What CMS system is best?

[wazza1985]

Hi Guys,

I am in the process of developing some new areas of work and a good CMS is going to be required to make my SEO and everything included work to its best.

What CMS systems are the best ones to use from an SEO prospective and generally all round?

Thanks

[alfredopalconit]

Im sure a lot of us here will recommend the popular CMSes like WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, etc. I think they are all good CMSes. But you ask me, you can use any. The only thing you really need to consider is which CMS has the most support when it comes to hiring a developer or designer to do customization work on your site.

[wazza1985]

How search engine friendly are these?

[gfiorelli1]

As Alfredo wrote, one basic factor about GPL CMS systems is how big and active is the community grown around each one of them.

In this sense Wordpress, Joomla and Drupal are the ones I would consider.

Then, about how much SEO friendly they are, the first thing you have to know is that all of them have basic SEO features, but that for all them you have to implement new plugins, modules or components.

For instance, for Wordpress I would suggest the SEO plugin by Yoast, SEO Friendly Image and social sharing button (for instance Active Share by OrangeSoda)

Remember that Wordpress is a blogging system, even though it is possible to create more classic web sites with it too.

Joomla is interesting especially because of its community and the tons of devs that almost daily produce new plugins, modules and components for it. It is not so hard to learn too.

Its default SEO features are good, but it is better to install specific components that add more SEO functionality. The most popular are sh404SEF and JoomSEF, but I invite you to explore here to find other software you may need.

Drupal. Of the three is the hardest to learn, but many SEOs consider it best one. Regarding it I warmly suggest you to read this post on Search Engine Journal

[Tompt]

Wordpress is very easy to get up and running, and can be very easily optimised, but if you want things to be "just so" it can be complicated getting it just how you want it. That said the volume of themes and plugins available make life very easy if you are willing to compromise. Just remember to keep it updated.

I am about to start playing with MODx which is really the other end of the spectrum, very customisable but with limited support compared to other CMS's. It looks clean and easy to optimise, but it lacks a lot of the bells and whistles that you can take for granted in other CMS's, simply because it's not as mature. They can probably be designed in, but you'll have to do the groundwork.

It really depends on what you're after.

[Dan-Petrovic]

My vote goes to WordPress. We're using it for our own website and it's awesome. The best thing about it is a wide support network and numerous SEO plugins which will make your job much easier than any other CMS platform.

[Tompt]

We've been running wordpress with the all-in-one-seo plugin up until now, but since looking at the Yoast plugin suggested here I've switched. Great suggestion.