CMS
Content Management System. Software like WordPress, Shopify, or Webflow that lets you manage website content without writing code. Your CMS choice has direct implications for technical SEO.
Why It Matters
Your CMS is the foundation everything else sits on. A good CMS makes SEO implementation straightforward - clean URLs, easy meta tag management, proper heading structure, fast page loads. A bad CMS fights you on every optimisation.
Some platforms generate bloated code, create duplicate content by default, limit your control over technical elements, or rely heavily on JavaScript rendering that search engines struggle with. Choosing or migrating a CMS without considering SEO implications is one of the most expensive mistakes a business can make.
In Practice
If you're choosing a CMS, evaluate its SEO capabilities: Can you customise title tags and meta descriptions per page? Does it generate clean URLs? How does it handle pagination, canonical tags, and schema markup? What's the out-of-the-box page speed like?
WordPress with proper configuration is still the most flexible option for SEO. Shopify has improved significantly but still has limitations (rigid URL structure, limited robots.txt control). Webflow is design-focused but can be tricky for large-scale content.
Whatever CMS you use, don't rely on its defaults. Every CMS needs SEO configuration.
Related Terms
Glossary
Technical SEO
Optimising your site's infrastructure so search engines can crawl, render, and index it.
Glossary
URL Structure
How your page URLs are organised - clean and descriptive beats messy and cryptic.
Glossary
Page Speed
How fast your pages load - a confirmed ranking factor that affects conversions too.
Glossary
JavaScript SEO
Optimising JS-heavy sites so search engines can actually see and index the content.
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