ExpressionEngine is fast-becoming my ‘go to’ solution for genuine CMS work for a multitude of reasons. However, one often-overlooked aspect when choosing a CMS is it’s inherent SEO features. ExpressionEngine is a cut above a lot of the competition ‘out-of-the-box’; here are a few of its SEO features:
- Ability to define custom URL Structure. Unlike many other enterprise-level CMS platforms, ExpressionEngine makes it easy to set static, semantic URLs, with the ability to specify custom directory structures. Some other CMSes require core hacks to handle even the most simple structure.
- Ability to specify custom metadata. ExpressionEngine makes it incredibly easy to define custom page title tags, meta descriptions, meta keywords, and other on-page SEO elements. While other platforms offer this functionality, ExpressionEngine goes a step beyond other Content Management Systems by making it very easy to manually override default metadata by simply tweaking your templates. This makes it easy and scalable to implement on-page optimization onto thousands of ‘long tail pages’ saving time, while still giving marketing teams the precise control that’s needed to have an effective SEO strategy.
- Internal linking is easy – ExpressionEngine allows pages to reside in multiple categories and channels, without having to worry about duplicate content. Because ExpressionEngine does such a great job of allowing you to display and publish content, it becomes easy to interlink pages.
- An easy way to generate XML Sitemaps – Having a properly formatted XML sitemap is a key step towards getting content indexed in the search engines. Thanks to the inherent flexibility of its template structure, ExpressionEngine is able to easily output a perfectly-formatted XML sitemap, complete with custom priority codes.
- Robust indexing and caching – ExpressionEngine’s advanced caching capabilities, including template caching, query caching, and tag caching reduces server load and improves page loadtime, making it easier for the spiders to index your pages.
- Easy integration with Google Analytics and Google Website Optimizer – Analyzing data is key to making your SEO efforts successful. Whereas many other systems make you update multiple pages to put on Analytics scripts, with ExpressionEngine, it’s literally a copy/paste situation. Even setting up advanced subdomain tracking, custom variables, and event tracking is painless, taking minutes where other systems take hours.