Developing a WordPress Silo SEO Plugin with Yoast/All In One SEO Support

The point of silo SEO is to reduce unrelated content from a webpage, the silo SEO widget I use helps achieve this. Obviously if you have a sitewide category link widget for example, that damages the silos (I don't use sitewide category links widgets: I generally avoid sitewide links unless to really important pages).

Do you aim for 100% siloed links on every web page or generally siloed so significantly more links are related to the content than not related? You have to keep the link juice flowing through a site, so need some cross linking between unrelated sections.

I aim for the latter, see my sig links and explain how they are not generally siloed based on WordPress categorization: you would have to look at multiple pages to understand what I've done.

Can you achieve better silo SEO structures manually, yes, but those take a LOT of time/effort. This is setup in a minute or two and forget about it, perfect for those with large networks.

Actually based on your Amazon comment you clearly don't understand what you can achieve silo SEO wise with WordPress and the right code (guess you didn't bother checking the two links!). Just like with your Amazon example, on my jokes site you won't find links to jokes about money on the jokes pages about yo mama jokes (yo mama jokes generally link to more yo mama jokes). Check out the two links and explain how they aren't siloed as well if not better than Amazon?

The tighter the categorization, the more niched the silos become using the silo widget.

David

Thanks for the input. You are right it's not that hard to generate a list of related posts, I decided to build the silo SEO plugin and it's around 500 lines of code due to all the options/features.

Here's the options list...

Widget Title : Widget Heading

Post Type : Popular Posts, Recent Posts, Recently Modified Posts, Random Posts, Reverse Alphabetical Posts or Highest Post ID (this is all possible ways to grab posts).

Order of Posts : You can reverse popular to least popular, recent to oldest etc... allowing for 11 different configurations.

Number of Posts : Numeric value, 10 for example.

Show Text Link : Tick box, this widget doesn't have to use a text link, could be an image link or just the excerpt text.

Link Anchor Text SEO Title Tag : Original Post Title, All In One SEO Title or Yoast Title.

Show Thumbnail Image : Tick box, uses posts featured image if set, if no image set no thumbnail loads.

How Many Links Should Have a Thumbnail Image? : Numeric value, 5 for example. This option means you can have say 10 posts show links and say 3 show thumbnail images.

Image Alt Text SEO Title Tag : Original Post Title, All In One SEO Title or Yoast Title.

Image Width : Numeric value, 50 for example (would be 50px).

Image Height : Numeric value, 50 for example (would be 50px).

Image Alignment : Center, float left, float right.

Number of Excerpts : This option means you can have say 10 posts show links and say 3 show post excerpts.

Number of Excerpt Words : Set the number of words in an excerpt.

Excerpt Separator : Add say a >> sign between the text link and the excerpt.

Excerpt Ending : Add say ... at the end of the excerpt text.

Select Posts From : All Categories, Silo: Only Categories the Post Viewed is in, Silo: Only Tags the Post Viewed is in, Only Categories Selected Below (next setting).

Categories List : When the previous option is set to "Only Categories Selected Below" select one or more categories you want posts to be grabbed from.

There's four form boxes for adding inline CSS like "list-style: none;" for matching the styling to the theme used.
List Styles UL : CSS Rules for the UL tag
List Styles LI : CSS Rules for li tags
Link Styles A HREF : CSS Rules for A HREF tags
Thumbnail Image Styles IMG : CSS Rules for IMG tags

All elements have CSS Classes for hard coding rules to CSS files.
Thumbnail ON - Ul class = siloseo_ul_image
Thumbnail OFF - Ul class = siloseo_ul
Thumbnail - IMG class = siloseo_image
Excerpt ON - LI class = siloseo_excerpt
Excerpt OFF - LI class = siloseo_excerpt_no
Text Links - A HREF class = siloseo_link

I don't do things by half, it's a widget I've put a lot of time into since I use it on every WP site I own and have kept adding new features as I needed/wanted them.

The above minus the inline CSS options is already part of the Stallion Responsive Theme (it doesn't need inline CSS options), and the theme version includes options for mixing the anchor text and alt text of links/image links: Stallion includes 4 keyphrases (like a Yoast/All In One SEO title) that's used for various parts of the theme like anchor text of internal links, so different parts of a site can use different anchor text/alt text for internal links.

Anyway, just need to clean up the plugin code and test with a handful of random themes, will then release when I have the time (got a busy week ahead). Like you said silo SEO is discussed a lots on WF, so might be a good WF special offer I can link to from my sig. Was thinking a price tag of $20 for unlimited use on a buyers domains and a minimum of one year free support/upgrades, so for those with networks it's a one off fee.

David