Meta titles and descriptions, every page.

These directly affect how your pages appear in search results and how likely people are to click through. If your CMS has the fields, use them, don't leave them blank or duplicated across pages.

Structured data (schema).

A CMS that outputs proper schema markup (Organization, Article, FAQ, etc.) helps search engines understand your content properly, which can lead to richer search results — star ratings, FAQ dropdowns, and more.

Image optimisation.

Alt text isn't just an SEO checkbox, it's accessibility too. Make sure every image uploaded through your CMS gets a proper description, and keep image file sizes sensible so pages load fast.

A real sitemap and robots.txt.

These should be generated automatically by your CMS and kept accurate, outdated or missing sitemaps quietly hurt how thoroughly search engines index your site.

Clean URLs.

`/about` and `/blog/your-post-title` read better to both users and search engines than `/index.php?page=about`. A good CMS handles this without you thinking about it.

Page speed.

A lean CMS with no unnecessary plugin weight will almost always outperform a heavier generic platform, and page speed is a direct ranking factor.

Consistent publishing.

Search engines reward sites that are actively maintained. A CMS with a genuinely usable blog and page builder makes it realistic to publish regularly, rather than something that only happens when you can afford a developer's time.

None of this requires guesswork or paid tools, it requires a CMS that gives you the controls, and the habit of actually using them.