Website Taxonomy: Organizing Content for Better User Engagement

Have you ever wondered how websites get discovered on Google? Search engine optimization and paid ads can put your content on top, but it boils down to having a well-organized taxonomy.

Website taxonomy may seem too technical, but it is less complicated than it sounds. It simplifies your website structure and content, optimizes the user experience, and increases brand awareness.

Here's everything you need to know about website taxonomy, including the different taxonomy categories and how to leverage taxonomy properly to reap maximum benefits.

Say you are looking for an easy 15-minute recipe on a kitchen recipe website. The home page contains recipes in different categories like chicken, seafood, pork, vegetables, etc.

Hover over every main category, and they lead to more specific options like soup, stir-fried, or baked. The page also suggests relevant information to your search. Because of the taxonomy structure, all information appears in a logical order.

Without a well-structured taxonomy, your website can become a mishmash of irrelevant content. It leads to a frustrating and chaotic web experience.

So, how exactly do website taxonomies benefit your brand?

A website’s taxonomy benefits both users and the brand. For starters, it makes navigation seamless for users and relevant content more discoverable.

Let's parse that down further.

1. Creates a Smooth User Experience

A website taxonomy provides a system that web developers and designers follow when creating a website. Like an organizational map, it ensures that all content and web assets are structured logically.

In effect, users have a more intuitive experience as they look for relevant content. It encourages them to browse longer and may convince them to move forward in their customer journey. It can push them to make a purchase or share your content.

2. Increases Search Engine Visibility

Search engines like Google rely on crawlers and search engine bots that scan the web for relevant keywords whenever someone looks up information. A website’s taxonomy aids your content organization so it can easily be found or indexed by search engines.

An existing taxonomy also makes your website highly visible on search results by increasing traffic and boosting content marketing. A carefully curated website structure is helpful, especially for smaller websites.

3. Prevents Duplicate Content Issues

Because website taxonomy or URL taxonomy creates a system, content management becomes more doable. A taxonomy structure helps reduce the likelihood of duplicating content, which may harm your search engine ranking.

There are different categories of URL taxonomy to choose from:

1. hierarchical taxonomy,
2. faceted taxonomy,
3. flat taxonomy,
4. network taxonomy.

Read on for an overview of what each website taxonomies cater to and how they organize content.

Hierarchical Taxonomy

A hierarchical website taxonomy is straightforward. Like a tree, all the information stems from the main trunk, which tackles a central theme. It branches into crucial category pages and splits into subcategories within your existing structure.

The levels of taxonomic categories and subcategories can be as many as you want. For example, when you want the latest news updates, you will search for a news site. Once there, news articles split into world, national, business, sports, and entertainment categories.

With a hierarchical structure, there are subcategories under top-level categories.

Example: Taza Chocolate

Taza Chocolate did a neat job of applying hierarchical taxonomy. The home page contains three main category titles: buy, learn, and visit. But as you hover over each taxonomic category, you can see other pages that contain more specific information. They can also easily get back to the main page when needed.

A hierarchical structure allows web visitors to explore more about the brand in detail.

Faceted Taxonomy

A faceted taxonomy is similar to hierarchical taxonomy but with a twist. Instead of searching through subcategories, users can access content based on filters. This allows users to refine their search based on facets or attributes.

Ecommerce brands often follow faceted taxonomies. When shopping for shoes online, instead of searching through pages and pages, you can toggle filters shoe size, colors, style, etc., to lead you to the right shoe model.

With a facet taxonomy, you can simplify overlapping and interrelated information, like thousands of shoe inventory, that may otherwise be complex to process. Your website creates a more accessible, efficient, and personalized experience. Using a facet taxonomy also encourages users to interact more with your brand.

Example: Glossier

Shopping for skincare and cosmetics can be overwhelming! There are so many things to consider.

To help its customers, Glossier integrated a filter feature where users can screen products according to their skin type and issues. All they have to do is tick the corresponding boxes, leading to relevant products!

Notice how robust the subcategories are in every category page content as well.

Flat Taxonomy

A flat website taxonomy typically has limited levels, letting users navigate your website easily. It focuses more on top-level categories than on multiple subcategories. That said, flat taxonomies are great for straightforward websites with minimal steps required.

Take a professional writer’s website, where there are usually only four categories: About Me, Works, Services, and a Contact page. Every category title opens up to a single web page of relevant information.

Example: Aileen’s Portfolio

Aileen has three website goals: showcase her work, tell her story, and convince visitors to get in touch. With a flat taxonomy, she has two category pages: work and info. Coupled with a modern and minimalist design, it’s a no-nonsense website that does the job!

Type 4. Network Taxonomy

With network taxonomy, order relies on relevance between categories. At the outset, they may seem random at times but are interrelated. So, how does this apply to websites?

Picture this: You want to order food and drinks online from a restaurant for dinner. The menu has different food types for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. The drinks category has hot beverages and cold beverages. As you tick your orders, some favorites or featured food and drinks across all categories appear on the side for you to consider.

This demonstrates how network taxonomy makes other content more visible. It also reinforces a positive user experience, suggesting related products customers may want to try.

Example: Golde

It can be time-consuming to order online, especially when presented with a multitude of options. Through Golde’s website, which follows a network taxonomy structure, it helps its customers by suggesting best-selling products accompanied by actual reviews. At the bottom of the page, the website links to related products that you may also like.

Choosing the appropriate taxonomy for your website depends on audience analysis, content volume, and website goals, among others.

Audience Analysis

Knowing what your audience wants and needs from your website can impact your choice of website taxonomy. After all, the website is made for them.

If you have a young market or digital natives as a target audience, a taxonomy that allows you to play with modern design and advanced features like animations can be appropriate. Older audiences may warrant a simple interface with larger buttons and easy-to-follow categories.

It also helps to defer to your target audience persona when strategizing your website’s taxonomy. Ask yourself:

• How much knowledge does my audience have about my business?
• What do they care about?
• What will make them visit your website?

Website Goals

Insights from audience analysis and research data are instrumental in setting website goals. Some examples of website goals to consider include:

• Create an easy-to-follow website navigation experience
• Make customers interested with related searches
• Enhance ranking on Google’s search results

Content Volume and Quality

Your content volume determines the complexity of your taxonomic structure. For multiple subcategories, a hierarchical taxonomy may be for you. If you are running an e-commerce store, then a faceted taxonomy is ideal.

Before choosing between hierarchical, flat, faceted, and network taxonomy, check out these additional tips for a strong start.

Involve Stakeholders

It helps to have different perspectives outside your team. With stakeholders involved, they can provide valuable and diverse insights to ensure that your taxonomy aligns with your goals. This is especially true if you have stakeholders from different backgrounds, like content creation and programming.

Including stakeholders in your taxonomy process ensures you have the support you need from creation to implementation and development. In effect, your content and strategies remain relevant.

Utilize User Feedback

User feedback plays a crucial role in shaping your website taxonomy as it keeps you in check with changing behavior and preferences. They reveal what features and content are lacking within a taxonomy, too.

When implementing search engine optimization, user feedback is instrumental in shedding light on terms and phrases you can integrate into your content. It also provides actionable insights to improve your website taxonomy.

Leveraging user feedback results in a well-planned taxonomy and high-quality website visible on search results.

Employ Usability Testing

A usability test helps validate the efficiency of your website taxonomy. It entails evaluating the user experience on various digital products—apps, websites, etc.

Usability testing can uncover design flaws that may hamper the performance of your website. It can test for balanced recall and precision when retrieving information. It also detects issues while users interact with your website.

Continuously Evolve

A well-kept and updated website taxonomy is critical in maintaining your website's ranking in search engine results. After all, search engines prioritize websites that are easier for crawlers to scan and index. Consistently maintaining and developing a website taxonomy also ensures it stays relevant, enhancing the overall user experience.

Step 1: Define Your Website Scope and Goals

Before you can define your goals, conducting an in-depth analysis of your audience is vital. It arms you with the knowledge for structuring your website taxonomy.

For instance, your audience may prefer to contact you directly via email. That said, a contact page is necessary for your website.

Knowing your audience can help segment your goals into primary and supporting objectives. It gives clarity to what your website should address.

Step 2: Conduct Keyword Research and Analysis

Weaving relevant keywords in your web taxonomy can impact your discoverability and search engine rankings. That said, leverage tools like Ahrefs for your keyword research. Consider keywords with high search volume and less competition from other smaller websites.

You can also look into your competitors and evaluate their set of keywords and how they rank. But most importantly, use keywords from your research that match the intent of your content. Once you have a definite list of keywords, organize them from the broadest to the most specific terms.

Step 3: Identify and Categorize Your Content

After having a good grasp of the scope and goals of your website, the next step is to categorize your content. Start by identifying the main topics that you want to include. Doing so helps in grouping similar content. Also, consider adding subcategories if the scope of your main categories is broad.

Step 4: Cluster Content Around Keywords and Link-Related Content

Websites need to retrieve information quickly. To do so, you can assign or tag content with specific keywords based on the searcher's intent.

Each cluster can represent a topic or a theme. In effect, it is easier to present related content, encouraging users to explore your website further.

Step 5: Test and Refine

The process of building a website taxonomy does not end upon implementation. Like everything else, it evolves alongside the changing needs of your website visitors. Hence, periodic testing is key to keeping your website taxonomy efficient and effective.

Testing and refining include combing through website metrics to see if you are achieving your set click-through rates and conversion results. Making adjustments to taxonomic structure, labels, or content placement prevents problems.

Now that your website taxonomy is ready, it is time to implement it. But before you begin, there are several considerations and tips to remember when you create taxonomies.

For starters, SEO is vital if you want to ensure that search engines can crawl and index your website for faster content discovery. Another point is integrating descriptive metadata or additional information that describes your content, like images and texts. This step is essential for optimizing your content management system, too.

Finally, always plan for scalability. As your entire site grows, it can accommodate new pages without changing the existing content context and website structure.

Work with a professional website design agency for a branded website that ticks all the boxes!