What Is a Perfect Content Management System?

Dynamic content rules the web world today. People are becoming more and more demanding and no one will be attracted to a static  website sitting out there for months with no updates. In order to stay in the flow e-retailers must have their product listings  updated, musicians - have their new albums out and small companies - attract users with new and relevant content regularly.



Content Management Systems (CMSs)

are essential if you want to keep your website completely up-to-date. When you are looking  for a CMS, don't just accept the first proposal made by any web designer or developer. Take your time to score your potential  suppliers - our checkpoint list below should help to start you off with the scoring.

What makes a good CMS

The market is flooded with CMS solutions offered by a hundred different companies. Many of them aren't search engine friendly or  do not include elements that should be standard. And if there is one thing you don't want to be behind on your competitors, it is your  online visibility. So among many individual requirements that your own business will require the following features are what makes a CMS stand out from the crowd.

• Grant various level users access to the CMS
• Sensible categorisation system - to create categories or classification of contents
• Ability to add new website pages
• Ability to modify text to have complete control over size, colour, style
• Ability to insert pictures
• Include external hyperlinks
• The CMS should be optimised for search engines. This includes various elements that can
• Help your website get top rankings by Google, Yahoo and MSN.
• A Meta tags module allows you to modify meta titles, meta descriptions and keywords for each page.
• URL rewrite module. This will allow you to create human friendly and readable URLs - goodfor both website visitors and Google.
• Ability to add alt tags for images. The 'alt' attribute tells the reader what he or she is missing on a page if the browser can't load images. The browser will then display the alternate text instead of the image. Good for both humans and Google, it is also very important for accessibility.
• Anchor links. Anchor text is the visible text of a link. An important factor for SEO. Whenever you use a text anchor link in your article, you can simply place keywords where the text should be.
• Track the historical changes to the text on your website.
• Use optional multilanguage functionality (if required).
• Banners and AdSense: The CMS can help streamline your targeted banner placements and pay-per-click advertising.
• The system should be extensible. What does that mean? Very simply the CMS changes with your needs, new modules or page elements be added/developed.
• Good support. CMS software is complex, and rarely deployed in a completely generic form. That means you're going to run into bugs or on-going development issues. Make sure the system you choose has the backing of the support team.

Having great content that is updated regularly is the key to attracting visitors to your site and getting repeated visits. A good CMS will  give you the ability to regularly update your content without maintaining an army of web designers and programmers.

Almost all of  these features come by default with a HeadChannel CMS - contact us if you need any help with finding the best product for you.

Sincerely,
HeadChannel Ltd
www.headchannel.co.uk