Taxonomy
A taxonomy is a controlled system used to classify and group content according to shared characteristics.
It defines the categories, tags, labels, or other classifications that help organize a body of information.
What It Means in Practice
A resource library might classify content by:
- Topic
- Content format
- Audience
- Industry
- Difficulty
- Product type
Those classifications can then support browsing, filtering, related content, and internal organization.
How It Differs From Hierarchy
A site hierarchy describes where pages sit in relation to parent and child pages.
A taxonomy describes how content is classified.
One article can generally occupy one place in a visual sitemap while belonging to several useful taxonomy terms.
For example, one article might be classified as:
- Accessibility
- Playbook
- Small Business
without needing three separate copies of the page.
Why It Matters
Taxonomy becomes increasingly important as a site grows.
Without defined classification rules, categories and tags tend to multiply unpredictably.
That can lead to:
- Duplicate categories
- Nearly identical tags
- Empty archives
- Confusing filters
- Content that becomes difficult to retrieve
- Inconsistent relationships between resources
Common Problems
Common problems include:
- Creating a new tag for every article
- Using singular and plural versions of the same concept
- Mixing audience, format, and topic in one uncontrolled list
- Categories that overlap without clear rules
- Classification based on internal terminology
- Showing every taxonomy term publicly simply because it exists in the CMS
How to Improve
Define what each taxonomy represents before creating terms within it.
For example:
Topic taxonomy: Accessibility, SEO, Performance Format taxonomy: Guide, Field Note, Whitepaper Audience taxonomy: Tourism, Small Business, Agencies
Then maintain consistent naming rules.