From a SEO basis, what software do you think is the best to use on a niche site?

How important are blog tools in a Niche CMS? IE Ping, Linkback and whatever else Bloggers use to get the word out.

Thanks!

very important, and wordpress continues to get my vote 2 years running.

I have a happy Drupalizing cms company with lots of good SEO results, so +1 vote for Drupal.

Drupal is a pain to design. Can you link me to your drupal site? I need a cms for my new site I am launching

I really think WordPress is great.

It's easy to use and, when combined with some nifty plug-ins and integrated mod_rewrite, very SEO friendly. Search engines really like my blog for that very reason.

-Nick

Wordpress has been a life saver for me. You should do a few tweaks to it to capitalize on your keywords, such as doing custom stuff with your titles when a visitor navigates to a single post.

Squirrel,

Can you elaborate a bit? I installed WP last night and got a site set up. So far, I find it to be a unfriendly and unintuitive. I've also encountered bugs for simple problems that required me to modify the code. A lot of people have been complaining about this problem that use WP for hosting their blog because they can't access the code.

I still think it's simpler than a full blown CMS and will serve it's purpose. I just need to learn a bit more about it.

As for a CMS, I am totally hooked on Joomla.

I'm using WordPress for the blog im making...

Originally Posted by Atomm

Squirrel,

Can you elaborate a bit? I installed WP last night and got a site set up. So far, I find it to be a unfriendly and unintuitive. I've also encountered bugs for simple problems that required me to modify the code. A lot of people have been complaining about this problem that use WP for hosting their blog because they can't access the code.

I still think it's simpler than a full blown CMS and will serve it's purpose. I just need to learn a bit more about it.

As for a CMS, I am totally hooked on Joomla.

Why don't you download WP and install it on your own server then? That way, you have access to everything.

As Hoang said, you should install it on your own server so that you can do whatever you want to it.

I'm not sure what you want me to elaborate on Atomm. Why don't you tell us what problems you are having and maybe we can help you troubleshoot them. I have never had any problems with the software, but I've been a web developer for nearly 5 years now so I'm sure it's a little trickier for non technical people.

I am a bit confused.

I installed WP last night and got a site set up.

I'm sorry if it seems like I am coming across as non-technical. In fact, it is quite the opposite. This is my fifth CMS product I have used. I've been doing web coding and system administration for the last 7+ years.

On one hand, Wordpress strikes me as a simple, straight forward product. I was just disappointed that I had to start doing code fixes to something that everyone was so impressed with. I'm talking silly things on the base install. I expect that when I start adding plugins, etc, but the base should be solid. This is just my first impression. I'm sure it will change as I use it.

Anyway, it's late and I am tired. This is probably coming across harsh. I don't mean it that way. I wasn't sure what you were talking about with your statement "such as doing custom stuff with your titles when a visitor navigates to a single post." Do you mean mod_rewrite and showing the title for each page? I have that going. What other "tweaks" should I look into?

Thanks,

Wordpress would have to be on the top of the list

wordpress all the way

(see also my article about 10 SEO tips for WordPress)

w/p + permalinks + adsense + google sitemaps

Originally Posted by BamaStangGuy

Drupal is a pain to design. Can you link me to your drupal site? I need a cms for my new site I am launching

I am using vbDrupal for www.talkhomebusiness.com and it has a custom design.

Wordpress gets my vote for a very SE friendly blog script.

Originally Posted by Atomm

I am a bit confused.

I'm sorry if it seems like I am coming across as non-technical. In fact, it is quite the opposite. This is my fifth CMS product I have used. I've been doing web coding and system administration for the last 7+ years.

On one hand, Wordpress strikes me as a simple, straight forward product. I was just disappointed that I had to start doing code fixes to something that everyone was so impressed with. I'm talking silly things on the base install. I expect that when I start adding plugins, etc, but the base should be solid. This is just my first impression. I'm sure it will change as I use it.

Anyway, it's late and I am tired. This is probably coming across harsh. I don't mean it that way. I wasn't sure what you were talking about with your statement "such as doing custom stuff with your titles when a visitor navigates to a single post." Do you mean mod_rewrite and showing the title for each page? I have that going. What other "tweaks" should I look into?

Thanks,

What meant by "doing custom stuff with your titles" was that the base install of Wordpress does do "okay" with your title tags, but you can definitely tweak them to be better.

For instance, the first thing I always do is go into options, then permalinks and check the "Dat and name based" radio button for the URLs. This will give you cleaner looking URLs that will have the keywords of your post name. Now, I know that isn't title tags, but it's still SEO related.

For the title tags I do actually step a little into the code. I go into the theme editor and edit he header. Below is what I change my title tag to

<title><?php bloginfo('name');?> | <?php if(wp_title(' ', false)) {?><?php wp_title(' '); ?>
<?php }else{?> default description you want your blog to have.<?php }?></title>

What that does is if you are anywhere other than your home page, the title of your blog will be "BlogName" | "Categoryname or PostTitle". Title tags are HUGE for SEO so having your category name or post title in the title of your page is very important.

Hopefully that makes sense. Let me know if it doesn't

A big thanks to Portal, PCDoc and Squirrel. That was exactly the information I was looking for.

Squirrel, I was actually looking at the site last night thinking I wish it had the blog name in the title. Your timing was perfect! Thank You!

For Sitemaps, is there a good plugin? I just started using phpSitemapNG for some other sites. So far, I have liked it, but anything to simplify this process.

Thanks again everyone!

I have had very good luck with wordpress. I have tried to use > v2.0 but I don't like it, so I use a custom mod of 1.5.2 with tons of plugins and tweaked templates.

I would recommend going with WP unless you absolutely have to have something else. You can do pretty much anything with it.

I like Joomla (formerly Mambo) if you enable the SEF urls and use the addons for custom page titles and metatags. Stay away from PHP Nuke, altho it has the easiest learning curve, it'll get hacked every other week unless you tweak a bunch of stuff. Drupal is ok for a simple site, but it doesn't have as many features as Joomla.Whatever you use, make sure it can produce SEF urls. While Google does usually index your index page and a few major entry pages with dynamic urls, it still does a much better job of deep crawling with urls that look like static. When I changed from dynamic, a couple thousand more pages got indexed the next time around.

But if you're just doing a small site, I think the best thing is do a search for HTML tutorial on Google and learn the basics to hand code and do it yourself, using SSI to include repeated features and templates to duplicate page layouts. It's not that hard, it's like learning your multiplication tables, once you get a few basic rules down, it's easy. You should be able to learn the basics in an hour, it'll take you longer than that to learn how to use a CMS.

Oh hell, I don't know... Google's blogger perhaps? Just might be SEO friendly?