Taxonomy is the system of creating a group of different elements in a hierarchical structure. In this article, you will learn about website taxonomy.
Today, the audience is looking to get their answer and solve their needs as quickly as possible through search. The user wants to get his answer quickly, easily, and without going through many steps and navigating the entire site. The structure that the user expects to see on your site is called taxonomy. From a scientific point of view, taxonomy is a classification method that categorizes different factors and subjects based on their characteristics and characteristics. Website taxonomy can be a decisive indicator of user experience and also has a great impact on your ranking in search engines. In this article, we will define website taxonomy and introduce you to the types of taxonomy so that you can design the appropriate structure for your website based on your use of it.
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Website taxonomy and its relation to URLs and subdirectories
Taxonomy, or in other words, the structure of the website, is directly related to the structure of the URL so that the URLs are designed in such a way that they can reflect the topic of their page in the best way. It doesn’t matter which website you are on, your domain is always the same. However, the subdirectories may change as each page changes.
For example, let’s say your domain is www.samplewebsite.com. You probably have subdirectories that are related to the content of each section. If your domain has a “contact us” or “special discounts” page, the URLs of each will be different according to the topic of each page, meaning that each page will have an address similar to www.samplewebsite.com/contact or www.samplewebsite. com/offer will have. But is website taxonomy just about changing the look of the URL? How important is it? Is it also useful in SEO? In the continuation of the discussion, we will discuss the importance of structuring.
Why is site taxonomy important?
A proper structure can improve user behavior towards your site, especially when site content is organized and produced according to a predetermined schedule. If the user gets the exact answer to the question he is looking for by visiting your site, he will recognize you as a reliable source and spend a longer time (time on page) on your website.
It is difficult for users to communicate with websites that do not have a clear and standard structure, and usually, these types of sites confuse the user. According to statistics, if a website is not structured properly, 38% of visitors will leave it very quickly.
Proper taxonomy has a great impact on improving the results of search engines or SEO and helps you a lot, making it easier for the crawlers to index the relevant page. Let’s say you have the domain www.recipe.com where you put recipes for different dishes. Since you know that the users who visit your site have different tastes and are looking for different recipes, then you must be looking to create categories for all types of food to bring them closer to their goal as quickly as possible. Also, keep in mind that SEO and website design are digital marketing channels, you can participate in the digital marketing course to learn other channels in this field.
For example, if your audience is looking for a recipe for a dessert, they prefer to be able to quickly see dessert recipes through categories. In such a situation, if you have not categorized your content, it is likely that the audience will not be able to satisfy their needs and will leave your site with dissatisfaction.
In this example, the page URL could be www.recipes.com/desserts. By choosing this address, the user will know what he will find when he enters this page. Also, the search engines will understand the subject address and its meaning and understand when and for which users they should show this page.
But what is the proper structure when designing a website? How to categorize the content so that both the audience can get what they want and the search engines are not misled. We will discuss this issue further.
4 important points when designing a website taxonomy
Every website should be able to communicate with its users at the same time and on the other hand, it should be understandable for search engines. Your effort should be to maintain a balance between these two items. Producing numerous but low-quality content will result in not satisfying the user’s needs.
However, to design the proper structure of your website, you need to consider several things:
1- Know your target audience and persona!
Like all conventional marketing techniques, knowing the audience is the most important thing to understand the audience. Who is your audience? Why did it enter your site? What are you looking for? Understanding their needs is critical for you to improve your content strategy.
Let’s go back to the previous example to understand this concept more. What do you think the user who enters the recipes site is looking for and what are his needs? Of course, he is looking for help to cook. But do they have other needs that you can address? For example, you may be able to offer him cooking utensils or quality food.
If you take some time and examine the users of your site and their needs, it can give you great help in continuing the process of designing your site.
2- Update your keywords!
The next step is to know the audience and their needs, to take appropriate measures to keep this audience on the site. Maybe your initial plan and strategy when launching your website can get you on the results page, but adding additional keywords that match your future categories is critical. In other words, you need to update your keyword list over time according to the changes you make in the structure of your website.
This time, suppose you have a website related to tourism, where you put various points that a tourist should follow while traveling. With a little searching, you may find that in addition to travel tips, your audience may also want information on travel insurance, bus tickets, or even camping gear. Knowing this information allows you to update your content production process and meet more needs of your audience.
3- Be regular and unified!
The closer your content is to the category in which it is located, the easier it will be for users to understand and access it.
For example, there are 4 different categories in blog Hubspot: service, sales, marketing, and website. Each content is assigned to one of these 4 parts according to its topic. This systematic and integrated structure makes it easier for the user to reach the information he wants.
This structure also has a high impact on SEO because Google robots give fewer points to sites that have a poor structure, and sites that have irrelevant and irregular content are known as spam.
4- Complex structure prohibited!
There may be hundreds of different categories that you want to include on your website, but never forget that “the less, the better”.
An optimal taxonomy should be focused and understandable. At www.recipes.com, which is all about recipes, simplicity means keeping a low number of categories with more general topics. So that you can have a general category related to baking and put all the commands related to this field in it.
For example, if someone is looking for baking recipes, they will go to www.recipes.com/baking, and if they want to see an apple pie recipe, they will go to www.recipes.com/baking/apple-pie.
Types of website taxonomy
After you’ve identified your audience and personas and chosen your categories, you need to evaluate and implement the best taxonomy structure for your site. In this section, we will mention different types of taxonomies so that you can implement the best one for your website.
flat taxonomy website
This category is a list of general categories needed. All categories have a single value compared to each other. This taxonomy is suitable for small websites that do not have a lot of content.
For example, a medical center website does not have much content to publish. The first page of the website should contain only 4 or 5 categories such as “About Us”, “Contact Us”, “Make an Appointment”, “Collection Address” and “Services”. Users who visit this website do not need more information than this.
Hierarchical Taxonomy website
In this type of taxonomy, categories are arranged based on their importance. Larger sites usually use this type. Moving down a hierarchical structure means that categories and topics become more detailed. With this, users can quickly navigate between different sections and categories. Search engines will also recognize this connection well.
For example, hubspot.com displays three main categories at the top of the page: software, pricing, and resources. Each of those categories is general and broad. If a user clicks on them, more detailed categories will be brought up and shown to them. It is important to note that there should not be too many categories and sub-categories, as too many categories may be confusing and confusing for users and search engine crawlers.
Network Taxonomy website
Grid structuring involves organizing content into related and related categories. The important point in this category is its comprehensibility for users.
For example, the “Most Popular” category on a website might contain a list of different articles covering a wide range of topics popular with the audience. However, what they all have in common is the high ratings, high views, and reposts they have received.
Faceted taxonomy website
When subjects can be assigned to several different categories, facet classification is used. Sites that use this structure allow users to find the content they want by sorting based on desired variables and filtering.
For example, Nike has a wide range of products. Although Nike has different categories for different shoes and apparel, it also uses sub-categories related to color, size, and price. “Cheap” is also displayed.
Take the time to taxonomy your website
Creating and maintaining a successful website classification that is understandable to users and search engines has a vital effect on advancing your marketing goals. If other elements of your site are already optimized for other SEO ranking factors, adding structured taxonomy will help your site rank higher in search engine results and, as a result, keep users on your site longer.