How does using a CMS (i.e. Wordpress/Drupal) affect backlinks and SEO?
-
So I need to build a website with over 100 pages in it. Elements of the design will probably be moved around and or tested so I need to use a CMS. It's pretty much a review site so while the content will remain static I'd like to employ A/B testing to mess with conversion rates. Wordpress has a plugin for that even.
So I'm just wondering, since CMS pages are pretty much created on spot and not retrieved from a library, how this affects backlinks and anchor text? How exactly does the external website point to yours if the URL is dynamically generated?
Or am I misunderstanding something? Please recommend any extra resources as well if you can.
-
Sorry, saw the follow-up, but I think the overall thread has you covered. The only real issue with CMS URLs is that you can sometimes have multiple versions pointing to the same page, and this creates duplicate content. There are plug-ins for WordPress that can help with that.
The only exception would be something like an AJAX-style URL, where the page content could change without the URL ever changing (Flash has the same issue, for example). You'll rarely see that in a standard CMS, though, and definitely not in WordPress.
-
Thank you very much CMC-SD, Jared and goodlegaladvice for all your help.
@CMC-SD: As promised, I stole your analogy (Now I realize it was an analogy and not a metaphor, I think) and I tried to explain CMS to my girlfriend who knows nothing about computers. Unfortunately it did not come out as elegantly as you put it and we ended up eating bison burgers instead.
-
Ditto to that Jared. Great explanation. And now I'm hungry.
-
Oh, okay, I definitely misunderstood. You're asking about the back-end rewriting process that makes a pretty URL point to the corresponding ugly URL which in turn points to the page. That's way back-end. Unlike a 301 redirect, it's invisible to the spider. The spider need never know that a URL like http://www.domain.com/?p=123 even exists. While it's crawling, it sees a link to http://www.domain.com/page1.html, follows the link, and sees the HTML for that page. That's all.
-
@CMS-SD: Great metaphor! I'm going to steal it But I already knew that about CMS's xD. In fact my confusion was about what follows from that... If the pages are created dynamically and not retrieved from the webserver itself, how do would a backlink even REFER it??
I actually found this SEO blog touching on the subject matter: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/url-rewrites-and-301-redirects-how-does-it-all-work
So, pretty much this is how it works: A page is linked through the URL that is randomly generated by a CMS, but the webserver rewrites the URL that points to the original URL. Pretty much the same thing. And google indexes that URL plus the html on the page. Is that about right? That is why I should not worry at all.
-
Thanks! That's what happens when a creative writing major learns php.
-
This is probably the most well constructed, and humorous explanation on this that I have ever read. Bravo.
-
No. What "indexing" means is creating a database of URLs and the HTML that those URLs point to. If your site has been "indexed," it means Google has discovered your URLs and taken note of the HTML that can be found at those URLs.
-
I think you are misunderstanding something, yes.
On a website with a CMS, the URL is not "dynamically generated." The page is dynamically generated. Here's what that means. Whenever you type http://www.domain.com/page1.html into your browser, you are telling your browser to go to that website and pull up the HTML that corresponds to that URL. URL stands for "uniform resource locator," meaning directions to the location of a resource. If you have an old-fashioned website, the URL points to an HTML file that you created, either by typing everything yourself of using a WYSIWYG editor. If you have a CMS, the URL essentially instructs your website to build the corresponding HTML page on the fly.
It's like ... okay, imagine that you walk into a bakery and ask for a chocolate chip cookie. They could either pull a pre-baked chocolate chip cookie off the shelf and hand it to you, or walk in the back and bake you one cookie from the ingredients in the kitchen. When we're talking about baked goods, option 1 is almost always better than option 2 because it's orders of magnitude faster and more efficient. The benefits that option 2 offers aren't worth the extra time and lost efficiency. But when we're talking about websites, that's no longer the case. The server can construct an HTML document almost instantaneously. Your browser gets the HTML just as fast as it would if it asked for a static HTML page.
In fact, your browser really has no idea that this is all happening. Here's another food metaphor. You walk into a fast food joint and order a hamburger. The cashier walks into the kitchen, and a minute later, walks out with your hamburger. Did the cashier pull the hamburger off a shelf of hamburgers that have been sitting under a hotlight for hours? Or did the cashier ask the cook to prepare a fresh hamburger just for you? Assuming the hamburger tastes great either way, you have no way of knowing. In this metaphor, the customer is the surfer, the cashier is the browser, and the kitchen is the server your website is hosted on. Either your server has a bunch of pre-made pages sitting around waiting for someone to "order" them, or your server has a clever program that makes the pages only when they're needed. That clever program, the CMS, is like the short-order cook.
The thing to remember is, the search engine spiders are customers, just like the surfer. They don't know what's going on in the kitchen. They don't care. They "typed in" a URL and got some HTML back. They now know that that URL produces that HTML. They remember that. When they see a link to that URL, they know it's pointing to that HTML.
Clear as mud?
-
Ahhh, so Google indexes URLs and not the pages themselves? D'oh.
-
"So I'm just wondering, since CMS pages are pretty much created on spot and not retrieved from a library, how this affects backlinks and anchor text? How exactly does the external website point to yours if the URL is dynamically generated?"
Firstly, different CMS's create pages differently. CMS just means content management, which means the platform just provides a gui for you to add content or make changes. If you are using WP and creating pages, then these pages wil be indexed as any other page, and links pointing to it would simply target the page's URL.
Wordpress uses permalinks and Drupal uses pathauto to redirect platform generated links into SEO friendly one. They use an internal redirect and the resulting URL is indexed in Google. Therefore, you simply treat the resulting URL as the "real" url, and external links to it work fine.
-
right no difference I took a whole site with statics and changed it over to a cms with all rewrites everything works great kept the urls the same though kept the .htm
-
I was under the impression that URL rewrites just change the way the URL is displayed on the browser but not the URL itself. I really need to learn more about the backend stuff.
So it would make no difference if the backlink contained an absolute path?
-
It works the same as a static page except its easy to manage your content....
You usually also use a url re-write agent that can change your urls to say what ever you want. In fact most of the web is now on a cms.
Backlinks, Anchor text is all the same....
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Could a redirecting a homepage mess with seo? if so is there any documentation you could point me too? Thanks!
I have a global page for our site but the global site has the exact same content as the main navigation personal page. If I redirect /index to /personal how much seo damage are we doing?
Web Design | | Miguelquirarte0 -
SEO Tips for Affiliate Website
Hi all , I would just like to have an expert Opinion on SEO for Affiliate Website . Basically if I list all Third party products (Amazon/Affilate Window etc ) on my website and then the customer will be redirected to the Affiliates website to make a Purchase will there be an issue with SEO (Lots of Outgoing Url's) and Will the website not rank for Important keywords or will it be hit by any penalty ? I heard it's not good for SEO , any work around this ? If this is case How come cashback Sites rank well with no issues , although the concept is basically the same ? Any Tips or Advice appreciated as how to get this done safe . My Preferred Option would be with Magento Shopping Cart or second option would be with Wordpress Cart only in case this provides some SEO benefits over Magento by some plugins .
Web Design | | Aus0070 -
Question #2: All of my INTERNAL links in OSE are being indexed from http://www.e.com/default.asp, and all my EXTERNAL links are linked to http://www.e.com/ am I getting a fraction of the link juice because of that?????
Hey guys, sorry for the really long question, but it appears that I am losing between 50 and 75 % of my link juice to my internal pages. In OSE all main category links (left sidebar) are being indexed from the URL that includes default.asp, even though NONE of my external links include that: http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/links?site=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.uncommonthread.com%2FSulky-Thread-s%2F78.htm If you check the PA for http://www.uncommonthread.com/: http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/links?site=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.uncommonthread.com%2F You see that it is practically double the PA of http://www.uncommonthread.com/default.asp: http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/links?site=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.uncommonthread.com%2FDefault.asp **Also, non of my internal menu links are being indexed. ** Look at the menu on this page: http://www.uncommonthread.com/Sulky-Thread-s/78.htm and then look at the OSE information here for the "invisible thread" item from the menu on the page above^^^: http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/links?site=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.uncommonthread.com%2FSulky-monofilament-s%2F54.htm Thanks SOOO much! Pre-thumbs and thanks to anyone that can lend me a seconds worth of advice! Thanks again for your time, Tyler A.
Web Design | | TylerAbernethy0 -
Using a lightbox
Using a lightbox type thing for our new website (you click on an image and then get a bigger version of image). Is there any best practices SEO wise for this and any no no's I should be aware of? It's all hard coded so not going the normal way via wordpress of using thumbnails then the larger original image as you click on the thumbnail, using two separate images- this sound to you guys?
Web Design | | Jon-C0 -
Has anyone had luck doing SEO with a wordpress website built with Parallax?
Has anyone worked with Parallax before? Is it possible and worth it to do SEO on a wordpress site that uses Parallax? I have a friend that is asking. Currently when you navigate their site there is only one URL (home page) and one title tag.
Web Design | | webestate0 -
Drupal SEO - Concerns about cloaking
It appears that core Drupal includes a CSS style that automatically generates an tag for any* or > ## Main menu This uses the CSS to create a 1px1px header with that text that is absolutely positioned in the top left hand corner. Essentially, hidden and unreadable to humans and presumably also useless to even screen readers. There is some discussion of the reasoning for including this functionality as standard here: [http://drupal.org/node/1392510](http://drupal.org/node/1392510 "http://drupal.org/node/1392510") I'm not convinced of its use/validity/helpfulness from an SEO perspective so there's a few questions that arise out of this. 1. Is there a valid non-SEO reason for leaving this as the default rather than giving ourselves full control over our ## tags? 2. Could this be seen as cloaking by creating hidden/invisible elements that are used by the search engines as ranking factors? Update: http://www.seobythesea.com/2013/03/google-invisible-text-hidden-links/ Google's latest patent appears to deal with this topic. The patent document even makes explicit reference to the practice of hiding text in ## tags that are invisible to users and are not proper headings. Anyone have any thoughts on what SEOs using Drupal should be doing about this?
Web Design | | Tinhat1 -
Using tables in html
I have a question about tables in html.I heard that you shouldnt use tables in html,you should should use css instead.Ive used free html templates that use tables but those tables are styled through css:td,th,table and other table elements are ale styled through css.I'm curious is this ok for SEO or should tables should be dropped altogether? Thanks for your response
Web Design | | PCTechGuy20120