What is a headless CMS? Why is it important to master your SEO strategies to make CMS work well for your business? What does all of this mean for your business?
This guide will help you use CMS SEO to help your business grow and your website improve its search engine rankings.
What is a Headless CMS?
Firstly, let’s discuss what headless CMS actually is.
CMS stands for content management system. In this case, we are talking about a back-end-only content management system that serves the purpose of being a “content repository” of some kind.
It doesn’t prepare your content for a specific output like web page rendering. Instead, a headless CMS delivers your data via an Application Programming Interface or API. By doing so, it allows us to display the content on multiple platforms.
Then, what does the “headless” part refer to? Well, it stands for the concept of “removing” the head off its body, or, in this case, removing the front end (website) off the back end (content repository).
A headless CMS is almost like an independent back office that allows you to have more flexibility.
Instead of having to present your content on one of the classic devices, such as a traditional CMS, the headless CMS utilizes API calls and displays your content on any platform you can think of.
It can be an app, a website, IoT, or something else. For instance, you can even create content on the same CMS for your website and your smart fridge.
How does it work?
Obviously, the next question would be, how does this headless CMS work? Essentially, the headless CMS uses different APIs for displaying content.
While most of these headless CMSs are SaaS-based, APIs are hosted in the cloud-based backend. Being SaaS-based means that content editors need to connect to a web app first.
It’s important to note that you can find some solutions that will allow you to host all your data on your own servers.
What makes it different from, let’s say, WordPress? Well, unlike these traditional examples of CMS that also include WordPress, CMS doesn’t guarantee the visual part. The difference is that the headless CMS makes the front end completely free and has no restrictions. This applies to all devices.
Also, note that headless CMS solutions don’t support the display of content. That means that connecting these headless CMS solutions to front-end technologies is imperative via APIs. They are simply there to store and deliver the content you produce.
So, how does it work in terms of SEO, and what does it mean for your business? Keep reading to find out more about that and how you can utilize the headless CMS in a perfect way to boost your SEO.
Perfect your page performance and loading
First and foremost, focusing your attention on the performance of your webpage as well as your loading speed is one of the most important factors.
To focus on page performance and loading, it’s essential to add a component for your metadata.
However, you have to be careful about how you do it. If your components are not read correctly, they will be marked as empty. To prevent that from happening, here’s what you can do:
Let’s say you’re managing the metadata of a React web app. Take a look at a React Helmet. A feature such as React Router is there to create the URL structure of your website. It will create paths between separate pages on your site. As a result, you’ll have a more SEO-friendly website.
Use HTTPS
Using HTTPS is important because this is how you can efficiently secure your communication with users.
As users tend to be more alert about sites that aren’t secure, there’s an even bigger reason to opt for HTTPS instead of HTTP, which has been marked as unstable and not secure by Google.
On top of that, HTTPS has a better loading speed, and this is one of the most important ranking factors for SEO.
Keyword research
You can’t even begin to think about the content you will produce without doing your keyword research first.
We all know that Google aims to provide the most relevant, quality, and useful pieces of content to online users.
Search engines use the data on what kinds of search entries are going around the Internet and generate that data into something useful for future notice. Many people search for specific phrases or, as we call them, “keywords.”
So, before you start creating content, research the primary keyword you’re going to base your content on. It should be regularly mentioned in your articles/blog posts and it should be a part of the title.
Then, see how that keyword performs on Google and what kinds of variations of that keyword are commonly used. This will help you build strong keywords that will boost your content’s visibility in Google searches.
Use SERP-friendly URLs
Next, make sure all of your pages follow a SERP-friendly URL structure. Here are examples:
● A clear SERP-friendly URL: example.com/about-us
● A complicated and unclear URL: example.com/services/page-id-1235/2021/12/13
If you want to create a secure and clear URL, try to match what users search for and offer transparency and relevance about where the link will lead them to. Usually, it’s the short and keyword-rich URLs that tend to perform better.
Optimize metadata for search engines
The most important descriptor of your page content is meta tags. While they are not visible to the user, they definitely help search engines find out what your content is about. The following are the main four meta tags with respective maximum recommended text lengths:
● Title tag (70 characters)
● Meta description - short description of the content in 160 characters
● Meta keywords - relevant keywords for the page (5-10 keywords)
● Meta robots - what search engines are meant to do with the page
A developer always freely designs the website’s content structure. In that process, they use an un-opinionated headless CMS. That’s why these metatags need to be added as String fields and they should be relevant to all content models. After that, content authors can add other relevant metadata.
Optimize for mobile phones
Another important factor is the usability of your website across all devices. For that reason, this step in the process of website development is one of the most crucial ones. After all, you want your content to be easily displayed on all devices and all screens fairly easily.
Ensure that users can effortlessly scroll through your website, navigate easily between pages, and find what they’re looking for with ease and fast loading time on all devices. That includes mobile phones just as much as laptops, computers, and tablets.
As mentioned before, the performance of your website is of great importance for SEO, and that goes for the site performance on all possible devices.
Optimize images and media for SEO
Pairing up written content with audio and visual features will always be desirable and will help boost your SEO efforts.
Adding images, videos, and other forms of media into your content is almost a default at this point. However, you have to do it right if you want to get the desired results out of that practice. In other words, you also need to optimize this media for SEO.
Firstly, when adding pictures, make sure they have the right sizes. Make sure you are using high-quality photos as well.
Don’t forget formatting. It’s highly important that you know how to properly insert these types of media in your content without disrupting the rest of the content.
The quality and size of photos can either help or ruin your SEO efforts. Also, the size and quality of photos will affect your loading time as well.
So, make sure you optimize them for SEO so that you don’t end up losing visitors who won’t wait too long for your media to load.
Create authentic and quality content
When creating your content, keep in mind that you are writing for other people, not robots. That’s why you need to pay attention to authenticity and provide not only relevant but high-quality content to your audience.
Make the content engaging and dynamic. Provide useful and relevant information that will reach your target audience.
Also, format the content in a way that will make it easy to read and dynamic. These are actual human beings whose attention you need to catch and maintain. Try to connect with them through your content.
Publish your content regularly
Lastly, once your audience finds your content authentic, relevant, and useful, they will come back for more.
For that reason, you need to keep up the pace and provide content to your audience as regularly as possible. This will ensure that your views keep growing, and search engines are more likely to mark your content as high-quality content that provides exactly what online users are looking for.
Conclusion
Overall, headless CMS SEO can be used in various ways to help your business grow and get your website recognized by search engines.
Some of the most effective practices include doing thorough keyword research, perfecting your website performance, optimizing your site for all devices, publishing quality content, and using the secure HTTPS protocol.
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