Best Basic CMSs for SEO 2019

Hey!
You’re here to check out the latest
best SEO friendly *basic CMSs.
And I'm here to show you these CMSs objectively, so
get ready to go on tour.
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You can find me at
https://www.linkedin.com/in/%C
5%82ukasz-busz/
Or just send an e-mail
lukasz@wrocode.com
*excluding all e-commerce platforms like Shopify and drag-and-drop platforms like Wix etc.

The best CMS in terms of
SEO friendliness?
I spent a month doing an online survey with digital experts to
find out which CMS they think is best for SEO strategy.
I had trouble gathering more respondents (people don't accept LN invitations as I
expected...) so it's only 50 people, sorry.
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By Digital Marketers

Wordpress was the most popular
choice.
Rosa Hayre who chose this CMS for the
question „What makes it so special?”
answered:
Basically it is the most used in the
market, for a matter of practice and
because universities or academies teach.
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*Rate
**People
Wordpress
I asked about:
• What is your favourite CMS in terms of SEO friendliness?
• What makes it so special? (details)
• On a scale from 1 to 10, how would you rate the community around this CMS?
*Rate/ 1-10
**People – number of people who chose this system (out of 50)

Joomla was the third choice.
Mark K. who chose this CMS for the
answered:
The installation and maintenance of
Joomla! it's simple, the security in your
code is guaranteed by the large number
of developers working together, making it
a safe and stable product; what favors
the extension of its characteristics and
offers a friendly interface for the user.
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I asked about:
*Rate/ 1-10
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5 5 5 5
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Rate
People
Joomla

Drupal was the second choice.
John M. who chose this CMS for the
answered:
Drupal is a full featured CMS software
that generates SEO friendly URLs and is
very stable and suitable for large content
driven sites.
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I asked about:
*Rate/ 1-10
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1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Rate
People
Drupal

Magento was the first choice (eComm)
Kate Smith who chose this CMS for the
answered:
I like that it has such an extensive list of
things you can do with it. From SEO
marketing, to product management, to
helping checkout, it's pretty awesome.
That’s all.
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The respondents came from different industries, so the responses
also included CMSs typical for e-commerce.
*Rate/ 1-10
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Rate
People
Magento

A great starting solution AND it's owned
by Amazon so it has a solid backing
and insight into their ecomm
expertise.
Has solid integrations like Shopping Cart
Abandonment to help clients
maximize ecomm opportunities and
driving revenue.
8*Rate/ 1-10
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1 2 3 4
Rate
People
Shopify
Shopify was the second choice (eComm)
Mike C. who chose this CMS for the question „What makes it so special?” answered:
Shopify has flushed out a lot of the pain points in using ecomm: payment solution integration,
web integration, SEO.

Prestashop was the third choice.
(eComm)
Andrew H. who chose this CMS for the
answered:
Unlike other platforms, CMS PrestaShop
is easy to work with SEO. We did not
have to install additional plug-ins, all the
tools were already in the basic version.
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The respondents came from different industries, so the responses
also included CMSs typical for e-commerce.
*Rate/ 1-10
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Rate
People
Prestashop

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What does it mean to be
the best CMS for SEO?
Just a handful of the things that factor into SEO are:
● Meta titles & meta descriptions
● URL structure
● Image alt text
● Backlinks
● Site speed & mobile usability
● Structured data
A website needs to be able to address all these things and more. A CMS without strong SEO is not
worth your time or money.
To know more about important factors, check out this article, which explores this topic.

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Wordpress
Joomla Drupal
CMSs used in presentation (market-share / 25 MAY)
Wordpress
(60,7%)
Joomla
(5,1%) Drupal
(3,3%)
MODx
(0,1%)

Let’s start
the tour
Starting with less popular CMS to best well known.
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Place your screenshot here
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MODx broke into the CMS market
in 2004 and has been hailed as one
of the best content management
systems with a focus on SEO.
MODX
https://modx.com/

MODX has been developed with the focus on optimizing for search
engines. The CMS does this by not loading your website with
unnecessary code and by giving you the choice on how to create URLs.
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General
By not overloading your website with
code, the search engines don’t have to
crawl through every piece of code but
easily get to the most important part of
the website: content.

MODX allows you to control 100% of what is output with virtually no
effort. Unlike other systems that require learning complex theming
engines, in MODX you work with HTML and as many custom variables
for the site you need.
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General
It takes minutes to build a site that
performs amazingly well in Search
Engines and because site builders
are in total control and can change
the output at any time, making
tweaks is just a few clicks away.

● SEO Pro
SEO Pro is an SEO tool
that offers guidelines to
optimize your web page.
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MODX Extras for SEO
By adding focus keywords, SEO Pro
shows feedback for the page title, the SEO
title which is shown in the Google search
results, the meta description and the alias
(the URL).
This feedback checks if keywords are
used and what a good amount of words is.

● SEO Tab
Besides the MODX Extra
SEO Pro, you also
have SEO Tab to help you.
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MODX Extras for SEO
Can be used for choosing which pages are
indexed by Google and which aren’t. This way,
two matching pages (duplicate content) can be
published without getting penalized by Google.
This comes in handy when you want to use
one page for SEO and another for SEA. By
indexing the SEO page, Google can find you
organically and a SEA page doesn’t have to be
indexed, because you pay for standing on top.

● SEO Suite
SEO Suite is a premium
MODX Extra used for
redirecting a visitor
automatically to the most
relevant page when they
search with an old URL.
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MODX Extras for SEO
This way, 404 errors get automatically
solved, because they redirect the old
URLs to a new relevant page.

Sterc (company responsible for the
creation of this CMS) also developed
several scripts that enhance the visibility
of your website.
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MODX scripts for
page speed
This file format is smaller and thereby enhances the loading speed of your
website, which is an important ranking factor for Google.
Using this script, you can upload each and every file format and the script
automatically changes it to the new file format.
Another developed script is a script that automatically optimizes the images.
Uploaded online images are not optimized for the full 100%, not even when you
set this in Photoshop. This script checks all the images every hour and optimizes
them in the best possible way.
A few examples for this are scripts that automatically change the images of your
website to the new image format Webp, which is developed by Google.

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Let's summarise
It’s highly customizable and supports a host of
plugins and themes, including the SEO Pro and
SEO Tab dedicated Extras, so you can have
your site ready to publish within minutes—and
it’s guaranteed to perform well.
There is bit of a learning-curve to mastering
MODx, but thanks to the welcome message and
fantastic built-in assistance tools you’ll easily find
your way around. This CMS has a lot of power
and flexibility, and improves with every update.

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Drupal, one of the oldest and most
established content management
systems, has been on the scene
since 2000. The software comes
with an extremely lean basic
installation, which can be extended
quite a bit by modules. Today, the
project’s strength lies in its
community. Already, the basic
module has numerous web 2.0 and
community functions like weblogs,
forums, and tag clouds.
Drupal
https://www.drupal.org/

Drupal has the best SEO capability that is readily available.
It provides its users with several modules available for any SEO
activity and tracking of the web statistics.
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General
It can automatically produce
customizable meta tags or create title
based URL nodes for a website, a
characteristic that is lacking with
WordPress and Joomla.
Additionally, it supports RDF and
integrates very easily with Google
Analytics and offers more advanced SEO
facility settings. However, there’s one
roadblock to unleashing its powerful SEO
features – Drupal is extremely
challenging for those without much
website experience.

Drupal does a great job in
offering a framework that
structures the content
and avoids duplication.
A great set of modules
that include:
- Pathauto,
- Search 404,
- SEO Checklist,
- Global Redirect
and many others make a
website SEO-friendly.
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GeneralWith the amount of content that
websites these days deal with on a
regular basis, it is very important for
the CMS to have a system that can
organize the content in the best
way possible.
Drupal CMS has a very powerful
built-in taxonomy system that
allows to organize the content and
also tag the content with key-word
rich terms for better SEO. The
advanced features, in combination
with the CCK and Views allows you
to rank higher for long-tailed
keywords on Google.

If you’re looking for free, you better start programming.
Most good plugins for Drupal are commercial.
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Price
If you don’t have the technical know-how yourself but
want to use Drupal to develop your site, you’ll definitely
have to hire someone with the necessary skills.
Luckily for those with at least a basic understanding of
web-design, there are more than 2000 freely available
themes and over 26 000 plugins.
More details here (comparing prices Wordpress vs Drupal)

SEO Pros and Cons
Pros Cons
Full control over everything (really – everything,
including your SEO strategy)
Learning Curve – There’s a huge learning curve.
Nothing is simple, and everything takes a manual
to figure out
Well-supported community for help and tips.
Most good plugins for Drupal are commercial -
price
Stability – Drupal is very stable, even with
thousands of users accessing at the same time
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Wordpress
vs Drupal
A quick look at the respected Alexa’s Top 10 000 list for SEO
friendly content managements systems will show you that
WordPress has the best ranking, but if you examine the statistics
you’ll notice that this is largely due to it being the most popular
CMS.
Drupal, by contrast, is almost twice as SEO friendly when you
compare their results in terms of market share ratio, so while it’s
definitely the most complicated of the popular CMS systems, it’s
also the better option in terms of search engine optimization.

Let's summarise
Designed to be search engine friendly, Drupal is an ideal CMS for large businesses, designed to
handle hundreds of thousands of pages with ease.
Of the top three content management systems, it’s by far the most complicated though, and
requires some expertise to use to its full potential, but as a result is capable of building highly
complex sites.
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One of the three most popular
content management systems,
Joomla has been around since 2005
and built its way to the top. It’s freely
available, and many web-hosting
companies include an installation
option for your convenience.
Joomla
https://www.joomla.org/

Ideal for small to medium-sized ecommerce businesses, Joomla’s ease of
use lies somewhere between WordPress and Drupal - which is to say, it’s
not the easiest CMS to navigate, but it’s certainly not the hardest either.
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General
Joomla requires the most initial care
and attention in terms of SEO, but,
contrastingly, it has great potential to
rank very high in case a website and
pages are set up properly.
The software contains basic SEO-
optimization functionality that can be
extended by experienced developers’
hands. In Joomla, it is possible to turn
on SEF URLs, take it a step further by
enabling URL rewriting and also
choose whether to enable URL
suffixes or not.

Besides, you can add global meta description and meta keywords, as
well as define meta tags and title tags at a page level.
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General
However, all the process is not as user-
friendly as it potentially could be.
In short, if a Joomla website needs more
than just a basic optimization, one should
be ready to get hands dirty since Joomla
proper on-site optimization is not a one-
click affair at all, especially for newbies
and first-time users.

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Price
Joomla itself is free as a CMS, but that doesn’t mean you
won’t be paying for other things such as website hosting.
While they do offer free hosting through their partner, it’s
certainly not the level of hosting you need in order to have
good SEO and for overall business purposes.
More details here

SEO Pros and Cons
Pros Cons
Full control over your SEO implementation Requires some configuration
Well-supported community for help and tips.
Medium learning curve if you’re brand new to the
platform.
Fast mobile page speed score (however, not 90 or
above out of 100)
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Let's summarise
Joomla isn’t for beginners, but it does
offer plenty of flexibility if that’s what
you’re looking for and are willing to
learn.
To a certain degree, it is comparable
to WordPress and provides a lot of
flexibility.
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By far the most popular CMS
available (free or otherwise),
WordPress is considered by many to
be the best content management
system available.
Although Drupal may have a better
SEO yield, WordPress is much easier
to use and requires very little effort to
manage well. In fact, one could say
that it’s the easiest CMS to use if you
want professional results.
WordPress
https://wordpress.org/

Its ease of use in terms of installation and management is not
entirely unique, but many newer CMS systems have based their
platforms on the WordPress module because it works so well.
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General
Of the Big Three - WordPress,
Drupal and Joomla - WP is often
revered by experts as the best
suited to those who want to
design and manage their own
websites without needing to do
any extra studying or hire a
developer.

Like Joomla, WordPress does require SEO plugins for optimal ratings,
but with more available themes than Joomla and Drupal combined,
and nearly double as many plugins, you’ll very easily be able to
customize your WordPress site into… well, anything you want, but
especially a high-ranking SEO friendly one.
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General
The top five SEO plug-ins designed
for WordPress are:
Yoast SEO,
SEMrush,
Open Site Explorer,
LinkPatrol, and
SEOquake.

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Price
Wordpress is another open-source CMS, but still, you have to
maintain it.
How much does it cost to build and maintain Wordpress site?
Here you’ll find out

SEO Pros and Cons
Pros Cons
It has a comprehensive list of existing plugins
The platform is complicated and can be
overwhelming at times without development help.
It requires some technical experience.
Because it is widely used there are many resources
and tutorials available covering anything you want to
know and/or do with your WordPress site.
Support can be found to help solve technical issues
relatively quickly
WordPress can also be slow on speed if you’re using
a combination of plugins that don’t work well with
the site or with each other.
WordPress can be fast on mobile as long as it is
configured properly
All WordPress sites are affected by
the Lighthouse update from Google when they
started moving sites over to mobile-first indexing.
SEO is not “built-in” to the starter templates.
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Let's summarise
WordPress offers highly customizable sites at an attractive price, but ultimately it is not suitable for
specific business applications due to its nature as a blogging platform. This does not stop many
innovative developers from finding different uses for WordPress (other than blogging) for their
customers.
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In fact, Google is about to release a WordPress plugin that is
likely going to resolve some issues we have seen regarding
technical SEO. With the addition of a better page builder native to
WordPress, better integration of speed, and Accelerated Mobile
Pages pages, it is the default choice when considering the costs
and SEO benefits it offers.

“ There really isn’t a best – there’s only the
best for the situation you’re in.
Consequently, take your time to evaluate
your experience, requirements, and budget
and make probably the most important
decision in your life.
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Which one is the best?

About Wrocode
In the area of Web Development we work as a full-service Drupal Agency.
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We are a technology enterprise that operates in the area of technology:
● Big Data
● Deep Learning / Machine Learning
Artificial Intelligence
● Web & Mobile development
● Cloud-based applications
● Product design (user-interface/user experience)

Location
our office
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WRO
Wrocław, Poland
In the center
of Europe

Thank you
for your time here.
I hope that the insights presented here will help you to achieve your goals.
If you met with a need of change/migrate/update your current CMS to Drupal
architecture, then I’m sure Wrocode will help you.
Just drop us a line at contact@wrocode.com
Check out our Blog if you’re into the latest tech news
https://wrocode.com/blog/
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Sources:
I used several sources to create this
presentation.
In some cases it’s copy-paste only because, I don’t have enough time to use all these CMSs in my daily work.
https://w3techs.com/technologies/overview/content_management/all
https://dynomapper.com/blog/21-sitemaps-and-seo/423-best-cms-for-seo
https://www.top5tecno.com/en/cms-content-management-system-seo/
2

Any questions?
2
You can find me at:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/%C5%82ukasz-busz/
lukasz@wrocode.com

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