Wednesday, January 28, 2009

Content Management Systems (CMS): Manage Your Website Easily

By Angie Sandy

Having content available on your website can help you steadily and consistently build traffic. Content increases your chances of free traffic from search engines, it also provides consistent value to a visitor which means theyre more likely to visit often. More website traffic and loyal website visitors can, in short, mean more sales.

Bottom line, if you want to increase sales frequent and valuable website content is essential. To make uploading, modifying, and managing all of this content, many business owners turn to a CMS, which stands for content management system.

What is a CMS?

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 offers two main functions. It makes it easy for you, the user, to manage the creation modification, organization and even the deletion of content with a simple interface. The creation of content operates much like other basic word processing tools and allows you to format your content as you see fit " all without HTML knowledge.

2. Secondly, CMS handles the delivery of your content to your website. Once youve made any updates to the content on your site, your CMS takes care of delivering it to your site " no need for a third party webmaster to handle the job.

Benefits of CMS

CMS offers a number of benefits for the busy internet entrepreneur. These benefits begin with the ability to create, store, and manage a ton of content without HTML programming skills.

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.

Create professionally designed pages. CMS offers a function called WYSIWYG, which stands for What You See is What You Get. This is a web page editor that allows for copy and paste formatting and it works quite well for those who dont have the time nor the inclination to learn HTML. You can format your content as you see fit including bold formatting, varying fonts, and embedded text links.

Unlimited access. CMS is a web based system which means you can access your content from any computer with an internet connection.

- A CMS makes improving your search engine rankings much easier. Users are able to upload relevant content on a regular basis, which is perhaps the best way to appeal to Google, Yahoo, and MSNs ranking algorithms.

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. - 16089

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