Traditional Websites only work if you are prepared to throw money at them. Lots of money. Continuously.

This is because your website only works if people see it. You need traffic. This comes either from paid advertising or a strong SEO strategy or both. A key part of SEO is having new content added to your site on a regular basis. The cost of paying web developers to update your content is prohibitive and inefficient. It is a duplication of effort because you have to write it first anyway.

This is where Content Management Systems come into their own.

* You can make changes to your website content any time and with no technical skills at all. Better still, you can authorise any one of your employees to do it for you.
* You can update your website from anywhere in the world.
* You can update your website any time, from anywhere AT NO COST.
* You can change the keywords in your site metatags as easily as changing the content - (If that last one was a bit too technical just take my word for it - it is a very good thing.)

Imagine you are sitting in an airport lounge late one Friday afternoon. You have just had a very positive business meeting with a client who has given you the best testimonial you have ever heard. You have 20 minutes to boarding time. You fire up your notebook, log onto your website and paste the testimonial into the front page and click PUBLISH. Now you have a problem. What are you going to do with the remaining 15 minutes until you board the plane?

With a traditional website you would have sent an email to your web development company asking for a quote to upgrade the front page, waited until Monday to get the quote, sent off an approval including detailed instructions on what you want done. Then you wait. And wait. And....no, actually you probably wouldn't have even bothered because it was just too much hassle.

Traditionally Content Management Systems have been seen as very SEO unfriendly. In the case of Joomla! that is no longer the case for a number of reasons.

1. Open Source projects like Joomla! have an army of supporters constantly developing the core system as well as extentions that can improve the system. One of the areas where Joomla! at least has seen huge advancements is in the SEO tools available to users. And like Joomla! Many of these tools are free.

2. Joomla Template designers are now producing templates that are more and more search engine friendly. The number and quality of template designers around the world continues to rise and they compete intensely to have their product at the leading edge of technology and usability.

3. Blogs. Like CMS, many blogs have dynamically generated pages which search engines have traditionally disliked. But the popularity of blogs seams to have lead search engines to develop much better ways of handling dynamic pages.

One of the key advantages offered by Open Source CMS's like Joomla! is that anyone can quickly learn to develop a website. That's all very well if you have the time to learn. For most businesses it makes more sense to pay a professional to develop the initial site, but you should always make sure the developer gives you sufficient training and access permissions so that you can take control of your content once the initial project is completed.

Remember:

* Most Computer Programmers know zip about marketing
* No-one knows your business like you do
* Your website is POTENTIALLY the most influential and profitable marketing document your company owns

You can't afford to risk leaving control of your website content in the hands of a programmer. Let them do the technical stuff - you control the content.