there is no need to click more than 2 or 3 links to get to any deep content. The shorter the path to an internal page, the more credít by the search engines.

Step 5 – Navigation
When developing the end site, you also want to make sure that your site navigation is search engine friendly – this is critical if you ever want free organic listings.

If possible, use a text based form of navigation. You can use CSS to style the text links to fit into your graphical design. Text links are the best method, but image based navigation and even some forms of drop down menus are also search engine friendly.

If you choose to use image based navigation be sure to include image alt text relevant to the link to give something for Google to associate with the linked page. If you absolutely must use Flash, or any form of navigation not friendly for search engine spiders, be sure to supplement this with text based links on another location of the page.

Step 6 – Analytics
It isn’t ever too early to start thinking about your stats. Before your site goes live you must have some form of accurate analytics in place so you can measure your site’s traffic and progress.

There is an endless supply of analytics options out there to choose from. You can simply use the stats software that comes free with your web hosting, however, more often than not, they tend to be very basic with no flexibility. Advanced choices such as ClickTracks can give you rather in-depth statistics, but for a very small mom and pop operation it may be too expensive. Google Analytics, is a free option that can give you most, if not all the data you will need and does not require access to your raw log files.

If you do opt for an option such as ClickTracks, check with your host to ensure that you will have the raw log files you require. StepForth can also help you with your statistical analysis and offers a number of inexpensive ClickTracks service packages.

Step 7 – Content Creation
Now is the time to get that new, fresh content posted to your site with the SEO in mind. Make sure that the content you write reflects your industry and target keywords. You don’t need to flood the content with your target keywords, but make sure they are in there a few times. When it makes sense to do so, also include some acronyms to help Google establish the overall relevance.

If you perform a search in Google for “~keyword”, any words that Google bolds in the search results will be acronyms that Google deems relevant. Include some of these where possible.

Step 8 – Basic SEO
Ensure that ALL pages of your site include unique and Meta Description tags. This is one of the core fundamental aspects of an optimized size and it does play a significant role in your search rankings. Make sure that these tags are not only unique but are accurate representations of each page. Also be sure to place your target phrase in heading as well as image alt tags where applicable.

Step 9 – Initial Promotion / Launch
Now that you have your new site all up and ready to go, you want to give it that kick start to help drive some traffic. It will be a while before the search engines fully index your site and even longer before you start to see organic rankings for your target search phrases. It is important to start off right away to get the ball rolling.

Start off by issuing a press release to announce the launch of your new business website. Press releases are a great way to get some traffic and a rather valuable first link into your site. Submitting your press release using a company such as PRWeb will get your link in the engine’s path and should help your site to be initially indexed by Google right away.

Next submít your site to some relevant directories starting with DMOZ. It can take months, even years, to have your site listed in DMOZ, so it is important to get it submitted right away. Consider submittíng to other industry relevant directories. For some information on how to select the right directories take a look at Building Links with Directory Submissions.

Work on getting as many links from relevant industry websites as possible. The more links you can get from reputable sources, the better the overall performance of your site.

Step 10 – Ongoing Promotion
Once you have completed the site, the content looks great, and all appears finished, you’ve still got work to do. For long term success, especially for a brand new site, you need to continually promote your site. You should always be looking at ways to build your inbound links and your relevant content.

Consider creating accounts with various social media platforms to help promote your site. These can not only give you a link back to your site, but they can help you drive traffic and raise awareness about your business and product.

A site that is always growing, and always getting new links, has the best chance of getting a stable top 10 listing in Google

CMS or Content-Management System is an application which can be very beneficial for SEO. A CMS, or in this case WCMS (Web CMS), is a software usually implemented as a Web application, for creating and managing HTML content. It is used to manage and control a large, dynamic collection of Web material (HTML documents and their associated images). A WCMS facilitates content creation, content control, editing, and many essential Web maintenance functions.

Different SEO specialists and consultants have come to use CMS applications to easily and conveniently make several changes within a website that would help in their SEO campaigns such as the use of Meta tags, Alt Tags, Title tags, and more. This also saves from asking an already busy web developer for making changes in a web page. But the question now is, which CMS is the best. There are, however, too many CMS softwares to go around, thus usually brings the question on which of these CMS’ are the best when it comes to SEO. After doing some research on which is the best when it comes to CMS for SEO, there are several names that came up from the list of prospectives. These names include:

Joomla!

Joomla! is considered by many as one of the most use-friendly CMS used not only for SEO, but also for other web-based applications. So what is Joomla!? Joomla! is a free open source content management system for publishing content on the World Wide Web and intranets as well as a Model–view–controller (MVC) Web Application Development framework. According to several SEO Philippines consultants, the system includes features such as page caching to improve performance, RSS feeds, printable versions of pages, news flashes, blogs, polls, website searching, and language internationalization.

Popular features: The Joomla! package consists of many different parts, which allow modular extensions and integrations to be made easily. These includes “Plugins”, “Components”, and “Modules”.

Plugins are background extensions that extend Joomla! with new functionality. The WikiBot, for example, allows the author of Joomla! content to use “Wikitags” in Joomla! articles which will auto-create dynamic hyperlinks to Wikipedia articles when displayed. There are over 4,000 extensions for Joomla! available via the Extensions Directory.

Components allow webmasters to perform such tasks as build a community by expanding user features, backup a website, translate content and create URLs that are more friendly to search engines.

Modules perform such tasks as displaying a calendar or allowing custom code like Google AdSense etc., to be inserted within the base Joomla! code.

Drupal

Drupal, like Joomla!, is used as a back-end system for many different types of websites, ranging from small personal blogs to large corporate and political sites. SEO consultants have made several use of Drupal when it comes managing a website to set it up for On-Page SEO.

The standard release of Drupal, known as Drupal core, contains basic features common to most CMSs. According to SEO Philippines consultants, these include the ability to register and maintain individual user accounts, administration menus, RSS-feeds, customizable layout, flexible account privileges, logging, a blogging system, an Internet forum, and options to create a classic brochureware website or an interactive community website. SEO specialists and consultants made use of Drupal when it was designed to allow new features and custom behavior to be added by third parties, which in this case several features used for SEO. For this reason, Drupal is sometimes described as a content management framework. The good thing about Drupal is that although it offers a sophisticated programming interface for developers, no programming skills are required for basic website installation and administration.

SilverStripe

Another great CMS for SEO is SilverStripe. SilverStripe is a free and open source content management system (CMS) for creating and maintaining websites. The CMS provides a web-based administration panel that enables users to make modifications to parts of the website. This panel includes a WYSIWYG website editor. Notable features of the SilverStripe CMS include:

A modern, extensible web-application interface Drag and drop customization of tree-based navigation structure Customizable output markup with CSS-based, table-free defaults Work-flow management:Draft/Published separation through content staging, and document revision control/rollback with ‘compare’ functionality Highly configurable security/permissions model Data object model, automatic database schema generation, and a suite of CMS data controls to enable easy customization of inputs. asset management and image resizing Multiple templates per page Search engine friendly URLs, meta-data management, and automatic XML sitemap generation Full text search and RSS feeds Optimizations for heavy loads (e.g. manual cache refresh) Internationalization/Languages: SilverStripe supports multiple-language content. UTF-8 and the internationalization of character sets are supported.

WordPress

Although not as popularly used for SEO compared to those mention above, many still use WordPress for SEO purposes. WordPress has a templating system, which includes widgets that can be rearranged without editing PHP or HTML code, as well as themes that can be installed and switched between. The PHP and HTML code in themes can also be edited for more advanced customizations. According to several SEO Philippines consultants that use the application, WordPress also features integrated link management; a search engine-friendly, clean permalink structure; the ability to assign nested, multiple categories to articles; multiple author capability; and support for tagging of posts and articles. Automatic filters that provide for proper formatting and styling of text in articles (for example, converting regular quotes to smart quotes) are also included. WordPress supports the Trackback and Pingback standards for displaying links to other sites that have themselves linked to a post or article. Finally, WordPress has a rich plugin architecture which allows users and developers to extend its functionality beyond the features that come as part of the base install.