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In the digital world where content flows fast and wide, how content is tagged and classified is anything but a backroom technicality. Getting it right means choosing an approach designed for the future and for business growth.
Good content classification is often the secret sauce which helps a site stand out to consumers or catch the SEO wind to fly higher in search results. It influences everything from editorial workflows to audience engagement to subscription strategies to device handling, and can literally be make or break for sites.
And as the importance of first-party data grows, content classification paves the way to better relationships with audiences.
Having so many critical factors reliant on good classification means that how you do it is an important decision. From quick and simple free-form tagging, to the disciplined approach of hierarchical taxonomies, content teams and businesses need to choose a path they can stick to that solves the widest range of problems.
Yet still the decision has to be made. When should you switch from one to another? Should you ever adopt free-form tagging? What are the benefits of hierarchical and disciplined tagging regimes over free-form tagging?
While both have their place, hierarchical taxonomy consistently proves to be more reliable, scalable, and editorially meaningful.
Let’s explore why, using real-world examples and how Glide CMS supports hierarchical taxonomy, to anchor the discussion.
Content categorisation basics: Tagging vs. Taxonomies
Free-form tagging is touted as flexible and user-friendly. Anyone - editors, contributors, algorithms - can attach tags to content with minimal barriers to instant progress: think of a tag, attach it, move on. If you’re in the speed-is-everything game, or don’t really have a proper categorisation structure, free-form tagging is tempting.
These sorts of tags can be as specific or quirky as needed. But therein lies the problem: if tags do not demand consistency, they quickly become inconsistent. Duplicates arise and disorganisation sets in, things search engines frown upon and create issues down the line.
When it comes to tags which are able to be added so easily, editors can unfortunately get the vibe that the more the merrier, even when tags trace back to the same thing and are just connected by variations of what seems right in the moment: "Premier League", "EPL", "English Premier League", “English Prem”, as well as misspellings and colloquialisms. Imagine those variations matched against similar variations for just one club - Manchester United, Manchester Utd, Man Utd, ManU, United - and you can see how expediency easily spirals into unruliness.
Rather than having a single deep and authoritative Manchester United section, stories instead become scattered across pages and sections which are in fact cannibalising each other for SEO, or simply being lost altogether. As you add in multiple player tags, and those of rivals, the predictable structure Google and users want ends up looking like a shaken-up jigsaw puzzle.
Taxonomies: The tree of truth
In contrast, hierarchical taxonomy typically organises content categorisation within a structured tree. The single tree of sport could contain every section of a site under the sport umbrella, or even multiple whole sites looking at particular sporting disciplines, in much part because they enforce logical root and branch structures which weed out (!) inconsistencies.
Categories, subcategories, and sub-subcategories are like branches which follow a predictable path which make sense both to people creating and reading the content, and also to search engines. They also do an enormous amount of work for the writers to boot.
For instance, you might classify your Manchester United football article under: Sports > Football > Club Football > English Premier League > Manchester United. The writer merely needs to add the single correctly spelt and categorised ‘Manchester United’ taxonomy for the content to benefit from all preceding ancestor taxonomies and metadata, while the site itself will ensure all those sections and the Manchester United section itself benefits from the built-up authority.
How about players? Freeform tagging relies on the writer to sprinkle names throughout their work, which for one raises the likelihood of all the spelling and nicknaming errors described above, as well as the time-consuming nature of the task itself. And, players have this nasty habit of moving clubs.
To one side, a publication might have an entire database of every player in the Premier League, including who they play for.
If they have marked each player with their respective club, then the reporter’s addition of the club taxonomy now opens up all those connections to individual player pages too. And if a player changes club in the future – the system will automatically re-associate the player with the next club in their career.
The power here isn’t just in order - it’s in shared understanding. Taxonomy management of this kind encourages consistency, discoverability, and editorial coherence. And having set these predictable thoughts paths into your system means the editor can actually save time in the writing process too: instead of feeling like they have to add multiple tags to identify Manchester United as playing in the English Premier League, the writer merely adds the single ‘Manchester United’ taxonomy and it backfills all the rest, complete with all the right metadata previously attached in the taxonomy library.
Suddenly that little bit of taxonomy prep work makes the apparent ‘speed’ of freeform tagging look slow as well as counter-productive.
The editorial lens: Why structure matters
Every publication or content-producing organisation has a view of the world. This view isn’t necessarily objective or universal; it’s editorial, a combined product of mission, audience, and voice.
A hierarchical taxonomy captures that worldview by making deliberate choices about how content is grouped and prioritised.
For example, a US-based sports network may choose to group Cricket and Rugby results and news under "International Sports," while an Australian media outlet is likely to have them under "National Sports." One isn't more correct than the other.
It’s equally possible to see how, say, Aviation could be under Travel, Lifestyle, and Business sections in three different publications. Or Apple under Business, Tech, Fruit, or Pies. This is where knowing your readers is paramount, and what makes it so difficult for automated tagging to do this sort of thing well – mostly they just emulate the quickfire fingers of a freeform tagging fan on acid.
Taxonomy, unlike tags, reflects these editorial truths rather than chasing questionable or ad-hoc relevance.
Where free-form tagging falls short
A tag cloud might tell you what’s popular, but it won’t tell you what matters. It lacks the nuance to differentiate, say, World Cup 2022 coverage from general International Football content.
Hierarchical Taxonomy in Action: Glide CMS
Glide CMS offers a superb example of how hierarchical taxonomy can be implemented to empower editors and streamline content management. Let's look at some examples that draw a clear picture.
Example 1: Sports Coverage
In Glide CMS, a sports publisher can design a taxonomy like so:
Sports
This structure allows for:
Example 2: Media & Entertainment
Consider a publication covering film and TV. A tagging system might include both "comedy" and "drama," but how do you distinguish between genre, tone, and format? Glide CMS lets editors construct any way they want, such as:
Now, an article about a crime drama miniseries has a precise place, enhancing recommendations, internal linking, and SEO.
Editorial taxonomy is not always "correct" - and that’s OK
Here’s where it gets interesting: taxonomy isn’t about perfect accuracy. It’s about utility.
For instance, geographically, you can consider Turkey part of both Europe and Asia.
For a sports news outlet, an editor will say it makes editorial sense to group Turkish clubs under "European Leagues" because Turkish football is under the jurisdiction of UEFA, the European football body.
However, at a business news outlet the same editor may take a different viewpoint and classify Turkey under Asia. Meanwhile, Turkey is an applicant to the EU so perhaps that viewpoint in the paper’s business pages will change.
And to cap it all, either outlet may choose to refer to Turkey as Türkiye. Where does free-tagged content sit amid all that?
Editorial taxonomy is about being practical, not pedantic.
The Hybrid Model: Best of Both Worlds?
There is a place for tags when they are used sparingly and intentionally.
For example, they can be handy at flagging transient events (Euro 2024) or viral topics (VAR controversy, blue/gold dress), without disrupting the core taxonomy. But tags should never replace structure. They’re seasoning, not the main course.
In summary
A hierarchical taxonomy provides:
Free-form tagging, while easy to start with, tends to collapse under scale, inconsistency, and ambiguity.
In intuitive CMS platforms like Glide CMS, taxonomy becomes more than a tool. It’s a narrative structure, a discovery engine, and an editorial backbone.
When thoughtfully crafted, it doesn’t just classify content - it expresses your identity.
Want to learn more about Glide CMS's hierarchical taxonomy capabilities? Request a demo with a Glide product specialist.
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