Thursday, February 12, 2009

Content Management Systems (CMS): Manage Your Website Easily

By Angie Sandy

Providing a steady and consistent stream of website content will help you increase traffic. It boosts your chances of free traffic from search engines and content provides value to your visitors which in turn encourage repeat visits. Its a simple enough equation; more traffic often means more sales.

Content management systems or CMS not only save you tons of time, they simplify the process of creating content and automate your site submissions to the search engines thus improving your website traffic and ultimately your profits. Because content is essential to the success of any online business, many entrepreneurs turn to a CMS.

What is a Content Management System?

A content management system is a program which makes organizing and uploading all of your content quick and easy. In addition to displaying the content, it creates links and provides a consistent look and feel.

A CMS offers two main functions:

1. CMS makes creating, managing, modifying, and removing content a simple process that you can handle yourself. You dont need to contact your webmaster to upload new pages, remove or change pages. AND you dont need to know how to program in HTML or any other language to create, manage or edit your content.

2. Additionally, you do not need to upload anything to your website. A CMS takes care of updating your website anytime changes have been made.

Benefits of CMS

There are innumerable benefits to using CMS. Consider the possibilities of a system which makes writing, uploading, and storing all of your content, potentially thousands of articles simple " no HTML required.

Outsourcing and delegating content tasks without compromising security. CMS gives you the ability to assign limited permissions to multiple authors. This means writers and assistants can manage and upload their own content without interfering with content they are not authorized to change.

- Professionally designed pages and no HTML required. WYSIWYG (stands for What You See is What You Get " which refers to a web page editor that allows for copy and paste formatting), is the CMS function which may appeal to many non-technical internet entrepreneurs. If you would rather not have to learn HTML but still want your content to have all of the features and functions that an HTML document has, then look for a content management system with a web editor. Users can format their content as they see fit, with underlining, bold and even embedded text links, without having to know programming languages.

Convenient access. Unlike many systems, you dont have to be at your very own personal computer to make changes to your website. A CMS based website is accessible from any computer with an internet connection. Just logon to your account and youre able to make any changes or additions.

Better SEO. Consistent and relevant content boosts search engine rankings. As your rankings improve so too will your website traffic and ultimately your profits. When the content management process is this simple, SEO rankings are sure to improve

Intuitive. In addition to offering a user friendly control panel, its important to be able to have security features, which make it easy to password protect certain areas of your website and make certain information available on a limited basis.

For example, you could offer a free report, send the download page and password to your subscribers and provide them special access.

Youve heard the phrase time is money, right? A good CMS will save you time adding and managing your content and regular and consistent content drives traffic and profits. Take care when choosing a content management system. Evaluate the features, make sure youre getting a system which is easy to use, offers the security features you need and helps you grow your business.

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