Making Sense of Website Content

Where Do You Start With an Existing Website?

Start by understanding what you already have.

Before changing categories or reorganising content, look at what the website actually contains. Page titles, menus and existing labels only tell part of the story.

Looking across the content itself can reveal recurring subjects, areas of overlap and useful information that may be difficult to find within the existing structure. What first looks like a collection of separate pages can begin to look more like a connected body of knowledge.

Look for Patterns, Not Just Labels

A website's existing categories can be useful clues, but they don't necessarily describe its content particularly well.

As a website grows, new categories and labels are often added to meet a need at the time. Years later, some may overlap, some may be too specific and others may no longer be useful.

Looking at the content as a whole allows different patterns to emerge. Related subjects can be brought together, unnecessary distinctions questioned and clearer groups identified.

The aim isn't to find somewhere to put everything. It is to create a structure that makes sense of what is already there.

Can AI Organise Website Content?

AI can help analyse and organise large amounts of website content, but its suggestions still need knowledgeable human review.

AI can quickly compare content, spot recurring subjects, suggest useful groupings and identify relationships that might take much longer to uncover manually.

But plausible isn't the same as correct.

AI can misunderstand what something means, miss an important distinction or confidently suggest a relationship that doesn't stand up when checked. This is particularly important when working with specialist information, where two pieces of content may look similar without actually meaning the same thing.

That's where human knowledge matters. Understanding the subject, knowing why the content exists and checking suggestions against the evidence remain essential parts of making good decisions.

Turn Understanding Into Structure

Once the content is better understood, a clearer structure can begin to emerge.

Categories can be simplified, related subjects brought together and unnecessary labels removed. Some content may naturally belong in more than one place, while still having one subject that best describes what it is mainly about.

The important part is the order in which this happens.

Rather than deciding how a website ought to be organised and then forcing its content into that structure, understand the content first and let that understanding help shape the structure.