Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Can a CMS affect SEO?
-
As the title really, I run www.specialistpaintsonline.co.uk and 6 months ago when I first got it it had bad links which google had put a penalty against it so losts it value.
However the penalty was lift in Sept, the site corresponds to all guidelines and seo work has been done and constantly monitored.
the issue I have is sales and visits have not gone up, we are failing fast and running on 2 or 3 sales a month isn't enough to cover any sort of cost let alone wages.
hence my question can the cms have anything to do with it?
Im at a loss and go grey any help or advice would be great.
thanks in advance.
-
I want to say I agree with Tom I focused strictly on your CMS and as Tom said essentially you have been hurt by your lack of relevant root domains pointing to your site.
Unfortunately after penalty given with an excellent cleanup Google is a little more wary of everything you do. So when you try to earn these new links which will need to do to compete for specialist paints an extremely competitive keyword. Be extremely careful that you do not cross any boundaries.
Take a look at the information below as well I did quite a few scans on your site and hopefully that will be of some help to you.
Respectfully,
Thomas
-
to answer the 1st question. Of course a CMS can affect how website performs. Meaning some are built better than others. If you had a CMS that was to produce all flash content that would be a pretty bad CMS.
I honestly prefer WordPress it works beautifully with search engines as well as people. The important thing though is that you can create a website that is easy for the end user and accomplishes what they want because that's exactly what Google wants.
when I used a tool I use a lot from Internet marketing ninjas in order to scan your site for issues it was giving me a 408 error that error is
- "408 Request Timeout (Couldn't find the user in time)"
- you can see what I mean right here I attempted this 8 times.
I used a another tool screaming frog SEO spider I highly recommend this tool it is free for up to 500 pages though the Pro version gives you the ability to fix a lot of problems instantly.
http://www.screamingfrog.co.uk/seo-spider/
Here the results
https://app.box.com/files/0/f/550482746/1/f_11967719472 crawl overview
https://app.box.com/s/nvyyszluy9mb9rhx1ms6 redirect chain check
https://app.box.com/files/0/f/550482746/1/f_11967725394 all links
I would doubt the CMS has anything to do with your issues. Based on using this tool below called feed the bot
http://www.feedthebot.com/tools/spider/test.php
I was able to crawl your site with no problems. That replicates googles ability to crawl a website. If there was an issue with your CMS blocking Google bot I would've picked it up there
It seems your CMS is custom-made I have never heard of this particular one however that does not mean it's bad. I would recommend using WordPress if you you build the site for any reason. It is very search engine friendly and has a extremely large pool of developers.
Use some of the tools found in this link to scan for other issues
aside from that I would guess that your prior penalty may have something to do with a drop or he could be the lack of content one your site. Overall you do not have a lot of content meeting over 200 or 300 words per page I would start by issuing another question regarding whatever you find to be off about your site. Or something more detailed about what exactly you suspect is a problem why you think it's your CMS? I would really love to hear some more info about this I hope the data I've provided is able to tell you that I do not believe it is your CMS that is harming you.
Download screaming frog and use it
sincerely,
Thomas
-
Hi there
Well yes, a CMS can have an effect on SEO performance. If the CMS makes elements on the page uncrawlable, or the website load very slowly, this could have an adverse effect on your performance. Similarly, if the CMS produces a lot of duplicate webpages, URL or content, which can often be a problem with e-commerce sites, that could lead to algorithmic Panda penalties.
However, looking at your homepage, the Googlebot sees this on the page - so it looks as though everything is fine with its crawl there. In addition, your site load speed appears to be good. I also can't find any obvious duplicate content or URL issues - the search function works well and each product listing looks to have good unique content, with no duplications of the pages (at least at very first glance).
So your CMS, at first glance, looks to be working really well. The issue that I see is that, as a result of your bad backlink cleanup, you have a very small amount of links pointing to your domain. Majestic SEO is reporting that you have gone from a peak of 9000 backlinks and 1000 root domains to just 69 backlinks and 25 root domains. That is a huge reduction in links. While being completely necessary, it essentially means that your off-site SEO is back to zero and so you need to earn more links. Now, it's about quality rather than quantity, but to give you a quick example: the top 5 results for "specialist paints" each have over 10,000 links to their domain.
You've done a great job with your onsite optimisation and an extremely thorough link removal process. What you're left with, however, is a site with very few links and so not a lot of power to help it increase its visibility in organic search. I would say that you need to replace the bad links you have had removed with strong, contextual and high-quality links in order to start performing well again.
I hope this helps.
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
-
Will skipping <H> tags affect your SEO?
Will skipping <H> tags on a page have any impact on your SEO, e.g. skipping a <H2> so your page has a <H1> and then goes to a <H3>? Obviously a page must have a <H1>, but does it matter if you skip other headings?
Technical SEO | | ciehmoz0 -
SEO + Structured Data for Metered Paywall
I have a site that will have 90% of the content behind a metered paywall. So all content is accessible in a metered way. All users who aren't logged in will have access to 3 articles (of any kind) in a 30 day period. If they try to access more in a 30 day period they will hit a paywall. I was reading this article here on how to handle structured data with Google for content behind a paywall: https://www.searchenginejournal.com/paywalls-seo-strategy/311359/However, the content is not ALWAYS behind a paywall, since it is metered. So if a new user comes to the site, they can see the article (regardless of what it is). Is there a different way to handle content that will be SOMETIMES behind a paywall bc of a metered strategy? Theoretically I want 100% of the content indexed and accessible in SERPs, it will just be accessible depending on the user's history (cookies) with the site. I hope that makes sense.
Technical SEO | | triveraseo0 -
Barba Plugin and SEO
Hello, community! My client wants to use the barba.js plugin for their new site. What are the implications for SEO?
Technical SEO | | SimpleSearch0 -
Craft CMS SEO Resources
I'm just starting out in freelance SEO & I've taken on a client who is using Craft CMS (version 2.0ish) for their site. I am not even close to being competent enough to manually code via Twig, but I had the main developer install the SEOmatic plugin for me. My question from here is - are there any resources or tips I should be aware of starting out? I just started by updating meta title/descriptions via "New Template Meta(s)" but I'm a bit concerned i'm doing the "template path" thing right - I haven't seen any visible changes in browser, and the SERP preview I'm getting is giving me a broken link. But i'm doing a fresh Moz crawl right now to see if the changes took place or not. so 1. Am I on the right track? 2. How long does it typically take for changes to start to show? 3. Is there anything I should be aware of? any follow up questions just let me know, I'll be following this thread!
Technical SEO | | dig_ad_austin0 -
CSS user select and any potential affect on SEO
Hi everyone and thank you in advance for your helpful comments. We have a client who is concerned about copying of content from their site because it has happened a few times in the last few years. We have explained that the content is essentially publicly available and that using the CSS selector user-select to prevent selection of text will really only prevent the technically limited users from working out how to get the text. He is happy that it will at least stop some people. So the question is would there be any way that this would have an affect on SEO? We would make an assumption that it doesnt but putting it out there for some feedback. Cheers Eddie
Technical SEO | | vital_hike0 -
Does the use of a unicode character high up on page adversely affect SEO?
I work for a company in the travel industry and we are currently in the process of building out a 360-degree video landing page to inspire travel to our destination. There is some desire from individuals on my team to use the unicode degree symbol ( ° ) after 360 to ensure clarity. We currently have the ° symbol in the Page Title and H1 tag. Does the use of a unicode character adversely affect SEO? Our concern is that it is very unlikely that people are searching for 360-degree videos using the unicode symbol. We also have it fully written out as well. Just want to make sure we won't get dinged for this. Thanks!
Technical SEO | | smontunnas1 -
Changing DNS -- SEO implications?
Hey Moz, We're migrating an old site on an old server over to a new server/DNS. The plan is to keep the same URL structure and reuse our existing URL's. As long as we make minimal changes to each page's content, we should be able to update our DNS entry and get all the pages recreated and assigned to their correct URLs without any reduction in SEO rankings. Is this correct? This site gets a lot of organic traffic and ranks highly on some challenging keywords, so it's key that we retain our rankings as much as possible. I've read that it's wise to lower the DNS time-to-live to one hour, about a day before the move, to help Google crawl the DNS a little quicker. Are there any other recommendations you guys can offer or past experiences?
Technical SEO | | stephen_reply0 -
Restaurant menu SEO: PDF or HTML?
Is it better to use a PDF or hard code restaurant menus (or any document for that matter) in HTML? I want the content to be indexed and thought PDF was the way to go for several reasons, but I wanted to get confirmation on this before I move forward.
Technical SEO | | BostonWright0