We are often asked if Adobe Business Catalyst is SEO Friendly. The simple answer is VERY Friendly!
There are a suite of integrated tools that not only make SEO on Business Catalyst simple, but in some cases 'fully automated'. Adobe is also very proactive, working with partners to improve the SEO functionality of the CMS, allowing us to better service and optimise our clients sites.
To give you a better idea of some of the fantastic functions that are available within the Business Catalyst Admin Console, we have included a list of the main features that we use regularly on our customers websites to improve their on-page SEO (remember that you can still have full HTML access through FTP to make SEO changes on a page-by-page basis) -
Simple Meta Data Access
Site pages, Blog Posts, Web Apps, FAQ's and eCommerce Products have SEO Meta Titles and Descriptions on-page, ready for you to add or modify without going into the HTML vew. You can even add Meta Keywords from within the Property Inspector.
Tooltips and Alt Tags
Add Tooltips to links as you create them in the Admin within any module, and even add them to your menu bar items. You can also use the Properties Inspector to add Alt Tags to your images as you insert them into pages or posts so your images have alternative text that can be displayed if the image does not load or images are switched off.
H1-H6 Tags
Easily add your H1 - H6 Headings within the Admin to take advantage of better page rankings by highlighting important keywords in these pre-defined Heading tags that take their styling straight from your css.
Relative & Absolute Links
Get access to the HTML for each page, content holder and template from within the BC admin to take control over Absolute and Relative links. The Hyperlink Manager and Menus also let you edit Absolute URL's when required.
File Extensions in URLS
Remove file extensions like .htm or .html from your file names on a page by page level within the BC Admin to keep short, clean page addresses. Then continue to link between files in the admin and watch BC automatically use the amended file names while still being able to edit your files in Dreamweaver with their native extension.
On-page Menu Scripts
Take advantage of CSS (HTML only) dynamic menu programming and get control over tooltips and menu links being added to the HTML instead of an external Javascript.
eCommerce Products
Page Titles and Meta Descriptions can be easily added to the large product detail layout on a product-by-product basis, giving your tight control over snippets for each individual product in your store.
Rel=Author
Add your rel=author scripting to your Blog Post Template so that all posts add to your author rank and are linked to your Google+ Profile, appearing next to your profile image on search results pages.
Site URLs
Url's across your sites pages, folder names, blog posts etc. can also be modified to further target your page content with appropriate keywords. You can add absolute links to improve the navigation within your site and can easily remove the .html suffix to keep your site url's shorter and cleaner for online marketing and better spidering.
Development URL's
Business Catalyst now excludes development domains from Google spidering so that you can better take advantage of your final sites launch.
Domain Names
Choose the primary domain name for your site to avoid duplicate content issues and use the 'redirect' feature in the Domain Name tab to help eliminate the secure url and multiple url names from appearing in search results.
HTML Access
Get access to the HTML view of any page from the HTML Tab or use the Develop tab to access the full page HTML and make adjustments from there, without having to go back to Dreamweaver or use your FTP program.
Blog Comments
Control and moderate blog comments using the Akismet program and use Captcha fields to reduce comment spam and future-proof your moderation. Alternatively, swap to social commenting to grow your community and brand.
Sitemap XML & HTML
The sitemap.xml file shows search engines a full list of all site pages, images and videos and is automatically updated daily, keeping your site freshness up-to-date and giving it more chance to be completely spidered... one of the fantastic automated systems BC has in place.
The 'sitemap' module also helps you add a simple html sitemap, adding a link to every page in the whole website on a page you choose. You can also include the breadcrumb hierarchy to help search engines see the relevancy and file structure of pages from the root down.
301 Redirects
Easily setup bulk 301 redirects for html pages from the URL Redirect module (you can even upload an excel document with all the files for redirect listed) or create redirects from within each html page.
Robots.txt
You can add a Robot.txt file by FTP to your site to control individual page or whole folder excludes.
Alternatively you can control 'excludes' from search results on a page-by-page level using the 'Search Results -> Hide this page from Search Engines' option on each page. This will add a meta name="robots" content="noindex" to the page and removes it from the auto-generated sitemap.xml file. This is a great option for all pages within a secure zone to be quickly and simply removed form SERP's.
Empty System Pages
BC automatically provides 404 permanent errors and broken link System Pages wrapped in your default site template so that any errors allow customers to continue navigating your site to find other pages of interest. You can even choose the text you want to display on the error page, indicating the team of monkeys you have deployed to fix the site (like Google does)!
Google Analytics Tracking
Use containers to add your Google Analytics code to your site template and have it automatically populate your whole site. To track referrals through the https secure urls, cross domain tracking can be installed for Products, Webforms or Event Bookings and we can even push some product purchase information through to Analytics for further diagnosis. Site Search can be tracked using query parameters and media downloads plus links to external sites can also be tracked using virtual page commands.
Business Catalyst Built-in Reports
Enjoy Business Catalyst reports that track your sites popularity and success and receive a weekly report on how much traffic, conversions, subscribers, email campaigns and secure zone logins you have had in the previous week.
It is easy to see why Business Catalyst is not only SEO friendly but also our CMS of choice.
Our Business Catalyst SEO Packages take advantage of these fantastic built-in SEO features to help fully optimise sites and improve rankings, site targeting and relevancy. Talk to us about how to SEO your BC site and we can recommend the best course of action to improve your site traffic, find qualified customers and convert visitors.