Broadly speaking, there are three categories of taxonomy that apply to the digital marketing space: Web, Content, and Campaign. We’ll review each of them in a series of blog posts in an attempt to better explain their similarities, differences, and importance when considering your digital marketing efforts.
Content taxonomy is the process of organizing and categorizing pieces of digital content in a way that makes it easier to know what the user is seeing (or reading, watching, or hearing) when they visit your site. Simply put, a content taxonomy has tags (categorical descriptions of what you want to know, such as ‘color’) and values (the possible values, such as ‘red’, ‘blue’, and ‘navy blue’). The lens in which you categorize your content taxonomy will reveal if there are aspects of your content that drive certain events or interactions more frequently than others.
By creating a taxonomy for your digital content, it can be broken down into smaller, more specific categories; this makes it easier for users to find information based on their interests or needs. And for our analytics purposes, making it easier for us to figure out content users are most interested in. For example, a website that sells different types of clothing could categorize its products (i.e. content) based on item type, such as shirts, pants, dresses, etc. The products could be further divided into subcategories, such as color, size, brand, and so on, which would help users find what they’re looking for more easily. Likewise, a display ad campaign could have content taxonomy that is organized into color, image, word count, or keywords; these content tags enable you to quickly learn that anytime the background color is red, you get more click-throughs, or anytime the word FLASH SALE appears, your CPC ROI is through the roof!
Content taxonomy is also important to help with content strategy and the tactical execution of that strategy. Using the earlier example, if you begin to see positive trends when FLASH SALE appears on the display ad, you can pivot your email blasts to include that in the subject line, or create a landing page that includes specially priced items. You see, people are not comfortable with change, so if they are drawn to FLASH SALE why would you confuse them and call it ONE DAY SALE or SIZZLIN’ SAVIN’S? Give the people what they want! 
Let us also address how the idiom “garbage in, garbage out” applies to taxonomy; this means that if you don’t have a standard definition of tags and values then you use you won’t be able to compare apples to apples with your analytics. Following the earlier example, if one person categorizes a color as “blue” and someone else as “navy blue” the value for the tag ‘color’ is different and therefore incomparable to each other.
At Roots Analytics, we have a core guideline for all content taxonomy. We’ll offer you standard fields, which you are able to customize for your brand. If the color yellow is verboten at your company, we won’t even list it as an option! You will receive guidance on what is – and is not – important to tag and track, because believe it or not, there is definitely such a thing as too much data! Tagging things like your call to actions, audience type, or even strategic intent will help you compare your blogs, ads, emails, and videos to figure out what’s helping move your audience through the funnel and guiding them to take the action you desire.
Here’s how we’ve tagged this blog, using the Roots taxonomy framework. Let us know what you think!
| TYPE: | text |
| BRANDED: | true |
| LANGUAGE: | english |
| STRATEGIC INTENT: | evergreen |
| CONTENT PURPOSE: | educational |
| CALL TO ACTION: | click through > contact us |
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