Why CMS - 9 reasons to consider them for good results

For several small to medium-sized businesses, CMS (content management system) is the beating heart of their company’s digital presence.

It doesn’t matter if you are just getting started with digital marketing or you are a seasoned pro, your site is almost certain to be the hub of your overall strategy. And this means it needs to be easy to update and use. That’s where a CMS comes in.

No matter the type of website you run, CMS features key elements that you can leverage to drive more traffic to your website.

Here are the 9 features in a CMS that you can use to drive traffic to your website and increase revenue.

1. Built-in SEO tools

The most beautiful website in the world can’t convert if your target audience can’t find it or know if it exists.

As Google continually changes its algorithm to provide the best search results for users, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a moving target that adjusts to the changes been made. When a CMS changes with the latest algorithm or technology, it helps make sure that your website can be visible to your target audience.

The features in CMS that are good to have for website performance and speed optimization include minimize HTTP requests, optimize images, minify JS & CSS, and GZIP components. For crawlability optimization, the key features include HTML validation, Canonical tags, CSS validation, and more.

While for search optimization, you will be good with social tags, Header tags, Schemas markup. If you find it difficult to integrate these features, you can contact the best SEO agency for more guidelines.

2. Schemas

This is a structured data markup that allows search engines to grasp the context of your site content.

One of the best ways to make sure your content is visible in the search engine result pages and that your target audience finds you when searching is by using schemas.

Most of the results that rank in Position 0 are drawn from marked-up content. When a CMS supports schema tags in the backend, it will be very valuable in making your website easy to find in the search engines.

3. Event calendar

Having an event calendar is a great way to have an incredible impact across websites, especially the sites with a local presence.

For example, Milestone’s platform can dynamically list events on your sites.

The platform pushes locally relevant events automatically from a stipulated radius around your location to your site.

Each of the events is wrapped in schemas, which makes it easier for them to appear in “near me” searches. In addition, you can include your own custom events for a fully customized calendar.

4. Easy-to-use site tools

Obviously, these are the features you need to look out for.

You should be able to easily and quickly access your CMS when you need to make any update, even with little technical know-how.

Plus, some CMS platforms even offer features for analytics and testing, some of which include personalization, rapid landing page deployment, and A/B testing.

You might not be sure which content, design, and functionality work better with your website visitors until you do a couple of testing and attain resulting analytical data – with the A/B testing method; you know what works and what doesn’t.

A CMS with effective A/B testing tools allow you to optimize every element on your site.

5. Business-focused insights

Every platform offers its own analytics dashboard, which allows you to view certain key metrics and insights so that you can make better decisions.

Incorporations of built-in report dashboards with insight, actionable recommendations, and comparison based on benchmarks combined with external tools like Google Analytics will be very useful to analyze the performance of the whole website or any specific page.

6. Mobile-friendliness

As of 2015, the Google algorithm now incorporates a mobile-friendliness into its rankings.

This algorithm scans every page for load times, mobile responsiveness, and the best mobile practices. And sites that are not optimized for mobile will appear down the search rankings.

So, use CMS that takes page speed serious and can accurately optimize and display web pages fast, no matter the type of device. A platform that supports AMP will also be valuable to you.

Due to the fast loading ability of AMP pages, it usually led to higher mobile visibility and engagement.

7. Built-in compliance

When building your website, you need to be aware of the latest consumer and legal needs. Your platform must be able to do this for you.

For instance, there have recently been several concerns about the regulations that are being imposed on businesses. Your business might be required to comply with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) or Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG), depending on your location.

You should look for a content management system that can help you comply with all the various rules and regulations and keep you updated with any changes to avoid legal problems.

8. At-a-glance features

These features might include task widgets, quick alerts, traffic light statuses, or announcement blocks that can be dismissed.

Arranging some information on a single page needs a unique content strategy. With that, you will be able to present important and relevant content in a way that they can be easily understood by the user and acted on without overloading information.

Information that is easy to digest in a glance can help your visitor on the move who may have limited bandwidth or bad connections.

9. Always-on availability

One of the things you should look for in a content management system is a built-in content delivery network (CDN).

A CDN is an extensive distributed system of servers positioned in data centers in several locations around the world. Its goal is to improve user experience by offering greater availability and better performance for delivering media content.

While reducing the traffic load on your website server, videos, documents, and images can be served faster to the end-user.

There are a lot of other functions from content delivery networks that add value to your website, including constant access, speed of delivery all over the world, and an additional level of protection against DoS attacks.