Whether you have a canned blog install or you’re developing a completely custom content management system, many website owners don’t really consider the consequences of their policy decisions. By making smart choices, both users and search engines can do better.

Limit Control
The “ultimate” in features for content management systems are packages like DotNetNuke or Joomla which allow a free-form editing of almost any content unit on any page.

However, it’s a “power tool” situation– the tool which makes it easy to do complex tasks, can be a tool which makes it easy to shoot your foot off. Full what-you-see-is-what-you-get editors are particularly notorious for it– by allowing users to manually style parts of the site, they often generate bulky code, with needless styling options, and encourage abusing HTML elements which are key for structure for styling. Ever seen an entire page as a header? I have.

Why does it matter if you misuse HTML? Search and performance. A poor page structure appears spammy, or alternatively just hard for search engines to identify key content. Moreover, a page heavy with mountains of extra tags will load slowly for both real visitors and search engine spiders.

What’s the alternative? Instead of an overarching CMS package, you may want to consider a “silo” package– a mini-blog which can only generate news entries in a controlled, consistent, and attractive formatting, as an example.

Pick Standard Conventions
People expect certain conventions. For example, news sites generally put the the freshest stories at the top. Some people think “I’ve got this one world-beater story, and it belongs on the top all the time.” Big risk. You’re wasting the most valuable space on the page. If you aren’t making it clear in seconds that new content exists- many visitors will leave. In the worst case, your freshest news will be on page 2, where few visitors will find it. You’ll look out-of-date.

Similarly, don’t play games with layout. Some people think that disguising the ads near content helps click-through rates. Yeah, except the people who click through don’t come back.

Finally, even though most CMS systems make it easy to go for a sprawling site, think heirarchy. Are you dividing everything so fine that you have only two sentences per topic? Rein in the divisions then. If you’ve got 85 different main topics, add some greater groupings to keep things tidy. Even inherently complicated sites (i. e. Amazon, WebMD) tend to offer some sort of teired navigation, instead of 75,000 option menus.

Don’t Get Too Dependent on Extensions
If you have 160 extensions for your CMS in play, you are probably trying to shoehorn the system into tasks it wasn’t meant to perform. You may be better served by a custom, or simply different, CMS, which meets the exact needs.

The risk of extensions is in the external developers. Some will change their product, or abandon it entirely. Do you want to have to choose between “fix critical security bug in new version” or “keep my extensions?” Or worse, if you get caught between two mutually incompatible extensions.

Keep Some Static Content
Half the time, doing everything in the CMS is actually harder. Some “moving parts” may not be ideal for a CMS based around fixed page content, for example. If you want a fancy contact menu, or forum, it ends up adding dozens of modules and coping with their limits, not just taking the right tool from outside the CMS.

However, the other argument is safety. If your entire site is on the CMS, if it breaks or is compromised, everything’s going to get ruined. A hybrid approach– keeping a CMS for news, and a static site for fixed content– is more robust.

Don’t Get Paranoid
A content-management system can be a wonderful boon both for ease of maintenance, and for producing quality pages which rank and navigate well. You just have to think as you use it.