Website Taxonomy Overhauled

Web Site Tags Examined and Updated

The past couple of weeks have seen the taxonomy used on graphicline.co.za completely revamped. Unused or redundant tags were deleted (except for a few that remain for planned articles), header images added along with a short description of the tagged content and a meta description and a list of tags added to the site.

Search Indexing for Tag Archives

Mostly, tag archive pages are “noindexed” for search engines to avoid duplication problems. During the overhaul I was able to weed out the ones that were still indexed – created before I set the system to automatically noindex new tags using the Drupal Meta Tags Quick module.

Some tag archives were selected for search engine indexing, being careful to avoid those with very similar results from being indexed as well. Indexing taxonomy (tags and categories) can create really big problems when it comes to content duplication and search engines.

Tags as Categories

(Image credit: Wikipedia)

For now graphicline.co.za is only using a single taxonomy vocabulary – tags. With all the other content types and structures available I have not yet found a need to provide further ways of organising content.

The parent/child relationship has been used during the overhaul to organise some tags into a more structured form. Tag archive pages have their own ‘breadcrumbs’ – the navigation hierarchy shown above the titles – that uses the relationship to good effect.

A Better Visitor Experience

Tag archive pages now offer a visitor a better experience. The pages have more visual appeal than before; each with its own banner image and description, as well as a content teaser with a ‘featured’ image for each article listed.

So What Comes Next?

The two biggest areas that needed attention (taxonomy and Drupal user guides) is now largely complete, and the smaller areas can be given some attention.

Navigation will probably be the next area under the microscope. While working through existing content I have seen a few ways to improve the breadcrumb structure, as well as options to offer better ways of structuring menus. How the navigation will end up is something that will develop once the process begins. But this next phase will have to wait until the current client workload has been cleared.

Related articles

• Views Reloaded (graphiclineweb.wordpress.com)
• WordPress Page Categories and Tags (graphiclineweb.wordpress.com)

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