On average,
38% of visitors leave a site if they find it hard to navigate. Your website's structure can either ease the finding of information or make it harder. Taxonomy helps in directing and giving information fast. So, what exactly is website taxonomy?
Website taxonomy is the strategy in which the content is structured in silos to help readers find content quickly. Website posts are usually grouped in content silos based on how they relate to each other. A well-optimized website taxonomy improves your website's ranking on search engines such as Google, Bing, Yahoo, etc. Additionally, the website taxonomy structures your website in a way that makes it simpler for visitors to navigate, which drives more traffic and on-page duration.
Why Is it Important? What Do I Need to Execute?
There are a variety of methods to achieve the objectives of your website. Here are a few of them.
1) Show Related Content to Readers
Website taxonomy helps a reader find several related posts on your site without difficulties. For instance, you can organize your website by topic, content type, videos, podcasts, and so on.
This way, when a person opens one content type, related content will appear below or on a sidebar. Arranging content related to each other in one place helps you communicate with your readers effectively. This is because a reader will get what they expect in one place.
2) Better User Experience
Users who find it hard to navigate a website rarely come back. Therefore, it is crucial to give your readers the best user experience to market your content effectively.
Website taxonomy allows you to provide readers with personalized content that will seamlessly improve their experience. Adding more categories and subcategories to your site might complicate things, so it’s critical to organize your high-level categories that will house all the low-level categories thoughtfully.
3) Keyword Research
Perform keyword research and use the keywords for the major categories and subcategories on your site when creating a website taxonomy. The keywords should relate to the topics on your site to help users find information quickly.
Types of Website Taxonomy
You can use different types of website taxonomy, and here are some of the most common ones.
Flat taxonomy is not layered and includes a list of items starting with top-level categories. This method is mostly used on small websites with less content. If you use this method, don't put all your content on one page but split it into several pages for simplicity.
Websites with more content sections and categories will use hierarchical taxonomy. Hierarchical website taxonomies list top-level categories first, then list subcategories under the major categories. It goes down to more specific subfolders. It is vital to minimize the number of hierarchy levels to make it easier for readers to find relevant information.
Network taxonomy organizes your web content into associative categories, though it may also use hierarchical categories. The relationship between the categories is either basic or arbitrary and is meaningful to your website visitors. If you have a website with the "Most Popular" category, you can also add popular content that other visitors like to read about or visit.
Your website may have many categories with designated names. In this situation, a facet taxonomy will be ideal to use. Visitors can then find relevant content by looking for specific topics connected with multiple associations within your website.
You may have a website that sells shoes, for example. You may classify a pair of shoes under a given color, say blue. The same shoes may show up under another category — cheap shoes.
A website taxonomy is essential for your website, SEO-friendly content, and enhancing customer experience. Therefore, you should have a well-optimized website user-centered design! Contact
De Novo Digital for help with your website design needs today.
