As content ecosystems grow more complex and as more omnichannel distribution quickly becomes the norm digital teams are challenged more than ever to guarantee proper discoverability. Within a headless CMS, where the separation of content from its final form occurs, tagging becomes even more critical to a hierarchical, contextualized approach to distribution. Good content, after all, goes unnoticed in a vacuum. Yet with the proper attention to tagging, the content will live on, able to be repurposed and generated in the past for the future optimized correctly via personalization for varying efforts.
H2: Why Tags are Important in a Headless CMS
Whereas many traditional systems have a CMS-driven, page-based hierarchy that comprises much of its functionality, a headless CMS gets a lot of its content organization from fields and metadata. Thus, within this context, fields become important for definition and output, but tags are critical for grouping, filtering, and accessing content. Tags are what keep content sections connected to one another and to the rendering delivery mechanism. Whether the rendering delivery mechanism is an internal recommendation engine, search app, or an automated feed, how well the content can be found and for what purpose is critical based on the device content and the tags associated thereto. A marketer-friendly CMS ensures that tagging and metadata management are intuitive and aligned with campaign goals empowering non-technical teams to take full advantage of structured content strategies.
H2: Build Controlled Vocabulary to Avoid Inconsistent Tagging
The biggest issue with tagging comes from inconsistency; one person tags “How to Articles” one way, another tagger uses “Articles of Interest.” Effective tag management comes from building a controlled vocabulary: a set of tag terms that can and must be used/reused within the CMS for a consistent experience. This allows for tagging to always be done in predictable ways, creating easy relationships between items. When filters & relevant queries and personalization engines can rely on predictable tagging activities, fulfillment becomes easy.
H2: Use Taxonomy to Scale with Structure
In addition to a flat tagging experience, different taxonomies allow for hierarchical control over content. While these can be more limiting than tagging since they require specific placements within categories, they frequently serve levels of access based on logical hierarchies. For example, a blog post can be tagged as “Marketing > SEO” or “Technology > AI.” This structure makes it easier to access/retrieve these items but also makes it far easier to expand over time. Editors will know where certain pieces live in relation to other placements while developers can use those relationships to create more efficient front-end logic down the line.
H2: Know the Difference Between Descriptive and Functional Tags
There are different types of tags. There are descriptive tags, which relate to what the piece is about what topics, what industries etc. Then there are functional tags which convey how the item should be used, who its audience is or where it fits into a larger content journey. For example: “SaaS” can be assigned to an article about your product; “Top of Funnel” can convey where/how it should be used in the process. Knowing the difference between these types of tags help teams better understand how content should be doled out and subsequently reused. Functional tags are especially important for targeting, personalization and executing campaigns.
H2: Make sure your tagging strategy fulfills business needs
Every content tagging framework should align with business needs. If the intention is to enhance search and discoverability within products, tag by features, benefits and pain points. If customer experience is content-driven personalization, then tags need to include anything relative to users like personas, intents, geography. This way, the tag framework exists not only for an internal organizational philosophy but for external, customer-centric and go-to-market/sales/customer experience philosophies. Therefore, these tags can become levers for actionable, measurable outcomes instead of mere organizational aids.
H2: Facilitate multichannel distribution based on where it’s delivered
Content lives in a headless CMS so that omnichannel distribution is possible; it can go virtually anywhere websites, mobile sites and applications, email campaigns, customer service chatbots, etc. Tagging should facilitate awareness of where and how content will be delivered, triggering certain requirements for delivery facilitation. For instance, if content is tagged “Mobile,” the delivery processors will know this asset can go to mobile applications; the editor will be alerted that it can only be there to not create mismatched experiences on other channels. Therefore, tagging can help facilitate better UX and no need to duplicate assets messing up the editorial queue and adding unnecessary workload.
H2: Enhance outside and inside searching with proper tagging
Search engines are not just limited to meta description fields and URLs. Tagging can provide extensive benefits for SEO and internal searches, as well. Tags that inform the systems how people search for information can increase visibility on the web and performance in faceted navigation, filters and recommendations. Therefore, semantic tagging tagging by synonyms, associations and user-driven search terms increases this visibility as well. When tagged correctly in correlation with site search capabilities, it can increase relevance, precision and desirability across websites and digital channels.
H2: Automated Tagging For You With No Possibility For Context
Sure, manual tagging is an option to ensure everything is accurate, but in an enterprise team with high-volume content, this isn’t always feasible. That’s where automated tagging comes into play. Whether it’s AI-based tagging solutions or natural language processing (NLP) engines, content teams can benefit from automated generations to eliminate the guesswork in recommendations based on what’s being produced. That said, automated tagging always needs to be accompanied by manual review so that situational context and nuances aren’t lost. A hybrid solution automation recommendation and then editorial approval can reduce the workload without compromising accuracy or contextual significance.
H2: Leveraging Tags For Personalization And Recommendation Engines
Tags are powerful beyond the implication when integrated with the content recommendation engine. For example, certain tags translate to dynamic modules that create “related content,” automatically generated newsletter blasts or alerts based on user engagement. If a piece of content gets tagged by reader interest, stage in the engagement funnel or intention trigger, brands can make tighter and more accurate paths for users to follow. The more accurate the tags are the easier it is to customize the experiential path even leading to activities like checkpoints or follow up opportunities. The better the experience, the more likely users will stick around and become loyal.
H2: Evaluating And Revising Your Tagging Policy Over Time
Tagging collections should never be static. To create relevancy for your ever-changing library and audience, you should regularly audit your tagging strategy. A tag audit includes assessing all your tags to see if they’ve been overused, incorrectly suggested or created but never assigned. In addition, it’s crucial to retire tags and create new ones as your emphasis changes and marketplace meaning merges. Keeping a tagging system malleable yet systematic promotes long-term relevance and findability. A regular tag audit avoids content from getting out of control and makes for a more successful and effective CMS ecology.
H2: Create Tagging Guidelines to Encourage Teamwork
Of course, while the tagging hierarchy is essential, the more a content team knows about tags and uses them, the more effective these fields of metadata will be. Tagging guidelines foster consistency among contributors no matter the country or role. Tagging guidelines should contain what each tag means, the process of approving and ignoring certain tags, and the general guidelines for avoiding overuse of tags that create competing interests. A combined drive and training set ensure that all team members tag content in ways that benefit enterprise discoverability instead of the opposite.
H2: Tag Structures Create Content That Is API Query Friendly
Because headless CMS use APIs, the content retrieval requests the CMS employ needs tagging structures to be made with queries in mind as well. This means consistent structures, no duplicative tag titles, and standardization across fields for quality. When developers understand how tags are used, and they’re able to replicate that in their content considerations, it becomes easier for those who formulate queries to create finite results. For instance, it’s easier to create a query that returns all matching posts tagged with “B2B” and “Case Study” for a campaign than relaying a request that uses “Business to Business,” “B2B,” “Case Studies,” “Case Study” as more generic terms. It’s also easier to raise a query that returns all articles but excludes “Archived” to eliminate frustrations of articles seemingly disappearing.
H2: Use Tags to Create Dynamic Pages
Tags can also help create dynamic experiences beyond just a means to an end or discoverability. By using tags to cluster and reveal like assets, pages can be created and content blocks populated to change based on tagging logic. One page can be tagged to automatically receive relevant assets; for example, a CTA that applies to a page with the “Webinar” tag can be pulled in along with the relevant blogs and case studies. This takes away the need for manual intervention while keeping content experiences fresh and relevant IN context.
H2: Preparing Your Tagging System for Future Integrations
As your technology stack evolves, so do your integration needs and as such, where users discover, aggregate and receive your content needs to change in tandem. What was once a siloed approach to the digital ecosystem no longer exists. Everything from platforms to APIs to layers of automation are connected. Whether you need a new integration between your headless CMS and new personalization layer, your marketing automation component, your customer data platform (CDP), or even a new, AI-driven content creation assistant, all these integrations will work if your tagging framework can communicate key information across various platforms.
For such interactions to happen with relative ease, the composition of your tagging framework from the start needs to champion interoperability. Tags need to be uniformly named and uniformly formatted so third-party tools can easily identify, map and process them without additional human or machine interpretation. Never create generic, broad tags or inconsistent ones, which makes synchronization or associative logic translation failures across other platforms too easy. Instead, create tags that align with your business purposes and the context in which they’ll be used and larger taxonomies created within CRMs or product databases or analytics tools.
Finally, any tagging framework must adhere to the principle of portability and migration. When your technology changes for more effective tools are introduced or older ones are deprecated a stable tagging framework makes migration more manageable so information isn’t lost and consistent campaign logic and content intentions aren’t lost either for optimal user experiences. Therefore, your content should be channel agnostic and cross-system flexible. When your tagging framework can speak to your updated systems, integrations become effortless across technology and experiences for clear, digestible content no matter the platform now and in the future when your digital footprint grows.
Conclusion
Tagging not only allows for internal organization but also makes content searchable across applications, experiences, and devices, which is all related to the headless approach. Content is not created for a specific use at the time of creation content created today will be used tomorrow in web applications, mobile applications, voice applications, voice technology, digital displays, and AI recommendations. Tagging provides the universal connection to render that all possible.
In addition, tagging occurs for integrated organization to ensure there’s no duplication as well as for increased SEO abilities for intelligent search and personalized content delivery based on past behavior and current situational needs. Tagging supports omnichannel efforts in that it provides a way to schedule what goes where, and it presents a cross-section of past uses so editors can filter for reuse and non-duplication.
Crucial to meet all the needs for successful tagging are structured taxonomies and operational relevance and automation. Structure creates specificity over vagueness, operational relevance helps focus on intended use audiences, and automation allows for tagging per anticipated need quickly and without loss of accuracy. The achievement is a tagging system that works hard now and will be poised to scale in the future. As the digital-first world becomes even more fragmented and fluid, tagging allows content to move beyond a static state of being to dynamic discoverability now and later.