I have found myself talking about taxonomy a lot recently. Taxonomy is a big job in a website project, but it’s something stakeholders may not consider early enough in an implementation project. I refer to taxonomy as a big job not only because it can be a lot of work, but also because it is the foundation of your site search functionality. It’s not the “sexy” part of search. It’s not the AI capability, the typeahead, the autocorrect…it’s the wiring into all of those features. When the wiring in your house is not set up correctly, you’ll start to see issues all over the place that may seem unrelated at first. Let’s discuss how that relates to setting up a solid taxonomy model.
What is Taxonomy?
First, let’s define taxonomy. The dictionary definition, as it relates here, is “a system of classification.” This system of classification is often hierarchical. The classification system we are discussing is for your site content. For pages, documents, and other content to show up in site search and other dynamic components around your site, your business must create a hierarchical tagging system and tag all content appropriately. Your content is also organized in site navigation components according to your taxonomy structure.
One common taxonomy model is categorizing content by industry. Industries can have sub-industries and even sub-sub-industries, following the hierarchical classification model I just mentioned. Organizing by product type, subtype, and so on is also a common model, especially on eCommerce websites.
Why is Taxonomy Important?
Many more components are driven by search technology than most realize. It’s not just the generic search box, search results, and filter components. Search and taxonomy drive popular components across many sites, such as those that suggest related content. A lot of planning goes into creating the logic for these components, but they still won’t work as expected unless the base taxonomy model that drives them is sound. Unexpected behavior in these components is often attributed to development defects when it is actually underlying taxonomy or tagging issues.
Working through this logic when implementing new functionality or refreshing your taxonomy can get very complex. You will decide on the logic for populating related content based on your chosen categories and subcategories and how closely they relate to each other. In addition to related components and search results, taxonomy drives filters and dropdowns. Some of these may be dynamic, and options in subsequent filters can change based on a user’s previous selection. Those relationships and dependencies must also be discussed, mapped out, and documented for the development and testing process.
Taxonomy also has an impact on your website’s SEO and ranking. Search engines prioritize sites that are well organized, and implementing a solid taxonomy will give search engines a clear understanding of the content on your site and how it is organized. Just as labeling and organizing your content properly makes it easier for human visitors to find what they need; it also makes it easier for (friendly) robots to find what they need.
Best Practices
Here are some best practices for implementing taxonomy on your website:
- Taxonomy is a massive dependency that must be completed early in a site implementation project. It drives a lot of complex logic, many estimations will depend on it, and it will be a blocker for implementing many foundational components on a website. You should complete most of the business work on taxonomy during Discovery or prior to the website build kickoff.
- Implementation partners should have a chance to review and clarify some aspects of the taxonomy, and there should be room for at least one more iteration after the partner review.
- Keep it simple! Why?
- Your taxonomy should be thorough and representative of your business, but it should not be overly complex. Your model should allow for future modifications and scaling as your business grows and changes. It will be tough to change an overly convoluted taxonomy structure.
- Most of the taxonomies that clients have delivered to us at Perficient have been in Excel. You can organize your tagging structure and show the hierarchical relationships just fine in an Excel document. You don’t need fancy tools.
- Complicated, multi-level taxonomies = complicated and long URLs.
Implementing Taxonomy in Sitecore
Content Tree & Templates
First and foremost, you should structure your content tree in Sitecore to match your taxonomy model. You can set up page templates to correlate to this model. An example would be creating a template for an industry page and a subindustry page and creating rules to only allow a subindustry page to be inserted underneath an industry page.
Utilizing Attributes in Sitecore Search
Sitecore Search utilizes the concept of attributes. Attributes represent different pieces of meta data in content items. From the Sitecore Search documentation: “Sitecore Search uses attributes in several different ways: to display information about content to visitors, to sort, filter, rank, or recommend content items, and to generate statistics.” You should absolutely use the tags associated with your content items (“entities” in Sitecore Search) as attributes to drive site and content engagement.
Attributes in Sitecore Search can be used as facets and/or filters and can also be used for personalization. As I mentioned earlier, it is common for elements of your taxonomy to be used in filters and dropdowns. These should be planned out and utilized wisely. As for personalization, this feature in Sitecore Search will customize a user’s search results by finding results that are similar based on a personalized attribute. Basically, Sitecore Search will show results based on the users’ past interactions with similar content if personalization is turned on for particular attributes.
Wrap Up
When a client recently asked me what the biggest tasks ahead of them were before a site build, taxonomy was one of my first thoughts. It is such a foundational task from a business and a technical perspective. Every business should commit to putting in the work to establish a solid initial taxonomy model and should also commit to revisiting this taxonomy every few years to make sure it is still relevant.
Perficient provides industry expertise combined with end-to-end digital services. If you need guidance with taxonomy or anything else regarding your website, contact our team.
