Eden Platform by Preation - SEO Friendly Hosted CMS System

The Preation Eden Platform is a new, user-friendly Content Management System (CMS) which enables the owners of small businesses to update and optimize their own websites from their own computers, and with very little technical knowledge. Preation's Eden CMS provides on-screen pointers that guide you through the process of search engine optimization.

The program is designed to be user-friendly, and highly accessible to individuals that do not have an extensive knowledge of web design. Website pages operated through Eden can be changed, added to, and updated in real time. The CMS comes with a staggering number of graphical features, which allow you to drag and drop online image files into your website, upload multiple images at once, and keep all your content in extensive and comprehensive multimedia storage. The Eden CMS also includes a full native XHTML templating system so that simple (and even complex) changes can be made quickly, without the costly need for technicians. The most unique feature about the Preation CMS is automated search engine optimization.

Eden Platform is the only website content management system that does search engine optimization for you. Other content management systems claim to be SEO friendly but they still require the user to have an established expertise in website development and search engine optimization in order to take advantage of their SEO features. Eden Platform allows users with no technical or web marketing expertise to optimize their websites for the search engines by displaying prioritized step-by-step instructions directly within the website editing interface.
The Eden Platform provides the following functionality:

• an editable, intuitive and code-free web-based interface
• drag-and-drop pages, content, images, and documents to create unique layouts
• edit your website as visitors will see it
• drag-n-drop site structure reorganization
• centralized resource library for images, videos, files, etc.
• advanced content elements for testimonials, contact forms, calendars and event registration

Specific SEO optimization functionalities include:

• A native optimization engine that analyzes site content and visitors, and recommends actions
• On-screen suggestions walk you through the process of creating a highly optimized website
• An optimization dashboard that displays a score for each page
• Optimization rules updates in response to changes in search engine algorithms
• XHTML Strict compliance
• Section 508 capable

The process

The sign-up process was quick and easy. After providing a few details, I was instantly taken to my dashboard.
After signing up, the first thing I wanted to do was to add pages to my test website. So I clicked “PAGES” in the top navigation menus. Adding and editing content looked like a fun. I found the “page tree” containing the visualized structure of my site. From there I could:

• Zoom the structure;
• Expand and collapse page sub-sections,
• Preview any page;
• Edit any page;
• Show each page in the main navigation menus, etc:

Each page editor looked very usable: I could change the placement of any element by simply dragging and dropping. The page meta tags and template could be controlled though SETTING tab:

Uploading files seemed also very easy. By accessing FILES module I was given the option to upload a file, edit it, organize files in folders and view all previously uploaded files:

So far the process seemed fun, I kept on browsing…

Some features I really loved:

Dashboard

The dashboard contains a lot of important information about your website including:

• News about recent updates to Eden Platform
• Contact information for your Account Representative
• The number of recent pageviews your website has received
• The number of recent unique visitors to your website
• A list of your most visited web pages
• Your current optimization score
• A list of off-site events that might have affected website traffic

Flexible system of permission distribution

Working in an SEO team, I always prefer the tool I am using to allow a flexible platform for permission management. I want to effectively distribute tasks among my team members. The Eden Platform offers a really nice option for that.
If your account has the proper administrative privileges you can add, edit, and delete users from your website. You can assign any “group” for each user to manage his permissions. A group stands for the set of rights and privileges a user have. By default, there are three groups:

• Administrators;
• Guests;
• Visitors.

You can edit or delete each group. You can also add a new group by providing:

• The group name;
• Description;
• Type of privileges.

After that the permissions are controlled from the “Authentication” module. See how flexible it is:

1. Setup your different user groups within the Users module.
2. If you would like to have one particular page accessible to one group but not the other, scroll down the page until you see “Pages” on the left hand column.
3. Find the page you’d like to set as private, turn on the permission for the group of your choice by clicking the red dot that lines up with the group and the page, turning it green.
4. To limit access to this page to all other groups, simply click each corresponding dot to red (note: you should leave the admin group’s dot green).
5. Now any user within the group that’s allowed access will be prompted with a password protected interface when trying to access the page, where they will enter in their username and password. Once entered, they are “logged in” and can access the page without having to retype their credentials.
6. You can also limit access to any or all modules within the Authentication module by following the same steps as above.

How-to Guides

The platform is really easy to use due to extensive help guides:

• There’s a Quick-start guide;
• Each section has “Quick help” guide explaining it;
• There’s also the knowledge base containing FAQ and other handy troubleshooting material.

Add to this very fast and efficient customer support: on signing-up I was instantly contacted by a team representative (who found my site in Google, looked through it and dropped me a message via my contact form). It looks like solid training and support are included with all full Eden accounts.

Optimization

Once you are done with learning the tool and performing some basic tasks (like adding pages, content and distributing user permissions among those who are going to be in charge of each page), you can go ahead and optimize your site.
Every page has an overall score from 1 to 100 that represents its current level of optimization. As you edit your Content elements this score will be updated each time you hit save. To increase your page score follow the suggestions displayed in the optimization.
The highest priority suggestion is automatically displayed in the optimization panel. To view all suggestions simply click on ‘view all’ to expand the list. The suggestions that need the most work are highlighted in red and yellow and suggestions that are already performing well are highlighted in green. As you make the changes indicated in each suggestion your page optimization score will increase.
Each recommendation has HOW? and WHY? buttons: hover over any of them and you will get specific instructions and explanations:

The traffic stats:

Eden platform does support third-party traffic analytics software (like Google Analytics) but it also has some nice built-in feature. I haven’t seen it in action because my test site hasn’t received any traffic yet, but from the screenshots I found on help pages it looked like a nifty tool.
For example, the dashboard contains the following visualized graph of your web site performance:

Eden is offered with no setup fees and it starts at just $10/month.