How can you create and maintain a content taxonomy that works for your business?

1 Define your goals and scope

Before you start creating your content taxonomy, you need to define your goals and scope. What are you trying to achieve with your content? Who are your target audiences? What are their needs and preferences? How do you want to deliver and distribute your content? What are the current and future content types and formats you plan to use? These questions will help you determine the purpose, scope, and scale of your content taxonomy, and align it with your business objectives and user expectations.

2 Analyze your existing content

The next step is to analyze your existing content and identify its characteristics, gaps, and opportunities. You can use tools like content audits, inventories, and analytics to collect and evaluate data about your content assets, such as their titles, descriptions, keywords, metadata, formats, categories, tags, quality, performance, and usage. This will help you understand the current state of your content, and how it can be improved, updated, or removed to fit your content taxonomy.

3 Design your content hierarchy

Based on your goals, scope, and content analysis, you can design your content hierarchy, which is the main structure of your content taxonomy. It defines how your content assets are grouped and nested according to their similarities and differences, and how they are connected and navigated by users. You can use techniques like card sorting, tree testing, and user research to create and validate your content hierarchy, and ensure that it reflects the mental models and expectations of your users.

4 Choose your content labels

Once you have your content hierarchy, you need to choose your content labels, which are the names and descriptions of your content groups and elements. They help users and search engines understand what your content is about, and how it relates to other content. You should choose clear, concise, and consistent labels that match your content attributes, topics, and relationships, and avoid jargon, ambiguity, or duplication. You can use tools like keyword research, competitor analysis, and user feedback to select and optimize your content labels.

5 Implement your content taxonomy

After you have your content hierarchy and labels, you need to implement your content taxonomy in your content management system (CMS) and website. You should use features and functions that support your content taxonomy, such as categories, tags, metadata, filters, facets, breadcrumbs, menus, links, and sitemaps. You should also test and debug your content taxonomy implementation, and ensure that it works properly and smoothly across different devices, browsers, and platforms.

6 Maintain your content taxonomy

Creating your content taxonomy is not a one-time project, but an ongoing process that requires regular maintenance and updates. You should monitor and measure the performance and effectiveness of your content taxonomy, using metrics like traffic, engagement, conversions, and feedback. You should also review and revise your content taxonomy, based on changes in your content, goals, scope, audience, or market. You should document and communicate your content taxonomy changes, and train your content team and stakeholders on how to use and follow your content taxonomy.

7 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?