How does using a CMS (i.e. Wordpress/Drupal) affect backlinks and SEO?
-
So I need to build a website with over 100 pages in it. Elements of the design will probably be moved around and or tested so I need to use a CMS. It's pretty much a review site so while the content will remain static I'd like to employ A/B testing to mess with conversion rates. Wordpress has a plugin for that even.
So I'm just wondering, since CMS pages are pretty much created on spot and not retrieved from a library, how this affects backlinks and anchor text? How exactly does the external website point to yours if the URL is dynamically generated?
Or am I misunderstanding something? Please recommend any extra resources as well if you can.
-
Sorry, saw the follow-up, but I think the overall thread has you covered. The only real issue with CMS URLs is that you can sometimes have multiple versions pointing to the same page, and this creates duplicate content. There are plug-ins for WordPress that can help with that.
The only exception would be something like an AJAX-style URL, where the page content could change without the URL ever changing (Flash has the same issue, for example). You'll rarely see that in a standard CMS, though, and definitely not in WordPress.
-
Thank you very much CMC-SD, Jared and goodlegaladvice for all your help.
@CMC-SD: As promised, I stole your analogy (Now I realize it was an analogy and not a metaphor, I think) and I tried to explain CMS to my girlfriend who knows nothing about computers. Unfortunately it did not come out as elegantly as you put it and we ended up eating bison burgers instead.
-
Ditto to that Jared. Great explanation. And now I'm hungry.
-
Oh, okay, I definitely misunderstood. You're asking about the back-end rewriting process that makes a pretty URL point to the corresponding ugly URL which in turn points to the page. That's way back-end.
Unlike a 301 redirect, it's invisible to the spider. The spider need never know that a URL like http://www.domain.com/?p=123 even exists. While it's crawling, it sees a link to http://www.domain.com/page1.html, follows the link, and sees the HTML for that page. That's all.
-
@CMS-SD: Great metaphor! I'm going to steal it
But I already knew that about CMS's xD. In fact my confusion was about what follows from that... If the pages are created dynamically and not retrieved from the webserver itself, how do would a backlink even REFER it??
I actually found this SEO blog touching on the subject matter: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/url-rewrites-and-301-redirects-how-does-it-all-work
So, pretty much this is how it works: A page is linked through the URL that is randomly generated by a CMS, but the webserver rewrites the URL that points to the original URL. Pretty much the same thing. And google indexes that URL plus the html on the page. Is that about right? That is why I should not worry at all.
-
Thanks! That's what happens when a creative writing major learns php.
-
This is probably the most well constructed, and humorous explanation on this that I have ever read. Bravo.
-
No. What "indexing" means is creating a database of URLs and the HTML that those URLs point to. If your site has been "indexed," it means Google has discovered your URLs and taken note of the HTML that can be found at those URLs.
-
I think you are misunderstanding something, yes.
On a website with a CMS, the URL is not "dynamically generated." The page is dynamically generated. Here's what that means. Whenever you type http://www.domain.com/page1.html into your browser, you are telling your browser to go to that website and pull up the HTML that corresponds to that URL. URL stands for "uniform resource locator," meaning directions to the location of a resource. If you have an old-fashioned website, the URL points to an HTML file that you created, either by typing everything yourself of using a WYSIWYG editor. If you have a CMS, the URL essentially instructs your website to build the corresponding HTML page on the fly.
It's like ... okay, imagine that you walk into a bakery and ask for a chocolate chip cookie. They could either pull a pre-baked chocolate chip cookie off the shelf and hand it to you, or walk in the back and bake you one cookie from the ingredients in the kitchen. When we're talking about baked goods, option 1 is almost always better than option 2 because it's orders of magnitude faster and more efficient. The benefits that option 2 offers aren't worth the extra time and lost efficiency. But when we're talking about websites, that's no longer the case. The server can construct an HTML document almost instantaneously. Your browser gets the HTML just as fast as it would if it asked for a static HTML page.
In fact, your browser really has no idea that this is all happening. Here's another food metaphor. You walk into a fast food joint and order a hamburger. The cashier walks into the kitchen, and a minute later, walks out with your hamburger. Did the cashier pull the hamburger off a shelf of hamburgers that have been sitting under a hotlight for hours? Or did the cashier ask the cook to prepare a fresh hamburger just for you? Assuming the hamburger tastes great either way, you have no way of knowing. In this metaphor, the customer is the surfer, the cashier is the browser, and the kitchen is the server your website is hosted on. Either your server has a bunch of pre-made pages sitting around waiting for someone to "order" them, or your server has a clever program that makes the pages only when they're needed. That clever program, the CMS, is like the short-order cook.
The thing to remember is, the search engine spiders are customers, just like the surfer. They don't know what's going on in the kitchen. They don't care. They "typed in" a URL and got some HTML back. They now know that that URL produces that HTML. They remember that. When they see a link to that URL, they know it's pointing to that HTML.
Clear as mud?
-
Ahhh, so Google indexes URLs and not the pages themselves? D'oh.
-
"So I'm just wondering, since CMS pages are pretty much created on spot and not retrieved from a library, how this affects backlinks and anchor text? How exactly does the external website point to yours if the URL is dynamically generated?"
Firstly, different CMS's create pages differently. CMS just means content management, which means the platform just provides a gui for you to add content or make changes. If you are using WP and creating pages, then these pages wil be indexed as any other page, and links pointing to it would simply target the page's URL.
Wordpress uses permalinks and Drupal uses pathauto to redirect platform generated links into SEO friendly one. They use an internal redirect and the resulting URL is indexed in Google. Therefore, you simply treat the resulting URL as the "real" url, and external links to it work fine.
-
right no difference I took a whole site with statics and changed it over to a cms with all rewrites everything works great kept the urls the same though kept the .htm
-
I was under the impression that URL rewrites just change the way the URL is displayed on the browser but not the URL itself. I really need to learn more about the backend stuff.
So it would make no difference if the backlink contained an absolute path?
-
It works the same as a static page except its easy to manage your content....
You usually also use a url re-write agent that can change your urls to say what ever you want. In fact most of the web is now on a cms.
Backlinks, Anchor text is all the same....
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Has anyone transferred a site from WordPress to Webflow?
We're thinking about making the move, but I'm (mildly) concerned about SEO implications.
Web Design | | lauraballer0 -
Amp plugins + Wordpress = speed, rankings, results
Hello beloved, Been some time since I have been on, planning to return and help out and be bit more active. Need some latest thoughts and input, on amp plugins for Wordpress, and their results and effect on rankings? Thank you all in advance 🙂
Web Design | | vmialik0 -
Advice on estate agent website SEO next steps
Hi everyone, I have been working on the SEO for this website for a while now and have had a good amount of success increasing the traffic and rankings. However our main hurdle is improving conversions on the actual website - we want to encourage more people to book a valuation. Does anybody have any suggestions on how we can improve this? The website is www.richardkendall.co.uk Thank you
Web Design | | sophiecrosby970 -
How we can check whether website design is good for SEO or not?
Is there any tool available to check website design whether it is good for SEO or not?
Web Design | | ross254sidney0 -
Post CMS-Switch Actions
I have recently switched a site from oscommerce (an ecommerce CMS) to Wordpress (using WooCommerce plugins). I have already placed automatic redirect rules for all the products and product categories. It has now been 2 weeks since the new CMS went live. However, the site is receiving approximately 30% less traffic than it used to. The new site has a cleaner layout, is responsive design. As I mentioned, the old product and product category URLs are being redirected to the new WordPress URLs. Any other ideas? Do you think its just Google penalizing for changing site structure? On the plus side, I see structured data and rich snippets showing up in Google SERPs for the site. The site is www.vrtack.com
Web Design | | amitramani0 -
Pages vs. Posts for SEO
Hi, I would like your thoughts about pages vs. posts for SEO. I understand the difference in terms of WP structure and have read the SEOmoz blog post about setting up your site for SEO success (http://www.seomoz.org/blog/setup-wordpress-for-seo-success). However, if you're trying to rank for a particular keyword, it seems that either one could work, from an on-page SEO perspective, as far as title tag, URL, meta description, etc. So how do you decide whether to set up a page vs. a post? What are the pros and cons, from an SEO perspective, about using one vs. the other? Thanks in advance! Carolina
Web Design | | csmm0 -
XML Sitemap that updates daily/weekly?
Hi, I have a sitemap on my site, that updates but it isn't a XML sitemap. See here: http://www.designerboutique-online.com/sitemap/ I have used some free software to crawl the site and create a sitemap of pages, however I think that if I were to upload the sitemap, it would be out of date as soon as I listed new products on the site, so would need to rerun it. Does anyone know how I can get this to refresh daily or weekly? Or any software that can do it? I have a web firm that are willing to do one, but our relationship is at an all time low and I don't want to hand over £200 for them to do one. Anyone with any ideas or advice? Thanks Will
Web Design | | WillBlackburn0 -
Switched From Wordpress, Traffic Dropped In Half
Hello, Thank you for taking a look at my issue. My site: http://www.getrightmusic.com A month ago, I switched from Wordpress to ExpressionEngine. The reason being I wanted a more powerful membership functionality with media uploading. After I switched, my traffic basically dropped in half. I was averaging around 4-6,000 unique visitors per day and now I am at about 2,000 per day. I resubmitted a new sitemap to Google webmasters. I also set up 301 redirects on my top 80 urls that were ranking well and driving traffic in Google. Not only did Google kick me off of my top spots in the SERP's, but I no longer get indexed as quickly as I used to. With the old Wordpress site I would get url's indexed within minutes. Now they aren't even getting indexed really at all. Is this a normal occurrence when switching site designs and systems? Do you think Google will just take a little time before they give me back some respect? Is there anything I should be doing to get back to ranking and getting indexed faster? Thanks for any help or any insight you may have. Jesse
Web Design | | getrightmusic0