Explaining Headless CMS to a web designer
22 Aug 2022
Did you know that the #1 result in Google gets 31.7% of all clicks or that only 0.78% of Google searchers click on results from the second page?
Besides various techniques, tools, and plugins, losing the race for better Google positioning is still very easy. More than 70% of marketers instead invest in SEO than in PPC.
Successful inbound marketing and SEO results in marketers' dedication to improving their ranking over other tactics. So, everyone is fighting very hard to be the first in today's internet world.
If you want your content to appear in search results, you need to optimize your appearance to SERP (Search Engine Results Pages). Since Google is the most popular—holding over 80% of the market share— the best way to gain #1 place is to focus on the Google Ranking Factors.
There are about 200 ranking factors that Google uses to understand and rate content on your website and decide whether your content will be in the top search. Ranking factors can be divided into a couple of groups:
Domain Factors
Page-Level Factors
Site-Level Factors
Backlink Factors
User Interaction
Special Google Algorithm Rules
Brand Signals
On-Site Webspam Factors
Off-Site Webspam Factors
Depending on how many factors the created content meets, Google will determine its position during the search. Of course, some of the factors are much more important than others.
CMS is a system that allows people who don't have the technical background to create and manage a website. First of all, most headless CMSs are content first, so everything else that happens and builds in the CMS benefits the content. The idea of headless CMS is not to predefine anything but to do everything you need. CMS allows you to create and use essential features for your content. That's why CMS can be powerful when elevating your SEO.
Regarding Google Rank Factors, high-quality content and link building are Google's two most important signals to rank your website for search. In both cases, headless CMS provides more benefits than traditional ones, so you shouldn't hesitate to use one.
As I mentioned above, headless CMS does not predefine anything, so there is an open space for any developer, marketer, SEO analyst, or team to decide what they need and how they want to fulfill their website, campaigns, or ads. Let’s see now how CMS can handle some of the main ranking factors.
Technical elements are the back-end building blocks that make up your website. Besides content quality and uniqueness, some major technical elements must work flawlessly. Search engines work by crawling and indexing your website's featured information.
The accessible browsing experience is one of the primary factors for ranking. The reduced loading speed will affect your rankings. Code must be well-written to prevent this from happening, and don't forget about images. They need to be optimized. Luckily, like GTmetrix, online tools can help you test your website's speed.
As you can see, a website built in headless CMS has great page speed. 😍
In 2020, 55% of worldwide online traffic came from mobile and 42% from desktop. The speed ranking factor also applies to mobile search. Even if the desktop version of your site is flawless, ranking can drop if the site isn’t optimized for mobile. So don’t forget to make your content accessible across different devices, not just for a desktop. Most headless CMSs have built-in features that allow you to do this. Also, countless online tools can help you check your mobile usability:
It is a set of metrics that measure a different aspect of UX (User Experience): - Largest Contentful Paint (LCP)- measures perceived load speed- First Input Delay (FID)- measures responsiveness- Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS)- measures visual stability
Besides technical ranking factors, some On-Off page SEO factors are relevant too. Let’s go further and see what you need to do to achieve the #1 position.
CMS should let customization of the title, meta description, and image alt text. For example, take a look inside the BCMS, which has some predefined components but is editable. You can adjust all On-Page SEO with those components such as header and title tags, image descriptions, and URLs.
These are essential to your on-page SEO and allow you to do some execution strategies, such as Programmatic SEO.
Human-readable URLs are also an essential piece of the puzzle. URL structure has some impact on search engine ranking. Mixed characters and symbols confuse crawlers, so the URL needs to be short and clean.
Headless CMS can make your URL, but there is an edit option. Whatever you choose to do, try to keep your URL short, no more than 65 characters.
Did you know that one-third of all existing web pages are blogs? Blogs are still one of the primary forms of media used for content release. It is crucial to work on a platform with blogging tools and templates.
A drag-and-drop editor with modules for images, videos, text, etc., can help create unique and creative blog posts.
91% of all pages never get any organic traffic from Google because they don’t have backlinks.
Internal linking is imperative! Building links help Google comprehend the context and content of your website.
Taxonomy or classification of content helps site engines understand your site's structure.
Content management systems can offer categories, groups, and tags to organize your content.
A navigation menu is an organized list of links to other internal web pages on a website. For search engines, that means that multiple pages are ordered in an easy way to crawl. If we speak about UX, readers can effortlessly find the content they want.
The 301 redirect is the best method for implementing redirects on a website. Also, it can help with duplicate content by removing it. Content management systems can handle redirects by creating redirection templates.
To ensure that the search engine always finds your page, use XML Sitemaps. Some CMSs can do sitemaps perforce, but there is an option to do it manually. If you need to make sitemaps, you can use these plugins: https://gridsome.org/plugins/@gridsome/plugin-sitemap https://www.gatsbyjs.com/plugins/gatsby-plugin-sitemap/ https://sitemap.nuxtjs.org/ https://www.npmjs.com/package/next-sitemap
An SEO-friendly CMS can help you create and optimize a website for better UX and search engines. When choosing CMS, the right features and extensions can make your website get more organic traffic.
Be aware that while choosing CMS platforms, you keep in mind all those SEO tools that can help you with search engine optimization. BCMS features show that BCMS is the best CMS for developers, but at the same time, it is a great web builder that fulfills all CMS SEO requirements. By implementing BCMS in your SEO strategy, the only left is to follow google analytics and watch how organic traffic on your website is growing.
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