Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Can a CMS affect SEO?
-
As the title really, I run www.specialistpaintsonline.co.uk and 6 months ago when I first got it it had bad links which google had put a penalty against it so losts it value.
However the penalty was lift in Sept, the site corresponds to all guidelines and seo work has been done and constantly monitored.
the issue I have is sales and visits have not gone up, we are failing fast and running on 2 or 3 sales a month isn't enough to cover any sort of cost let alone wages.
hence my question can the cms have anything to do with it?
Im at a loss and go grey any help or advice would be great.
thanks in advance.
-
I want to say I agree with Tom I focused strictly on your CMS and as Tom said essentially you have been hurt by your lack of relevant root domains pointing to your site.
Unfortunately after penalty given with an excellent cleanup Google is a little more wary of everything you do. So when you try to earn these new links which will need to do to compete for specialist paints an extremely competitive keyword. Be extremely careful that you do not cross any boundaries.
Take a look at the information below as well I did quite a few scans on your site and hopefully that will be of some help to you.
Respectfully,
Thomas
-
to answer the 1st question. Of course a CMS can affect how website performs. Meaning some are built better than others. If you had a CMS that was to produce all flash content that would be a pretty bad CMS.
I honestly prefer WordPress it works beautifully with search engines as well as people. The important thing though is that you can create a website that is easy for the end user and accomplishes what they want because that's exactly what Google wants.
when I used a tool I use a lot from Internet marketing ninjas in order to scan your site for issues it was giving me a 408 error that error is
- "408 Request Timeout (Couldn't find the user in time)"
- you can see what I mean right here I attempted this 8 times.
I used a another tool screaming frog SEO spider I highly recommend this tool it is free for up to 500 pages though the Pro version gives you the ability to fix a lot of problems instantly.
http://www.screamingfrog.co.uk/seo-spider/
Here the results
https://app.box.com/files/0/f/550482746/1/f_11967719472 crawl overview
https://app.box.com/s/nvyyszluy9mb9rhx1ms6 redirect chain check
https://app.box.com/files/0/f/550482746/1/f_11967725394 all links
I would doubt the CMS has anything to do with your issues. Based on using this tool below called feed the bot
http://www.feedthebot.com/tools/spider/test.php
I was able to crawl your site with no problems. That replicates googles ability to crawl a website. If there was an issue with your CMS blocking Google bot I would've picked it up there
It seems your CMS is custom-made I have never heard of this particular one however that does not mean it's bad. I would recommend using WordPress if you you build the site for any reason. It is very search engine friendly and has a extremely large pool of developers.
Use some of the tools found in this link to scan for other issues
aside from that I would guess that your prior penalty may have something to do with a drop or he could be the lack of content one your site. Overall you do not have a lot of content meeting over 200 or 300 words per page I would start by issuing another question regarding whatever you find to be off about your site. Or something more detailed about what exactly you suspect is a problem why you think it's your CMS? I would really love to hear some more info about this I hope the data I've provided is able to tell you that I do not believe it is your CMS that is harming you.
Download screaming frog and use it
sincerely,
Thomas
-
Hi there
Well yes, a CMS can have an effect on SEO performance. If the CMS makes elements on the page uncrawlable, or the website load very slowly, this could have an adverse effect on your performance. Similarly, if the CMS produces a lot of duplicate webpages, URL or content, which can often be a problem with e-commerce sites, that could lead to algorithmic Panda penalties.
However, looking at your homepage, the Googlebot sees this on the page - so it looks as though everything is fine with its crawl there. In addition, your site load speed appears to be good. I also can't find any obvious duplicate content or URL issues - the search function works well and each product listing looks to have good unique content, with no duplications of the pages (at least at very first glance).
So your CMS, at first glance, looks to be working really well. The issue that I see is that, as a result of your bad backlink cleanup, you have a very small amount of links pointing to your domain. Majestic SEO is reporting that you have gone from a peak of 9000 backlinks and 1000 root domains to just 69 backlinks and 25 root domains. That is a huge reduction in links. While being completely necessary, it essentially means that your off-site SEO is back to zero and so you need to earn more links. Now, it's about quality rather than quantity, but to give you a quick example: the top 5 results for "specialist paints" each have over 10,000 links to their domain.
You've done a great job with your onsite optimisation and an extremely thorough link removal process. What you're left with, however, is a site with very few links and so not a lot of power to help it increase its visibility in organic search. I would say that you need to replace the bad links you have had removed with strong, contextual and high-quality links in order to start performing well again.
I hope this helps.
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
-
Our clients Magento 2 site has lots of obsolete categories. Advice on SEO best practice for setting server level redirects so I can delete them?
Our client's Magento website has been running for at least a decade, so has a lot of old legacy categories for Brands they no longer carry. We're looking to trim down the amount of unnecessary URL Redirects in Magento, so my question is: Is there a way that is SEO efficient to setup permanent redirects at a server level (nginx) that Google will crawl to allow us at some point to delete the categories and Magento URL Redirects? If this is a good practice can you at some point then delete the server redirects as google has marked them as permanent?
Technical SEO | | Breemcc0 -
Are on-site content carousel bad for SEO?
Hi, I didn't find an answer to my question in the Forum. I attached an example of content carousel, this is what I'm talking about. I understand that Google has no problem anymore with tabbed contents and accordeons (collapsible contents). But now I'm wondering about textual carousels. I'm not talking about an image slider, I'm talking about texts. Is text carousel harder to read for Google than plain text or tabs? Of course, i'm not talking about a carousel using Flash. Let's say the code is proper... Thanks for your help. spfra5
Technical SEO | | Alviau0 -
does <base> in html affect seo?
hey, just wanna know does <base> in head of website affect SEO? and if it's a yes, how?
Technical SEO | | m17001 -
Domain Masking SEO Impact
I hope I am explaining this correctly. If I need to provide any clarity please feel free to ask. We currently use a domain mask on an external platform that points back to our site. We are a non-profit and the external site allows users to create peer-to peer fundraisers that benefit our ministry. Currently we get many meta issues related to this site as well as broken links when fundraisers expire etc. We do not have a need to rank for the information from this site. Is there a way to index these pages so that they are not a part of the search engine site crawls as it relates to our site?
Technical SEO | | SamaritansPurse0 -
Is Removing Breadcrumbs Detrimental for SEO?
We have full navigational breadcrumbs on our site for the menu and the brand menu. i.e. Home > Clothing > Jackets Brand > Brand Name > Brand Jackets There's been talk of removing this and having it like Chico's does, where on item pages they just have a link at the top to previous category (i.e. you're on a shirt product page and at the top it says "Back to Tops" instead of listing Home > Clothing > Tops) Is doing something like this detrimental to SEO? From what I've read Breadcrumbs are for user experience but I just want to be sure.
Technical SEO | | AliMac260 -
Does an Apostrophe affect searches?
Does Google differentiate between keyphrase structures such as Mens Sunglasses & Men**'**s Sunglasses? I.e. does the inclusion/exclusion of an apostrophe make any difference when optimising your main keyword/phrase for a page? Keyword explorer appears to give different results..... I.e. no data for Men's Sunglasses, but data appears for Mens sunglasses. So if I optimise my page to include the apostrophe, will it screw the potential success for that page? Thanks 🙂 Bob
Technical SEO | | SushiUK1 -
Do Letters With Accents Affect SEO?
Hi Guys, My company has a franchise of a foreign company that uses an accent/foreign letter in its brand name. We have to refer to this franchise with this symbol on our website to meet their standards. I've done some research on this but its not conclusive, so i was wondering whether anyone here can confirm this for me; Will using the letter with this symbol impair our rankings for this franchise name? Obviously as a UK business people search for this franchise with a regular letter and not the accented one. I would have thought that Google is clever enough to recognise the meaning of the accented letter by now and therefore it wouldn't affect rankings (much). Furthermore, do you think that it would make any difference to use the HTML element to represent the accent rather than copy and pasting the symbol onto our website? I would've thought this would help Google pick it up, but it might not make a difference anyway! Any help is appreciated. Thanks Sam
Technical SEO | | Sandicliffe1 -
Do Domain Extensions such as .com or .net affect SEO value?
In the beginning of SEO days, it was going around that .com is the best for SEO and that .net is not as good. Is there any truth to this, and what about .org or .edu? I always hear that .edu sites have high PR. Is there any rhyme or reason to this, or all they all equal? Thank you, Afshin Christian-Way.com
Technical SEO | | applesofgold0