How content tagging enables better content management

Working with digital content can be like trying to find the proverbial needle in a haystack. In fact, it can be even more daunting because the virtual haystack that we’re dealing with is full of needles that all look very similar, and you’re working to a deadline to find a specific needle for the job you have in mind.

We need a way of making our metaphorical needle search easier and more efficient. Ideally, one that can not only identify content from vast databases of stored text, images, videos, audio files, and so on, but organize content by type and function (and other classifications), so that we can retrieve the content we need, and publish it, as efficiently as possible.

Let’s drop the needle metaphor — because we do actually have useful ways to organize and find digital content, and one of the most effective is content tagging.

In this post, we’re going to discuss content tagging, and its value in content management. We’ll look at the common challenges of tagging, and the best practices, and get into the ways that Contentful helps you get the most out of the tagging process, and use it to gain a marketing advantage.

What is content tagging?

Simply put, content tagging refers to the process of attaching descriptive data — tags — to pieces of digital content. By observing the tags, users gain a certain level of insight into the content and its position within the digital ecosystem. Similarly, by clicking the tags, users may be able to access content of the same type, or within the same group.

In other words, content tags help users classify, organize, and understand different types of content so that they can find that content faster, and store it more effectively within their digital ecosystem. For example, a restaurant that writes a blog post on “The best pizza recipes” might add the tag “blog” to that content — but could also think about the subject of the content and add other, relevant tags such as “pizza,” “Italian food,” “recipes,” and so on.

To get a little bit more technical, a content tag is essentially a form of metadata that tells you — or a software program — what a piece of content is about. There are different types of content tags too: You could tag with specific keywords based on SEO research or broad classifications with internal relevance such as “blog,” “product page,” or “case study.” You could also tag using HTML code, such as an alt text image description tag.

Controlled tagging

Should end users be able to create their own tags? Probably not, as this can lead to inconsistencies. For example, one user could tag something as “financial sector,” while another uses “finance.” These two tags mean the same thing but are different and will likely lead to inconsistent application. 

Generally, it's better to define tags centrally, and for end users to select from a controlled list.

What about taxonomies?

Taxonomies are a type of content tagging that relates to classification and organization of tags within a hierarchical system.

The term “taxonomy” is traditionally associated with biology where it’s applied to the identification, description, and classification of organisms within a system: A “species” is part of a “genus,” a “genus” part of a “family,” a “family” part of an “order,” and so on — all the way up to “domain.”

As it pertains to digital content, a taxonomy defines a hierarchical relationship between metadata. For consistency, many companies have common taxonomies which are used across different projects. Each type of content in a CMS may use different taxonomies — for example, a “product” content type could be associated with a product taxonomy, a “blog” content type with an industry sector taxonomy, and also with the product taxonomy for when the blog contains product information.

While not necessarily a critical component of a wider content tagging strategy, for brands with highly complex content needs, or those handling multiple websites for multiple different brands, taxonomies are typically an extremely useful way of standardizing content, imposing order, and eliminating content chaos.

For example, a bank might produce a huge range of digital content to publish to its website — including loans for automobiles. The taxonomy concept for that type of loan might be first categorized under: “Truck loans,” which sits alongside “Car loans” and “Bike loans” in the classification system. Those types of loans would sit under “Vehicle loans,” which sits under “Loans,” which sits under “Financial products,” and so on.

You could set out the taxonomy as: 

Financial products > Loans > Vehicle loans > Truck loans

That taxonomy can help users determine the tags that each content entry receives when they are added to a brand’s digital ecosystem.

Taxonomies take a bit of preplanning, which means brands should think about them carefully as they’re developing their content model so that they can define them according to the various relationships between content types and taxonomies.

Ideally, the brand’s content management system (CMS) should make content tagging as easy as possible so that content teams can establish and navigate their taxonomies effortlessly, and get the most value out of them.

Why tag content?

Talking of value, let’s explore some of the key benefits of content tagging and taxonomies.

• Discoverability: Effective content tagging makes it easier for users to find information within a website or digital ecosystem. That discoverability makes navigation easier for both internal and external users, facilitates personalized recommendations, and ultimately, boosts user engagement.

• Structured content: Tagging content according to its structural components facilitates a composable approach to content creation in which content components are put together, like modular building blocks, to create new pieces of content quickly. A creator could spin up a “product page,” for example, by using tags to locate the relevant header, image, product description, and CTA content.

• Duplication and governance: Content tagging offers brand teams a clear content overview, preventing redundant creation, wasted resources, and content duplication that dilutes keywords and harms SEO. Effective tagging and taxonomy can also improve content governance by increasing organizational awareness of the existing inventory of content.

• Gap analysis: Tagging and taxonomy create a holistic overview of content, which enables brand teams to map existing resources against their business objectives and intended customer journeys. That perspective can make it easier to identify gaps in the content offering — and what is needed to fill them.

• Search visibility: It isn’t just content teams and customers that can benefit from content tagging. Tags and taxonomies can be used to create navigation links, which are a key factor in search engine optimization.

Content tagging challenges

What are the factors that can limit or reduce the effectiveness of content tagging?

• Consistency: Tagging requires a disciplined approach from content teams. Inconsistent, decentralized tagging can quickly create confusion, preventing marketers from finding content, increasing the likelihood of duplication, and compounding existing organizational issues.

• Accuracy: Tags must be highly relevant to the content they describe so that they orient both users and site visitors. That requires consideration of the content being tagged and may involve a degree of subjectivity — for example, a blog post about “Holidays in France” may be better served by a “France” tag than a “Europe” tag.

• Over- and under-tagging: It can be difficult to determine the right and wrong number of tags to apply to your content. If you “over-tag,” that is, apply too many tags, you risk diluting the relevance of individual tags for all content. On the other hand, “under-tagging” can limit the discoverability of content and harm navigation.

• Workflow integration: Determining where and how content tagging should fit into the content creation process is challenging, especially if there is no taxonomy to dictate structure and hierarchy of content. Tagging delays can slow the content publication process and so brand teams should assign responsibilities for tagging clearly. It’s also important to have a quality assurance (QA) process to ensure that tags are applied correctly.

• Tagging technology: Brands that manage large volumes of content, or those with a busy publication schedule, will struggle to tag content manually — that is, on a piece-by-piece basis. In practice, that means automating the content tagging process as much as possible. Certain CMSes facilitate automated tagging, and may provide other tagging tools, such as taxonomy features that automate the organization of content into taxonomies.

• Scaling: Content production needs change constantly, and so brands need to be able to scale their tagging process with them. Tagging technology is, again, an important consideration when it comes to scaling tagging: Brands need to implement tagging tools that can keep pace with their growing content footprint, as well as taxonomies that can support more complex organizational needs.

How Contentful makes content tagging easy

We mentioned the importance of the CMS in facilitating a brand's content tagging strategy and establishing effective content taxonomies — but what does that look like in practice?

Contentful’s headless CMS streamlines the content management process — including content tagging. In fact, our CMS integrates tagging within the user interface, so you can apply tags to structured content, and even establish taxonomies, at the click of a button, without having to leave the app.

Let’s find out how that works.

The Tags tab

Contentful supports a structured approach to tagging, via a dedicated “Tags” tab on entry and asset pages. Users select from tags that are defined within the Contentful space.

Administrators give permission to selected users in order to enable them to create and manage tags. Tags can be “Public” or “Private,” as shown below. Public tags are available on your frontend websites, and can be used for things like generating navigation links. Private tags are used by Contentful users when filtering content views, and when searching for content.

Tags can also be used with roles and permissions. For example, you can use them to restrict users in a certain role so that they can only see or edit entries that have been tagged with a particular value.

The screen shot below shows a user adding the “Region: EMEA” tag to a content entry:

The Taxonomy tab

While tags are undeniably useful, what if you had to deal with thousands of them? Wouldn’t it be great to be able to organize them into a tree structure that users could navigate?

That’s where taxonomies come in.

Contentful also features a “Taxonomy” tab that enables users to assign “taxonomy concepts” to content. In the screenshot below, the user is editing a blog post. Four taxonomy schemas (Financial Products, Region, Event type, and Coin Products) are associated with the blog content type. Each of these schemas contains a hierarchical structure of concepts. The hierarchy for “Financial Products” is shown on the right, and the user has selected the concepts “Credit Cards” and “Auto Loans.”

If users don’t want to select the concepts themselves, the “Assign with AI” (currently in beta) button uses an LLM to analyze the content, and then suggest concepts automatically. This saves editors valuable time. You can check out our wider AI Actions capabilities to see more examples of useful content automation.

Contentful’s Taxonomy Manager aligns with the W3C’s Simple Knowledge Organization System (SKOS) standards for its data model. ‌The manager, shown below, enables users to define multiple hierarchical “concept schemes,” and the hierarchical relationships between the concepts within them. Each concept contains preferred and alternative labels, as well as descriptive information about the concept.

Using Content Entry fields

Fields in your content model can also be used to add tags to your content. The field could be a text field which enables the user to select from a predefined list of values, or even lets the user enter their own free-format tags — although, as we mentioned earlier, doing this can lead to tagging inconsistencies.

Reference fields can also be used to link a content entry to other metadata entries. These can represent tags, and even be part of a hierarchical structure.

The screenshot below shows a blog entry where the user can enter their own tags and can use a reference field to link the blog to a category.

Using tags

Tags are useful for both internal content management users, and for users of public websites.

One of the primary functions of tags is to help content users find things. To that end, filters can be applied to specify tags, taxonomies, and fields. For example, the screenshot below shows filter criteria for entries that have the taxonomy concept “Auto Loans,” and the tag “Region: EMEA.” The user has saved these criteria as a private view so they can re-run this filter whenever they want.

Wrapping up

Content tags shouldn’t be considered a nice-to-have luxury that you can add to nudge the search performance of your content — they’re a critical content management priority.

By adopting an effective tagging strategy, you’ll not only transform the way your content teams work with your content, but the way that your customers understand and consume it — thus improving their experience, and boosting engagement.

And here’s the good news: By using Contentful, you’ll be able to implement content tags in alignment with your content strategy, eliminate manual tagging friction, and position your business to scale effortlessly as your content needs grow. If you want to learn more about content tagging in Contentful, or any other aspect of our AI-powered content management capabilities, get in touch with our sales team today.

Take a tour

Chat with our team

We'll show you how our composable content platform can enhance 1:1 customer connections and drive growth for your business.

Subscribe for updates

Build better digital experiences with Contentful updates direct to your inbox.