These days, there are lots of good Content Management Scripts (CMS) that are free.  The 3 most popular ones these days tend to be Wordpress, Joomla, and Drupal.  If you  are thinking of using on of these, let me give you a quick rundown of the basics (in regards to functionality and SEO).

Wordpress

  • Easy to use.  Very simple and good for newbies.
  • Out of the box SEO is very good.
  • Has a lot of plugins that make SEO even better.
  • Google seems to love Wordpress sites.
  • Primary for blogs.

Joomla

  • Very versatile.  Has forum options among other things.
  • Easy to edit and use.
  • Out of the box SEO support might not be as good as Wordpress, but there are some nice plugins you can use like SimpleSEO and Joomla 1.5 SEO Patch.

Drupal

  • Very complex and powerful.
  • Can be used for almost any type of site.
  • Lots of options and very versatile.
  • Can optimize it for search engines very well.
  • Might be a little too much for newbies to handle.

Having said all that, I still believe that content is key.  Even if a CMS is perfectly optimized for search engines, good content will still be the thing that gets you ranked.

So, if you are starting a new site.  I recommend picking one of the free software packages described above and start developing!  Great content combined with one of these CMS’s will be guaranteed to get you some good search engine ranks.