Optimizing Content for Search Discoverability

Content is the foundation of the search experience. The best search configuration in the world won’t return content that’s disorganized, unlabeled, or inconsistent. When users complain that “search doesn’t work,” they’re often really feeling the absence of a thoughtful content strategy. With Liferay, you can use content fields and taxonomies to add meaningful context and improve search discoverability.

In this lesson, you’ll learn key principles for creating searchable content and how to leverage features like categories and tags to improve your site’s search experience.

Building a Solid Foundation for Search

Optimizing content for site search is most effective when it's done proactively, during content design and creation. It is much more difficult to fix discoverability issues after content is already live. By being intentional from the start, you can avoid time-consuming and frustrating post-launch troubleshooting. This proactive approach is built on several key principles, including:

• Content Quality and Relevance: Liferay's search engine is designed to surface valuable content. This means you should focus on creating clear, well-written articles that directly address user needs.
• Clear Content Structures: Use well-defined content fields along with descriptive titles and proper headings. This creates a clear hierarchy that helps both users and Liferay's search engine understand and index your content.
• Comprehensive Content Metadata: Filling in all available metadata fields—like summaries, friendly URLs, and image alt text—is crucial, as the search engine uses this data to index, rank, and display your content.
• Thoughtful Taxonomy: Classify all content using Categories (for formal hierarchy) and Tags (for flexible labeling). This is essential for connecting related content and enabling features like faceted search.

Applying these foundational principles is the first and most important step toward an effective site search experience.

Organizing Content

Liferay provides categories and tags for classifying and labeling content, though each serves a different purpose. Specifically, categories provide a formal, hierarchical structure for content, while tags offer flexible, user-driven labeling. Understanding when to use them is essential for effective search.

Categorizing Content

In Liferay, categories are part of a formal, hierarchical system used to group content based on shared traits. These categories are organized into ‘vocabularies,’ which act as containers for sets of related categories. For example, Clarity Vision Solutions could use these vocabularies and categories to improve the discoverability of their content:

Categorizing content gives your site a clear structure. To use categories effectively, consider these best practices:

• Maintain Consistency: Define and use a consistent set of categories to ensure content is classified uniformly.
• Avoid Sprawl: Stick to meaningful, distinct terms. Too many overlapping or unclear categories can confuse users and content creators.
• Require Classification: Train content authors to select at least one category for every piece of content.
• Review Regularly: Periodically review your taxonomy to clean up unused or unclear categories and ensure they still meet your business needs.

Ultimately, categories provide the stable, structural backbone for your content organization.

Tagging Content

While categories provide a formal, hierarchical structure, tags offer a flexible, user-driven way to label content. They are 'flat' (non-hierarchical) and act like keywords that describe a piece of content in natural, everyday language. Unlike vocabularies and categories, content authors can create tags on-the-fly by as needed.

The primary purpose of tagging is to enhance search discoverability by matching the specific terms and phrases your audience actually uses. For example, a Clarity article formally categorized under "Eyeglasses" might also be tagged with blue light, screen fatigue, and computer glasses. A user searching for "computer glasses" is now much more likely to find the article, even if that exact phrase isn't in its title.

To use tags effectively, consider these best practices:

• Use Common Terms: Focus on the words and phrases your audience would actually type into a search bar.
• Be Consistent: Use consistent capitalization and spelling to avoid creating duplicate, fragmented tags.
• Keep Tags Focused: Avoid over-tagging with dozens of keywords or creating tags for concepts that should be formal categories.
• Reuse Tags: Reuse existing tags when appropriate to build their relevance and strengthen the connection between related content.
• Enable Auto-Tagging: Leverage Liferay's AI-based tools to automatically suggest relevant tags for your content.

Tags add a rich, user-centric layer of metadata that complements the formal structure provided by categories.

Producing Search-Friendly Content

Creating search-friendly content requires a consistent and standardized approach from all content authors. Without clear standards, it’s easy to end up with inconsistent tagging, vague titles, and orphaned content that harm the search experience. This section covers the best practices for achieving consistency.

Using Searchable Titles and Summaries

Search results in Liferay typically display a title and a short summary. These fields are your content's first impression and are critical for convincing users to click. For example, a title like "Return & Exchange Policy, 2025" provides far more value and better keywords than a generic title like "Welcome to Our New Policy Page."

Consider these best practices:

• Be Specific: Use clear language that accurately describes the content.
• Prioritize Keywords: Put the most important words and concepts at the beginning.
• Use Plain Language: Avoid internal jargon and use terms your audience understands.
• Write Effective Summaries: Write summaries that tell users what they’ll find in the full content.

Remember, users may never see the full article if the title and summary don’t convince them it’s relevant.

Defining Content Metadata

Liferay provides many metadata fields for content, such as friendly URLs and image alt text. You can also define custom metadata fields using web content structures and document types. Leaving these fields blank is a significant missed opportunity. If you ignore fields or accept default values uncritically, you’re making your content harder for the search engine to understand and for users to find.

Consider these best practices:

• Review Titles and Descriptions: Always review and customize the title and description for each asset.
• Customize Friendly URLs: Ensure friendly URLs are readable and descriptive.
• Leverage Specific Fields: Use the appropriate metadata fields for each type of content (e.g., web content, documents).
• Use Alt Text: Add descriptive alt text to all images to improve accessibility and provide more context for search.

Metadata is even more important when search results include multiple asset types. The more context you provide, the better your content will stand out in search.

Connecting Related Content

Search doesn't exist in a vacuum. The more you relate and cross-link your content, the easier it becomes for users to discover information and for Liferay's search to understand the relationships between assets. For Clarity, this means a blog post about digital eye strain should link directly to the product page for their blue-light glasses, while how-to articles should embed or link to video tutorials.

Consider these best practices:

• Use Related Assets: Leverage Liferay’s Related Assets feature and asset publishers to connect content.
• Create Displays for Content Groups: Use display pages to group content by tags or categories.
• Add Links Directly to Content: Add links to other relevant pages and assets within your content's text.
• Avoid 'Orphaned' Content: Ensure every piece of content is categorized and connected within your site's content network.

This network of related content guides users on their journey and provides context for search engines.

Conclusion

Search issues are often content issues in disguise. Once a site is fully populated, it’s far more expensive and time-consuming to go back and fix metadata, taxonomy, and structure. By beginning with best practices during content design and creation, you can avoid painful cleanup later and lay the groundwork for high-performing search experiences.

Next, you'll explore how to build these search experiences in Liferay.