Taxonony is the practice of categorisation and classification. And with regards to your website, it is how you categorise your pages and posts, and order them in the menu structure. Taxonomy has implications for how you draw data to different pages, and also the user experience of your site as a whole.
Why is taxonomy important?
It’s not just a way to navigate your website via the menu, the taxonomy is so much more:
- It influences the UX of your site
- A good taxonomy helps indicate to Google the authority and breadth of your site
- It can help organise your site in complex ways to maximise the visibility of your content
- From a technical perspective, a well thought-out taxonomy can help when drawing certain content to different pages. Even simple ‘category’ pages are enhanced when you have constructed your taxonomy well.
Think of it as a way to deliver the right information to the right places, as well as giving your content a chance to grow and expand with ease.
The basics of taxonomy are categories and tags. These can be optimised for SEO to be included in Google search results. Categories should be kept to a simple structure, and not have too many sub categories (as this adds longer URLs).
Use tags as the second layer of search terms. These can help add a focus to searches, as well as a brief note of what to expect from the post. Tags are an integral part of the meta data that guides search engines and helps your customers find what they need.
Think of your users, not your own classification preferences
An important thing to think about when designing your taxonomy is that it should be for your users. Don’t overcomplicate it with too narrow a focus purely for your own preference. Consider SEO, the most impactful categories for your users; and how you can have a simple UX-centric taxonomy instead of an unnecessarily complicated one.
