What is a Content Management System and/or a CMS Site?

It has come to my attention, as I repair, overhaul and rebuild non-performing web sites every week, that SEO is not the only area where people are getting conned on the net. There are huge numbers of non-pro "web designers" charging people for web design - then using a CMS Site Generator to do the work.

CMS systems were designed to allow non professional site owners to update copy for specific sections of a site without the help of a web designer – upcoming events, changing schedules or notices, yada, yada. They are also the backbone of blogs.

CMS (Content Management Systems) were not conceived for designing entire web sites. Wannabe web designers found they could fool clients with a front end that looks like a rudimentary web site, but in reality is a nightmare of needless complication that would astound Rube Goldberg himself!

Click here to see an incredible example of thousands of worthless files used to "auto-generate" a CMS web site. I rebuilt the site on a new server so I could flush the whole mess and start fresh.

CMS Systems are for blogs, where huge quantities of text are generated and auto-posted by the blog participants. If you have a hot topic, it will draw lots of people adding new content every day.

Also, this media is geared to topics of mass interest. But what if your CMS site is a four page realtor site with the same small amount of copy day after day? No one can add copy, not even you - in most cases.

This content is not readily available to search bots and renders a page full of presentation code and no content. A web bot is ONLY interested in textual content and presentation code is considered an obstacle to finding that content.

Most people who have paid for a site like this don't even know what they have until a real professional looks at the source code and enlightens them as to why their site is not performing in the searches.

WHAT IS BAD ABOUT CMS WEB SITE?

1. A CMS Web Site (Content Management System) is basically a blog masquerading as a web site, that only you can post to.
2. If content is static (stays the same), the logic of employing a CMS in the first place is ridiculous.
3. The heavy price paid in failed searches is site-wide, with no dividend for the site owner, who is clearly not utilizing the only reason for ever deploying a CMS – which is revising content daily without paying a designer to do it for you.
4. CMS sites (Word Press, Drupal. etc) are all constructed via a wizard by people who don't know how to build a web site from scratch. In this respect, people who call themselves web designers or web developers and use CMS to build client sites are basically con men.
5. You can't tag or uniquely format text content in a CMS - unless you know how to hand write CSS code. For the vast majority, text remains un-formatted and without any hierarchical markup, so important to search engines.
6. Most end users don't know how to write effective web copy anyway - if they actually were utilizing the frequently update features. Analogy: You hire a "hunting guide" to take you duck hunting - he drives you ten miles into the country, hands you a duck call and a shotgun, says "go git em" and splits.
   
   A Content Management System might have some value to a professional writer who can't afford a real web site - if he or she is writing on hot topics.
7. CMS web site builder tools are used by amateurs who don't even understand the basics of creating a web page, much less how to optimize one for search engines.
8. Free CMS site builder outfits like Word Press and Drupal automatically insert self serving link code (via their auto-site builder wizards) into your web site to pump up THEIR page rank
   
   Your site will not inherit any page rank from Drupal, WordPress or Joomla etc. However, they all have huge page ranks because of the links and code their generators automatically inject into your code.

CMS architecture can be effective if cleaned up and optimized by a professional that knows how to work around the shortcomings of this system. However, a real web professional wouldn't be caught dead using CMS tools to build a web site anyway.

Popular CMS / "Site-In-a-Can" tools -

• Word Press
• Drupal
• Joomla
• PHP Nuke
• Squarespace
• Sitecube

If you paid someone hundreds of dollars to build a site for you and it has something like this in the code near the top - <meta name="Generator" content="Joomla! - Copyright (C) 2005 - 2007 Open Source Matters. All rights reserved." /> — you've been had!

It is what lies under the page, out of plain view, that can make or break you in the searches.