We've all done it. "It's just a quick look" we tell ourselves. "What harm can it bring?"

We don't hate our houses but we can't seem to stop ourselves. We load up Zillow on our phones and search away. First we look in our area and filter by "Home Type"... we see options for: "Houses", "Townhomes", etc.

Then we filter by "Home Price", "Let's start with a minimum $2 million to keep myself realistic."

Three bedrooms just isn't enough, "Let's only see houses with a minimum of five bedrooms. Might as well have at least five bathrooms too."

The power of taxonomies

And there you go! Before I wrote a single thing about them, you were already intimately familiar with the concept and value of having good taxonomies and how it helps your users interact with your content.

Taxonomies can be for anything! Any way that you can group content together can be a taxonomy. It could an attribute such as color, size, etc. Or it could be that you want to create a "series" of posts. You can use a "series" taxonomy and the terms within it to connect pieces of content around the same series. There really is no end to the information you can use when creating taxonomies. But, how do you know how and when to use them?

Let's dissect them a bit to better understand how we can use them for ourselves. This isn't an exhaustive list, but these are the key things we think about when considering taxonomies:

Taxonomies help you, your users, and LLMs (Large Language Models) determine who you are

We like to think of the taxonomies for our sites as the pillars that help to reinforce or define what your site is about. This is helpful for you as the site owner to clearly define your goals. If you have clearly defined taxonomies, they help you determine what content you should pursue and what content to create.

It is helpful for users and LLMs because it gives clear signals on who you are and what you are about. When you organize content around certain terms or ideas, you are explicitly declaring what you find important and what your content can help someone understand. Whether it is a topic tag such as "anxiety" or that a house has 4 bedrooms, having these flags gives a clear message about your content.

If you're using a system like WordPress, the "terms" for each of your taxonomies will also have it's own, dedicated archive. That way, all content associated with that term will be grouped together on it's own page which is indexable and browsable.

Taxonomies create a standardized way of organizing like attributes for your content.

Imagine how painful it would be if filtering the number of bedrooms on Zillow was "4", "Four", "4.5", or "Four and a half"? What about selecting "4" vs. "four" and it giving you different results? That would be maddening!

The number of bedrooms issue is a little contrived, but think about something like a "topic". You could have hundreds of topics that your content could be organized into. And, with each of those topics, you could have multiple ways of describing the same topic.

By organizing these types of things within a taxonomy, you can set those options, lock them, and when content is created, you don't have to decide how you'll describe this time.

Taxonomies create "character" for your content

When you define elements about a piece of content, you can create a display that allows people to quickly see and consume those details. When we know things like "number of bedrooms" or "lot size", we can display those items along with the post anywhere we use it throughout the site. These can be shown on the post as well as any "card" used to represent that post throughout the site.

How are you using taxonomies?

How are you using taxonomies on your site? If you're interested in how your content can be upgraded with some better organization and taxonomies, reach out! We'd love to chat.