To improve how the public engages with our mission, I restructured the site’s content and tagging system from the ground up. This included a full audit, metadata implementation, and collaboration across departments to unify how programs are presented online.
Our organization's website had become difficult to navigate—both for the public and for internal staff. Key content pages were buried 3–5 layers deep within the site structure. The existing search function failed to deliver relevant results due to inconsistent or missing metadata. Internally, staff struggled to find even their own program pages, and externally, users were left guessing.
We knew a redesign wasn't an option. Stakeholders were committed to the current look and platform. So we focused on what we could control: improving the underlying structure and searchability.
As part of the digital team, I took the lead on auditing the site’s structure and helping departments properly categorize and tag their content. My goal was to make information easier to find—without breaking what stakeholders already felt was working.
To understand where things were breaking down, I manually mapped out the full site structure—roughly 75–125 pages total, with about 30–45 key content pages. I created a visual tree showing how pages were nested. This helped illustrate just how deeply buried our highest-value content had become.
We found that some critical pages were five layers deep, and often hidden behind generic navigation labels or duplicated under multiple categories.
I conducted informal interviews and worked closely with internal teams to gather their frustrations. Common feedback:
This gave us insight into not only what was broken, but also how different departments mentally organized the site—often too narrowly. My team’s role was to bridge their internal logic with a more public-facing, marketing-aligned approach.
Our dev team worked with leadership to establish a new site-wide tagging system. I helped implement it by coordinating with departments and ensuring their programs were tagged correctly.
We introduced consistent tags for
If teams wanted their content to surface in the correct sections of the site, they had to participate in tagging—which created natural buy-in.
Tagging was done manually. Once content was tagged, the site’s backend logic automatically sorted it into user-facing categories. We haven’t fully tested improvements to search performance yet, but this foundational work will enable better filtering and navigation in future phases.
So far, this project has created a clear visual map of the site’s structure, helping internal teams align on how content is organized. We’ve surfaced high-priority pages that were previously buried, implemented a consistent tagging system across departments, and laid the groundwork for a more functional search experience and improved public access to key information.