Taxonomy and tagging are essential for organizing digital content. This article uncovers how taxonomy and tagging and using a structured approach to tagging and taxonomy improves content discovery, search capabilities, and workflow efficiencies in a Digital Asset Management (DAM) system.
Getting Started with Taxonomy and Tagging
Let's dive into taxonomy and tagging, and why they are important.
Tagging in Adobe Experience Manager (AEM) Assets is the process of adding keywords or labels (tags) to digital assets (images, videos, documents, etc.) to categorize and organize them - ultimately making them easier to find and manage. Incorporating a taxonomy and tagging into your DAM improves content creator and author search capabilities.
Tags are properties in the form of additional metadata that allow assets to be classified, searched and filtered based on specific characteristics or attributes stored in tags. Metadata typically includes highly structured, formal data points (like product IDs or copyright dates), whereas tags are typically more flexible keywords for categorization and discoverability.
Tags are use to classify assets and group assets more dynamically, and across folders, to enable quicker searches based on user-defined terms. Think of tags as being 'keywords' that are part of broader 'themes' which are meaningful to all asset users.
Tags are organized into multi-level hierarchies – forming what is called a tagging taxonomy. The tagging taxonomy should scale as an organization’s digital assets and their structures evolve. In AEM Assets, the top level of the tagging structure is a called a namespace with tags and sub-tags within each namespace. Through namespaces, tags, and sub-tags, entire taxonomic systems can be represented. By using a hierarchy, you can help users make tagging selections from a pre-set lists of related keywords, loading and searching for assets.
Why you need tagging and taxonomy
A taxonomy is essentially a systematic classification - a structured way to organize digital content based on clearly defined categories, attributes or metadata. Think of the taxonomy as the structure for storing and surfacing tags and the tags as essential data to be applied to assets.
To classify assets, group them dynamically across folders, and enable quick, faceted searches based on user-defined terms.
The tagging and taxonomy become extended metadata which helps consumers of your assets find them more organically in search, using keywords, rather than simply by navigaint the folders in which they reside or more operational metadata.
"A taxonomy is essentially a systematic classification, or a structured way to organize digital content, based on clearly defined categories, attributes or metadata. It ensures that everyone on your team is literally speaking the same language. This shared understanding enables automated workflows to function smoothly, saving time and reducing manual errors. And most importantly, taxonomy improves content discovery by making it easier to find exactly what you need."
- Ritesh Mittal, Lead Architect at IBM and an Adobe Chamipion and Adobe Community Advisor Captain
Benefits of taxonomies and tagging
- A well-structured taxonomy supports metadata-driven automation and governance.
- Taxonomy is essential for organizing assets in a searchable way, enabling users to find and reuse content.
- Grouping tags hierarchically in a taxonomy makes the tags extremely flexible and is an excellent way of organizing key business terms in a logical way.
- Tagging and taxonomy allow content to be categorized and organized so that assets are not duplicated, and instead tagged to be found for different uses and purposes
- Tagging and taxonomy allows authors to easily organize dissimilar assets through a common approach. Authors can quickly search and organize assets by common tags.
- Tags may evolve over time as an organizational vocabulary changes, whereas folder structures are more stable and pervasive.
- Tags managed in the AEM Admin view remain in sync with the tags managed in the Assets view, which ensures metadata governance and integrity.
"A digital asset is only as valuable as your ability to find and reuse it. A thoughtful taxonomy isn't just an organizational tool; it's a strategic framework that unlocks the full ROI of your content by ensuring the right assets are discoverable by the right people at the right moment."
- Katie Junge, Senior Marketing Technology Product Manager at Workday and AEM Champion
Common applications of tags
- Organizing content - tagging makes life easier for authors as they can quickly organize content with little effort.
- Controlled tagging - tagging can be controlled by applying permissions to tags and/or namespaces to control who can create or apply tags to assets.
- Improved searching - the default search component in AEM broadly includes created tags and applied tags to which filters can be applied to narrow the results to those that are relevant.
- SEO enabling - tags applied as page properties in AEM Sites will automatically show up in the metatags of the page making it visible to search engines
"Tagging is essential in AEM Assets as it enhances asset discovery and supports features like Smart Tags. With a strong tagging strategy, your asset library becomes more intelligent, enabling automation and more accurate content recommendations."
- Melanie Bartlett, Partner Development Director at MRM and AEM Champion
Best Practices for Taxonomy and Tagging
- Focus on findability - define your top-level taxonomy based how the tagging will guide digital asset consumers to find relevant assets quickly.
- Make it additive - define your taxonomy and tagging to be additive, not duplicative of your folder structure and metadata.
- Incorporate business requirements - ensure your taxonomy and tagging considers the end users, their business needs, and how they search for assets, ensuring that taxonomy and tagging support the surfacing of assets.
- Consider the entire asset lifecycle - from creation to approval to archival.
- Incorporate any legal or brand compliance requirements.
- Utilize Smart Tags - Adobe’s AI/ML (machine-learning) capabilities to further tag assets (more coming on this topic soon!) Smart Tags can automatically tag images on-demand or as you choose with keywords, significantly reducing the manual effort of tagging and improving the depth and consistency of metadata.
- Implement synonyms to help with common search errors.
- Govern the taxonomy itself by configuring permissions to control who can add, edit, or modify tags.
"The best taxonomies are built with empathy for the end-user. Before creating a single tag, ask yourself, 'What words would my colleagues use to search for this?' This user-centric mindset, combined with strong governance to maintain consistency, is the key to transforming your asset library from a chaotic folder system into an intuitive, searchable content engine."
- Katie Junge, Senior Marketing Technology Product Manager at Workday and AEM Champion
Try it
- Go to Assets > Settings > Taxonomy management
- Add tags and keywords that do not have any hierarcy, store those under "Standard Tags"
- For hierarchical tags, create a namespace for each logical set of tags. Add tags and sub-tags to each namespace. You might have a namespace for each product, or for each lifecycle stage, or for each audience you are targeting.
- Add the Tags component to the metadata form if needed.
- Follow this guidefor more details.
Additional Learning Resources
Adobe Experience Makers: The Skill Exchange sessions
- For a deeper guide to tagging best practives, watch Taxonomy & Structure: AEM’s Secret to Scalable Asset Management featuring AEM Champions Melanie Bartlett and Katie Junge.
- For a deep view into creating tagging and applying other metatdata, watch the Smart, Scalable, and Structured: Building a Future-Ready Content Framework feature AEM Champion Ritesh Mittal
Additional resources below are also helpful for establishing a taxonomy and tagging AEM Assets.
- Manage tags in Assets view (documentation)
- Tags, taxonomy, and metadata best practices: high-level summary (AEM as a Cloud Service documentation)
What's next?
This article on best practices for taxonomy and tagging a is part of a serious of articles including foundational guidance, best practices and Adobe Champion tips for getting started with Adobe Experience Manager Assets. To continue in the series, we will focus next on governance.
To explore all articles in this AEM Assets foundational series, see: