Plan your content modeling approach in Xperience

Plan your content modeling approach in Xperience

Different CMS solutions allow editors to approach their content in different ways. Although using a single content type for free-form content in Xperience may seem easier, we recommend creating a structured content model with clearly defined content types and presentation layers to help editors maintain a consistent content experience across teams and channels.

Aim for semantic content types

Semantic content types organize information into conventional data types⁠ (opens in a new tab) and make the data easier for both humans and machines to understand and interact with. Semantic content types go beyond just presenting a few images or texts; they provide a clear semantic context and give the data meaning. This meaning remains the same when editors adapt this content for different channels, like a website, mobile applications, or emails. At the same time, editors can enrich this content with relevant information, such as date, time, or location, or personalize the message to tailor the experience further.

Semantic content types are particularly valuable when customers integrate Xperience with third-party systems like ERPs or external product catalogs. Making the data shaped and scoped into a consistent structure in Xperience and other systems allows for efficient data synchronization. As a result, maintaining meaningful content and ensuring a seamless flow of information between systems is much easier.

Here are a few practical use cases:

• Articles - store articles⁠ (opens in a new tab), or blog posts⁠ (opens in a new tab) as structured content items with titles, summaries, body content, author references, tags, and related assets. You can dynamically display articles on listing pages, author profiles, and topic landing pages without duplicating content. This ensures consistent presentation, supports discoverability, and makes it easy to update metadata or related links across all listings when editors update the articles.
• Product – reuse product's⁠ (opens in a new tab) structure with common features and benefits across similar products. For example, if several products include fast approval or secure online banking, you store these benefits once and link them to each product. This allows product teams to update a benefit’s description or icon in one place, automatically updating all linked products without manual edits.
• Services – manage your services⁠ (opens in a new tab) as reusable content items containing structured details such as the service name, description, benefits, related case studies, and CTAs. You can link these services across product pages, industry landing pages, and campaign microsites. This allows your marketing and sales teams to maintain consistent messaging about each service. The system automatically updates the service information instantly across all channels where the service appears.
• Author profiles – reuse authors⁠ (opens in a new tab) or bios across blogs, webinars, and landing pages. When a team member’s role or bio changes, your content team only needs to update it once, and the change reflects across all blog posts, speaker pages, and author blocks, saving time and ensuring consistency.
• Events – share event details⁠ (opens in a new tab) across event listings, landing pages, promotional emails, and a dedicated event companion mobile app. Event teams can manage the event date, time, location, and description in one place, ensuring that any updates automatically appear everywhere the event is promoted.
• Organization – store organizational profiles⁠ (opens in a new tab), such as partner companies or internal departments, as reusable content types with names, logos, descriptions, and contact details. These can be linked dynamically to press releases, case studies, or event listings, ensuring consistency and simplifying updates when contact information or branding changes.
• Place/Location – manage places⁠ (opens in a new tab) or locations⁠ (opens in a new tab) as structured content items with address, map coordinates, contact details, and opening hours. Editors can reference the same location across events, service area listings, or store finders. When they change the details, Xperience automatically promotes the updates across all digital channels.
• Reviews – manage customer or partner reviews⁠ (opens in a new tab) as reusable content items with the reviewer’s name, role, rating, testimonial text, and related product or service references. Editors can refer to these reviews from across product pages, campaign landing pages, and industry sections to build trust and social proof. Updating a review or adding translated variants automatically updates every location where the review is displayed, maintaining consistency while reducing repetitive content management.
• Testimonials – similarly to reviews, you can use the same customer testimonial in multiple campaigns. Marketing teams can centrally store testimonials in a predictable review snippet⁠ (opens in a new tab) structure and reuse them on landing pages, newsletters, and product pages while tracking where each testimonial appears, supporting consistent messaging across channels.

Similarly, your project can store data in content types that aren't described in the schema.org⁠ (opens in a new tab). Even though their data structure isn't rooted in conventions, you can still define a predictable one. For example, you can derive their properties from existing types and validate their structure with Google's structured metadata markup⁠ (opens in a new tab). We have seen the following types in Kentico customers' projects.

• Hero banners – store hero banners as reusable content items⁠ (opens in a new tab) with images, headlines, and supporting text. Editors can reuse banners across landing pages, campaign pages, or microsites. This allows your design and marketing teams to update seasonal or promotional banners in one place, ensuring a unified look across channels while enabling fast swaps when campaigns change.
• FAQs – link common questions⁠ (opens in a new tab) to products, services, or help articles. Support teams can update an FAQ answer once, and the new information will automatically display anywhere the FAQ is referenced, reducing customer confusion and repetitive edits.
• Case studies – manage case studies as atomic content types that contain the client name, summary, testimonial quotes, and outcomes. These can be linked dynamically to industry pages, service pages, or campaign landing pages, allowing your sales and marketing teams to showcase relevant case studies without duplicating content across your site.
• Delivered projects – store completed project⁠ (opens in a new tab) descriptions, client details, project images, and outcomes as reusable content items. These can be linked to service pages, industry landing pages, or even specific blog posts highlighting your expertise, making it easier for your teams to display proof of delivery consistently while managing updates in a single location.
• Global CTAs (Calls to Action) – manage CTAs as reusable items across pages and campaigns. If your marketing team needs to update a link or button text for a seasonal campaign, they can do it once in the CTA item, instantly updating all linked locations.

This composable approach supports large teams by separating ownership and maintaining a single source of truth for reusable content. It simplifies multi-channel delivery because editors can reuse and display the same structured content in emails, websites, and apps without duplicating it. It also helps maintain consistent customer experiences, ensuring your brand speaks with one voice wherever your content appears.

Help agentic search, LLMs, and SEO

Semantic content types also help provide a better AI agentic web experience⁠ (opens in a new tab) and support traditional, now almost legacy, SEO practices⁠ (opens in a new tab). It is easier for LLMs and search AI agents to extract and repurpose concise and structured content in clearly defined types. Different content elements represent conventional semantic types.

Developers can add semantic metadata to website-specific content and define a clear and concise structure that LLMs understand⁠ (opens in a new tab). This helps search engines and AI agents⁠ (opens in a new tab), including AI Overviews⁠ (opens in a new tab) and NLWeb⁠ (opens in a new tab), understand, interpret, and present your content more accurately.

Preparing the content for AI-driven tools will support your client's long-term content strategy and discoverability across search and other emerging AI-driven platforms.

Help editors with content creation and curation

Providing structured, semantically relevant editing experiences helps editors deliver high-quality content efficiently. Editors can submit their content using elaborate editing workflows to reduce mistakes during content creation, publishing, and curation throughout the content lifecycle.