Content management systems (CMS) allow businesses to develop appealing websites and properly manage their content. By implementing a CMS, you can publish content efficiently to meet the demands of the modern consumer. To gain visibility for your website and brand, it’s important to implement search engine optimization (SEO) wherever possible. Since content is a major component of SEO, your CMS software will play a significant role in making sure your website is properly optimized.
While CMS systems offer many benefits to website owners, there are also a few challenges that must be overcome when implementing SEO. For example, you may find it more difficult to efficiently optimize your content with a traditional CMS. These systems can also hurt page speeds and site performance, which might negatively affect customer satisfaction and retention rates.
You can navigate the challenges of using a CMS to perform SEO by opting for a headless content management system. While headless CMS systems have been around for more than two decades, they’ve become increasingly popular over the past five years.
Modern SEO strategies rely on using headless CMS to quickly implement changes and push them across all supported devices and channels. Headless CMS systems work by decoupling the backend from the frontend, which allows content to be updated behind the scenes. If you’re looking for ways to enhance your content strategy, this guide provides a closer look at headless CMS SEO and how to integrate it into your website.
Understanding Headless CMS
A headless CMS is a type of content management system that only includes the backend. The frontend portion that people see is separated. There are many advantages of keeping the backend and frontend separate, the primary of which is that developers and site owners have a considerable amount of freedom. Developers are able to use any type of technology and make numerous changes to the backend without needing to consider how the frontend will be affected.
Editors can also reuse some of their content across an unlimited number of devices. This content isn’t locked to a single channel, which is the case with traditional CMS platforms. The content that’s produced with a headless CMS is accessible with a GraphQL or RESTful API.
While a traditional CMS and headless CMS perform similar tasks, they do so in a much different way, which makes all the difference when it comes to site performance and efficiency. Traditional CMS solutions don’t separate the frontend from the backend, which means that they provide an all-in-one system. When content goes into the backend, it’s immediately produced for a single frontend, which is typically a standard website.
While a traditional CMS offers some benefits, it’s extremely difficult to expand to other channels. All of the assets, content, and code you create are contained within a closed system, which means that remixing or reusing it is challenging. The most popular CMS platforms are Joomla, WordPress, and Drupal.
Since a headless CMS isn’t constrained by the same limitations, you can easily scale the platform to meet your needs. All assets, code, and content can be reused without issue. If you want more control over your website, its performance, and how your content is distributed, consider opting for a headless CMS.
SEO Challenges with Traditional CMS
The main reason why headless CMS platforms are becoming more commonplace is because of the SEO challenges that are inherent in traditional CMS solutions. For example, traditional CMS and SEO are incompatible because of the slow site speeds that occur. Good website performance is a critical aspect of search engine rankings on Google and Bing. The causes of slow speeds with CMS platforms include too many plugins and unoptimized images.
There’s also much less flexibility. Traditional CMS solutions usually come with pre-built features and templates, which makes it difficult to create a customized and unique website. To create a website that properly reflects your brand personality, you may need a headless CMS.
Keep in mind that content optimization is also limited with a traditional CMS. These systems are complex, which means that developers and website owners must have ample technical knowledge to use them effectively. Headless CMS platforms are simple to use and allow for effortless content optimization across all devices.
Benefits of Headless CMS for SEO
There are numerous reasons why you should use a headless CMS for SEO purposes. With this type of system, you can centrally manage all your content, even if some of it is used across numerous channels. When you update content in one location, it will be deployed everywhere. In this scenario, you won’t have a problem with the content on your website differing from that of your mobile app.
The headless approach also offers considerable flexibility. For example, let’s say you want to optimize your URL structure for search engines or include keywords in your content. A headless CMS allows you to make these alterations quickly. You’ll have the ability to optimize content for various platforms and devices seamlessly.
Headless solutions are scalable as well. You can effectively create dozens or hundreds of unique web pages without delaying the delivery time. These platforms are designed with performance and site speed in mind. Since you aren’t beholden to slow templating engines that come with traditional CMS platforms, you should be able to introduce headless SEO into your website without experiencing slowdown. Make sure you select a headless CMS that offers dynamic image optimization and fast response times.
SEO Best Practices with Headless CMS
Before you begin to optimize your website for search engines with your headless CMS, there are some best practices you should know about. For example, consider structuring content for SEO-friendly URLs. Your URLs need to be search-engine friendly. Make sure all pages follow a similar structure.
An example of an SEO-friendly URL is xyz.com/about-this-page. It becomes more complex and unclear if the URL contains a lot of random numbers and letters. SEO-friendly URLs allow users to more readily reach the websites they’re interested in. They should include keywords and be as concise as possible.
You should also leverage structured data and schema markup. Schema.org provides pre-defined properties that enhance HTML tags. With on-page markup, you’ll be able to add structure to your content, which allows search engines to understand it quickly. This technique allows you to give search engines clues about what your page means.
It’s also a good idea to implement meta tags and headers effectively, which is easy with headless architecture. Make sure you implement the right heading hierarchy with all your content. Only use the H1 tag once. You can place it around the main title of your page. The most common sub-headings are H2 and H3. Heading tags should only be placed around content that’s part of the article’s main body.
Integrating Headless CMS with SEO Tools
When choosing a headless CMS, make sure that it’s compatible with some of the more popular SEO tools. For example, SEMrush allows you to discover marketing insights and improve your website’s visibility with features like campaign management, content marketing, SEO, PPC, keyword research, and SMM.
Google Analytics gives you the tools you need to perform an in-depth analysis of your marketing campaigns and website performance. You can also use the data that Google Analytics gathers to identify the effectiveness of your existing SEO and learn how you can make improvements. Keep in mind that every CMS platform has its advantages and disadvantages.
When you switch to a headless CMS, you can use APIs for data exchange and analysis. The API is the base of the headless CMS architecture. It allows you or your developers to gain access to content and freely change it. To set up your API, you’ll likely need to configure the content management system with a GraphQL or REST API. Once the API is configured, it can facilitate data exchange when the frontend needs to display content.
Future Trends in Headless CMS and SEO
Headless CMS and SEO are constantly evolving to incorporate emerging technologies and innovations. For example, artificial intelligence is being introduced to headless CMS platforms. Along with text-based content generation, AI may be able to help create slideshows, videos, and other interactive content out of existing assets, which will significantly reduce the amount of time it takes to make content.
Website owners will also benefit from a larger focus on workflow automation to enhance efficiency. While headless CMS platforms already offer workflow dashboards and tools, it’s believed that artificial intelligence and rule-building UIs will further improve automation in the future. This technology may allow for more automation during editorial cycles and workflow reviews.
Conclusion
Using a headless CMS for SEO allows you to improve page load speeds, scale your content to meet customer needs, and push content to any device or platform. You’ll also benefit from better security compared to traditional CMS platforms. To seamlessly integrate a headless CMS into your SEO strategy, make sure you implement meta tags and headers properly. It’s also important that you structure your content to maintain SEO-friendly URLs. Taking the headless approach to SEO allows you to avoid the challenges associated with the more traditional method.
