Recruitment CMS software with SEO "Out of the box"
Most SEO’s are familiar with content management systems like WordPress or Joomla, but what happens when you’ve got a much larger, specialist project requiring more “brunt” out of the box? I’ve been reviewing a recruitment CMS package called dotVacancy3, a recruitment industry specific CMS platform from 4MAT.com
We’ve all seen content management systems that are pretty unfriendly to SEO’s, which is why the features of this CMS were a bit of a breath of fresh air. The folks at 4MAT were kind enough for me to take a few screenshots and blog about the features too!
Meta code manager
We’ve all seen meta code managers before but what sets dotVacancy apart is a global template manager, configurable by content type. That means that jobs pages, content pages and your campaigns can all have a unique meta code template configured from this screen. No more individual handcoding of meta, unless you really need to. See how database tags such as [COMPANYNAME] and [JOBTITLE] can be applied to ensure each meta description and title are unique?
Content manager and 301 redirects
The content manager on this CMS has a clever trick. You can change the friendly url to a page as many times as you like, and each time the CMS will set up a 301 redirect from the old url to the new. Rather than chaining redirects from A > B > C, if you’ve changed the URL a few times, the CMS will always cut out the “middleman” and redirect you from A > C or B > C.
Vacancy URLs don’t have to be auto generated
If you have a set of special vacancies that need their own URLs defining, no problem. The vacancy editor will allow you to manipulate the URL in any way you like. You can also overide the global meta code manager and tailor individual titles and descriptions too.
There were a lot more features than this, including the ability to administer how “expired vacancies” are displayed and managed, a robots.txt editor and an XML compliant, dynamic sitemap generator. It’s good to see so much thought put into the needs of an in house SEO team and features built for us out of the box and hopefully software like this will make 2009 a little easier!
5 Responses to “Recruitment CMS software with SEO "Out of the box"”
Leave a commentGreat article, thanks for the information. In my view sitemaps are critical to getting your site listed in Google/Yahoo etc. correctly.
Hi James, I’m afraid most SEO’s would disagree with your use of the word “critical”. Sitemaps can be a powerful way to help search engines discover your content (particulary vacancies in the context of this post) and provide a great channel to inform Google / Yahoo / MSN of updates to your site, however, there are many more important variables “to getting your site listed” in the major search engines. Hope that makes sense!
Hi Richard, interesting to see custom CMS’s used for Recruitment websites & SEO – feel free to take a look at the alternative approach. Use a free ‘community developed’ ATS (OpenCATS) and then write a Joomla module & component for the web presence. This allows all the usual Joomla SEF plugins to be used for job pages etc. I’d say best of both worlds? But I’d be really interested to hear your comments.
@RussH – the point of these larger “out of the box” systems is that including the SEO functionality, the software provides integration with all recruitment specialist systems such as Bond Adapt, Broadbean, etc. It’s all well and good to develop the system from scratch but when you’ve got an international, 12 interface website to build, free software just doesn’t cut it.
I was thinking of the flexibility of the tooling – I’m sure I don’t need to go to the old old argument of the number of developers on open source projects versus commercial. But the sooner we have an open system that can be tweaked by a community the sooner we’ll have an ideal tool. Anyway – nice review of the 4mat system – and as you say – very refreshing!