5 Steps to getting reports and website to the top of search engines

This powerful search engine optimization (SEO) presentation demonstrates how search result rankings are affected by some simple but important steps you must take to get your reports and information to the top of search engines.

CLICK HERE TO VIEW SLIDESHOW: Getting your reports and website to the top of search engines

Successful Interwoven Teamsite CMS deployment

Imagine that! There is a successful Interwoven Teamsite CMS deployment in the Canadian federal government. Human Resources Development Canada (HRDC) deployed Interwoven with the Teamsite module.

Check out a successful deployment of Interwoven in the federal government: HRSDC website

HRDC has over a 100 self-publishers - so integration and user adoption were skillfully handled at HRDC. Congratulations to HRDC's IT and business teams. Quite an accomplishment!

2010 Update: Self-publishing in this instance required a two-person team per publishing division: an html coder and a web communications advisor. No WYSIWG editor was installed meaning specialized coding skills still required.

The search continues for the best-in-class enterprise CMS for non-coders!!!

What You Should Look for in a CMS

While there are many things to look for when considering a content management system (CMS) there are a four considerations that are the most important:

1. Quick and easy installation with a helpful user community
2. Simple administration interface to ease user adoption
3. Add-on modules that easily add extra functionality as required
4. Simple template design

Choosing a CMS

I have used a lot of Content Management Systems (CMS) over the years, everything from a custom developed CMS, to a simple CMS, to an industry standard CMS, to open source CMS. There are key factors to choosing, deploying, using, and widely adopting a new CMS. The most important factors relate to technology integration and self-publishing user adoption:

Technology integration

1. Review your existing technology environment. What technology stack are you using? Research and choose a CMS that integrates and deploys easily because integration will be one of the biggest sources of failure - and the biggest financial cost to your organization. Enterprises CMSs that I have used are Sharepoint and Interwoven. 

2. Your other choice is an Open Source CMS which can be deployed stand-alone to quickly migrate existing content and get your new site easily deployed. Once deployed you can spend the time integrating with the existing technology stack. Good open source options that I have used are Joomla, WordPress and Drupal. This CMS Rating Guide accurately describes how users rate the many OpenSource CMS options.

User adoption

Other than how easily your existing techology integrates, the only big thing you have to think about is how easy it will be to have internal users adopt and self-publish in your new CMS. This should be treated as a separate project, after the new site(s) is deployed.  Best practices include creating:

• governance for your new CMS
• publishing workflows
• training guides and tutorials
• first and second level user support
• user support site
• CMS rollout schedule starting with internal users who are eager to be your champions
• simplified admin panel

The big thing here is making sure the admin interface is easy to use - strip or comment out any fields that aren't required. Your users will thank you and your user adoption/self-publishing success rate will sky-rocket.
Check out the CMS best practice links posted on the side of my blog.