SEO improvements that would rock!

12 posts by 5 authors in: Forums > CMS Builder
Last Post: June 29, 2010   (RSS)

By benedict - February 8, 2010 - edited: February 8, 2010

Hi guys,

As part of trying to make your CMS the best in the world, I had a few suggestions to maybe tighten up the SEO capabilities. Some are simple, some ain;t:

1. With upload fields, the default info fields are Title & Caption - be great if Alt (for img alt tags) was the third one entered always by default. Save me a lot of repetitive work.

2. XML sitemaps - I would expect this wouldn't be too hard to generate something like this (don't roll your eyes!). The format for Ask.com, Google, YAHOO and MSN Search would be fine.

3. No Index, No Follow metas - my clients are increasingly aware that there is stuff they don;t want Google to index that they edit with the CMS. It would be great to have a No Index, No Follow check box that would allow them to do this kind of stuff, especially on a record by record basis.

4. Smart Links - this would be massive for us. If we want to interlink pages across the site, we have to go through page by page creating manual links - a major pain. It would be great if there was a function that does a find and replace of terms and replaces them with a specified url link.

5. Not SEO based, but related to above, a Find & Replace function for the admin to use throughout the site would be an awesome addition for a whole bunch of different uses (name changes, etc).

6. Default SEO field-filling - It would be great if a default method of adding meta titles could be created. e.g. %site_name% | %section_name% | %record_name%. If I could add code like this when I create the fields, and then be able to override these actual fields in the CMS to what I deem fit, it would really make a huge difference with those big sites. I realise that I can do this in my viewer page, but some hardcoding is required which I prefer to avoid.

Anyway, whether it comes as an SEO plugin, or part of the package, I'm not fussed, but I think these improvements would really take CMSB to the next level.

My two cents.

Cheers.

Re: [benedict] SEO improvements that would rock!

By Codee - February 9, 2010

1. With upload fields, the default info fields are Title & Caption - be great if Alt (for img alt tags) was the third one entered always by default. Save me a lot of repetitive work.

Although not JUST SEO-related, this would be a good, core thing to have. It is a standard element for images.

2. XML sitemaps - I would expect this wouldn't be too hard to generate something like this (don't roll your eyes!). The format for Ask.com, Google, YAHOO and MSN Search would be fine.

Definitely. This could be relatively simple for IT to program. I'd buy a plugin JUST for this piece alone - today!

3. No Index, No Follow metas - my clients are increasingly aware that there is stuff they don;t want Google to index that they edit with the CMS. It would be great to have a No Index, No Follow check box that would allow them to do this kind of stuff, especially on a record by record basis.


Although a core SEO plugin could be helpful, this piece is essentially already in your hands - especially if you want it on a record-by-record basis. Just program your record fields to handle this and some of the other pieces.

4. Smart Links - this would be massive for us. If we want to interlink pages across the site, we have to go through page by page creating manual links - a major pain. It would be great if there was a function that does a find and replace of terms and replaces them with a specified url link.


this is doable right now, possibly several ways. One would be to create a menu section that plugs into the bottom of your pages. Another way, maybe simpler, is to use server side includes (SSI) and have a SSI page for such a menu.

5. Not SEO based, but related to above, a Find & Replace function for the admin to use throughout the site would be an awesome addition for a whole bunch of different uses (name changes, etc).


I use UltraEdit, a really cool (and cheap) file editor that allows single page, as well as global files, replacement of code.

just a couple thoughts on this.

Re: [benedict] SEO improvements that would rock!

By Dave - February 9, 2010

Hi Benedict,

Thanks for your feedback and suggestions.

If there was interest we could actually do a 2.0x release all around SEO improvements. This would be a couple releases in the future though (as we have previews and some other features already queued) and we'd need some people to work with us.

We'd just have to ask a lot of questions and go back and forth until we figure out exactly what's needed and the best implementation for each item.

So if you're up for that let me know, also what would you say your #1 request from that list would be? It's often easier to tackle issues one at a time.

Thanks! :)
Dave Edis - Senior Developer

interactivetools.com

Re: [equinox69] SEO improvements that would rock!

By jackquil36 - February 9, 2010

Although a core SEO plugin could be helpful, this piece is essentially already in your hands - especially if you want it on a record-by-record basis. Just program your record fields to handle this and some of the other pieces.

Hi, I am a newbie here . Can you throw some more light on how to program the record fields to get this thing done. TO be honest no follow metas are a big factor in seo for example if your site has lots of similar product pages with same descriptions search engines may give a duplicate content penalty and so on. A no-follow links plugin or something while including links in the page will be good too.

Regards.
Jack Forex

Re: [jackquil36] SEO improvements that would rock!

By Codee - February 9, 2010

Hi Jack,

The simplest way to have this occur is to add a text-based field, for example: "meta classification" or "meta keyword", etc. Then after generating your viewer code, insert the code into the areas that you want the data to appear in.

for example:

<meta name="classification" content="<?php echo $inventoryRecord['meta_classification'] ?>">

<meta name="keywords" content="<?php echo $inventoryRecord['meta_keywords'] ?>">

Re: [Dave] SEO improvements that would rock!

By benedict - February 12, 2010

Hi Dave,

Happy to help with any questions you may have with this topic in the future. If previews is coming next, then I'm the first to say that this (SEO) should go on the backburner until that comes along as I have clients hanging out for previews.

But of the items there, 1 and 3 are the easiest to implement and would be items I (and my clients) would use in every single implementation, the others could come later.

Cheers.

Re: [benedict] SEO improvements that would rock!

By InHouse - February 12, 2010

The sitemap (XML) plug-in is something that we've been keen on for ages. Took a stab it ages ago just for Google format and it worked reasonably well for one table, but things got hairy when content from multiple tables were involved - much like the multi-table search function.

This plug-in would have my support for sure!

J.

Re: [Dave] SEO improvements that would rock!

By Dave - February 15, 2010

Thanks everyone for your feedback. We're going to revisit this in the next few versions and see what we can come up with.
Dave Edis - Senior Developer

interactivetools.com

Re: [Dave] SEO improvements that would rock!

By Codee - June 26, 2010

Dave and the IT Team,

Okay...it's been a few months and a few version changes (and they're awesome) but what's the scoop NOW on a sitemaps plugin?