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If You're Not Using a "SILO" structure in SEO... You Better Start

by Headstart
166 replies
  • SEO
    • |
I've been doing SEO for well over a year and can tell you if you're not doing this it's a huge disservice. This is how Google creates an idea of what your website is about. When you silo your site you want to structure it so that the Main topic of the site is the home page. Within that main topic there are subtopics and that's how you can rank for long tails and more specific keywords.


I had a site stuck at #8 for months and went through and organized in a silo manner and within a few days it was up to #4 and then eventually #2 (#1 was one of the biggest companies in the world and a PR8)

for example if your website was about "Dogs" (let's keep it general lol)

Your Url May be MyDogBlog.com

Now within that main topic you can have many different subtopics. So now you have a category about each type of dog.

Dalmations Golden Retrievers Pitbulls Rottweiler



and then within each of those categories you will have subcategories

Food Toys Doghouses Exercise

and so on... the purpose is to build a broad base of many different subcategories that support your main topic. This lets Google know that your site is about dogs first and foremost and then you can begin ranking for longtail keywords such as "Dalmation Health Food"

I've attached an image of what silo structures look like for your website to give you a better idea.

Do this and watch your rankings skyrocket

If you have any questions just let me know and I'll give you a hand.
#seo #silo #sites #structure
  • Profile picture of the author yukon
    Banned
    Originally Posted by kennyall View Post

    I've been doing SEO for well over a year and can tell you if you're not doing this it's a huge disservice. This is how Google creates an idea of what your website is about. When you silo your site you want to structure it so that the Main topic of the site is the home page. Within that main topic there are subtopics and that's how you can rank for long tails and more specific keywords.

    I had a site stuck at #8 for months and went through and organized in a silo manner and within a few days it was up to #4 and then eventually #2 (#1 was one of the biggest companies in the world and a PR8)

    I can't post links as I only have 2 posts but if you google image "SEO SILO" it will give you a very good understanding of what I'm talking about.

    If you have any questions just let me know and I'll give you a hand.
    I use Silos on my own sites, because I've seen what they can do in the SERPs. Plus If done correctly the Silo will help traffic navigate the site in a logical way.

    I would be careful on the Google Images when looking at Silo info. some of those guys got stuck on the idea of linking out of the bottom of the first Silo to the 2nd Silo for no reason, they link regardless If the pages are related or not. Linking out to unrelated pages isn't a a good idea IMO, it dilutes the whole purpose of creating a Silo (tightly themed pages).
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    • Profile picture of the author Headstart
      Originally Posted by yukon View Post

      I use Silos on my own sites, because I've seen what they can do in the SERPs. Plus If done correctly the Silo will help traffic navigate the site in a logical way.

      I would be careful on the Google Images when looking at Silo info. some of those guys got stuck on the idea of linking out of the bottom of the first Silo to the 2nd Silo for no reason, they link regardless If the pages are related or not. Linking out to unrelated pages isn't a a good idea IMO, it dilutes the whole purpose of creating a Silo (tightly themed pages).
      Yep, the results it will provide is incredible. As far as linking to unrelated to pages it's completely up for debate when it comes to losing link juice. If you're using a wordpress theme it can get very difficult to entirely regulate what is linking where.

      I actually chat regularly with a very successful internet marketer who's making millions from SEO and his opinion is that it's not a huge deal but if you're seeing results then stick to it man.
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      • Profile picture of the author yukon
        Banned
        Originally Posted by kennyall View Post

        Yep, the results it will provide is incredible. As far as linking to unrelated to pages it's completely up for debate when it comes to losing link juice. If you're using a wordpress theme it can get very difficult to entirely regulate what is linking where.

        I actually chat regularly with a very successful internet marketer who's making millions from SEO and his opinion is that it's not a huge deal but if you're seeing results then stick to it man.
        Agreed, Wordpress can get a little hairy when creating theme pages that keep the links sorted out. I've hard coded a lot of things in my own WP Silo themes over the years which I've been trying to clean up & create a new SILO theme for others to use, it's a slow process but it's getting there (slowly but surely).

        The thing is, you can't just slap a theme together & that's it, you have to explain in detail what each part of the theme does & why it does it (user manual).
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  • Profile picture of the author DeskCoder
    You guys got any links for more information on the SILO structure? I did some Googling, but didn't find anything that clicked for me.
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  • Profile picture of the author sovereignn
    It may work well but the whole "you wont rank well" thing is just completely wrong.

    I've never used this structure and have multiple #1 rankings
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    • Profile picture of the author Headstart
      Originally Posted by sovereignn View Post

      It may work well but the whole "you wont rank well" thing is just completely wrong.

      I've never used this structure and have multiple #1 rankings
      Good luck ranking for anything difficult without a Silo.. and even if you are good luck lasting with it. I know it's definitely a factor they look into in manual reviews.
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    • Profile picture of the author yukon
      Banned
      Originally Posted by sovereignn View Post

      It may work well but the whole "you wont rank well" thing is just completely wrong.

      I've never used this structure and have multiple #1 rankings
      It's defiantly not the only way to rank a page, but it does help lighten the external backlink workload.
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  • Profile picture of the author WittyBlogger
    A bunch of BS.

    Silo-ing is just a theory, it's catered more towards having a good user experience. In my experience, the flatter the site architecture, the easier it is to get indexed and be deemed relevant.

    You also rank much faster with a cross-linking structure over a siloing structure.

    The only reason why silo-ing works is because it's used on a HUGE site with nearly hundred thousands of pages... Together with an aged domain.

    -WittyBlogger
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    7-figure entrepreneurs aren't made overnight. You can make money online with a full time income through blogging and making words crackle with energy. ;)
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    • Profile picture of the author thomharvey87
      Yes, I've noticed some crazy results doing Siloing as well. Had multiple sites go from 2nd page to 1st page and 1st overall just changin the structure. And to the guy Above no, just no. It's not B.S. at all. Silo is all about giving Google an idea of what your site is about.

      Sure you can rank without it, but it probably won't last.
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      • Profile picture of the author WittyBlogger
        Originally Posted by thomharvey87 View Post

        Yes, I've noticed some crazy results doing Siloing as well. Had multiple sites go from 2nd page to 1st page and 1st overall just changin the structure. And to the guy Above no, just no. It's not B.S. at all. Silo is all about giving Google an idea of what your site is about.

        Sure you can rank without it, but it probably won't last.
        I've ranked sites with over 1 billion pages in very tough competition, and they've never fallen off after even after all the updates.

        I think what's even more important is the "user experience".

        If you have a good navigation system (which part of it can be said to be siloing), then you won't fail the manual inspections.

        I'm just calling BS on the "you won't rank" part. It IS still possible. Some people manage to rank whole "conversion" pages with low SEO onpage... And all of that is attributed to good offpage popularity.

        -WittyBlogger
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    • Profile picture of the author yukon
      Banned
      Originally Posted by WittyBlogger View Post

      A bunch of BS.

      Silo-ing is just a theory, it's catered more towards having a good user experience. In my experience, the flatter the site architecture, the easier it is to get indexed and be deemed relevant.

      You also rank much faster with a cross-linking structure over a siloing structure.

      The only reason why silo-ing works is because it's used on a HUGE site with nearly hundred thousands of pages... Together with an aged domain.

      -WittyBlogger
      Lol, call it what you want but If the silo is tightly themed with internal linking it works well.

      Not sure what your linking comment is about considering the whole process of Silos is themed linking, random linking has no advantage in SEO.

      BTW, you can easily silo a site as small as a 10-20-30 page site, it defiantly doesn't have to be a huge site. The age of a domain doesn't matter, what matters is all internal/external links are indexed, which you'll want even If you don't Silo.

      Not sure why you said a Silo is a theory & in the same comment said a Silo works?
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      • Profile picture of the author Headstart
        hmm, I agree with the "won't rank well" I will go back and change the title. But to say it doesn't work is ridiculous... I've been told by just about all of the best SEO people I know that it's a must.
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    • Profile picture of the author Mike Anthony
      Originally Posted by WittyBlogger View Post

      A bunch of BS.

      Silo-ing is just a theory, it's catered more towards having a good user experience. In my experience, the flatter the site architecture, the easier it is to get indexed and be deemed relevant.

      You also rank much faster with a cross-linking structure over a siloing structure.
      I think I get where you are coming from but here is what I see as fact. Building a site that fully explores a niche is just common sense. I'm not too crazy about creating some buzzword like "silo" but well built sites just from common sense have a certain structure to them. Why wouldn't Dogs.com
      create several sub categories for dogs? Its not like any person owning a dog just wants to read about dogs in general but their own dog breed. Whywouldn;t they have categories about Dog health, dog grooming etc.

      The way I see yukon addressing this is it helps when you have a bigger picture in mind of creating content tightly around a niche. Anyone doing this just for some magical structure is missing the point.

      Anything that gets people out of this idea that they will just put up a wordpress site and a couple pages and then blast links to rank for one keyword rather than building sites that make sense, give a rip about their site's subject content and care about user experience to me is a good thing.

      Now if they are so clueless they are not getting the drift and think that a magical structure without the content is going to make them dominate then yeah I would agree about the "BS" part.
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      • Profile picture of the author WittyBlogger
        Originally Posted by Mike Anthony View Post

        I think I get where you are coming from but here is what I see as fact. Building a site that fully explores a niche is just common sense. I'm not too crazy about creating some buzzword like "silo" but well built sites just from common sense have a certain structure to them. Why wouldn't Dogs.com
        create several sub categories for dogs? Its not like any person owning a dog just wants to read about dogs in general but their own dog breed. Whywouldn;t they have categories about Dog health, dog grooming etc.

        The way I see yukon addressing this is it helps when you have a bigger picture in mind of creating content tightly around a niche. Anyone doing this just for some magical structure is missing the point.

        Anything that gets people out of this idea that they will just put up a wordpress site and a couple pages and then blast links to rank for one keyword rather than building sites that make sense, give a rip about their site's subject content and care about user experience to me is a good thing.

        Now if they are so clueless they are not getting the drift and think that a magical structure without the content is going to make them dominate then yeah I would agree about the "BS" part.
        EXACTLY. You hit the nail on the head. That's exactly what I've been trying to put across.

        There are trade-offs when you silo. Your content is less frequently updated (unless there are many inbound traffic including crawlers) with more tiers. Lesser tiers = better indexing = in my results, far more chance for the homepage to rank.

        I'm not placing a theory here. This has been tested by me over 50+ blogs. I've also studied seo guides like seomoz's subscription content, seobook and blackhat... So yeah.

        But ultimately, you don't want useless traffic. You just need to guide users through a content funnel to the call of action you need them to respond to.

        Conversions make your traffic become of higher quality.

        -wittyblogger
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        • Profile picture of the author yukon
          Banned
          Originally Posted by WittyBlogger View Post

          EXACTLY. You hit the nail on the head. That's exactly what I've been trying to put across.

          There are trade-offs when you silo. Your content is less frequently updated (unless there are many inbound traffic including crawlers) with more tiers. Lesser tiers = better indexing = in my results, far more chance for the homepage to rank.

          I'm not placing a theory here. This has been tested by me over 50+ blogs. I've also studied seo guides like seomoz's subscription content, seobook and blackhat... So yeah.

          But ultimately, you don't want useless traffic. You just need to guide users through a content funnel to the call of action you need them to respond to.

          Conversions make your traffic become of higher quality.

          -wittyblogger
          Talking about home pages.

          Really I don't care If my home page every ranks in the SERPs, it's nice that it does, but most of my sales/conversions happen on internal pages, mainly because I have so many pages picking up long tail traffic.

          The traffic doesn't care what the URL is, all they care about is If you can give them what their looking for.
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          • Profile picture of the author Jeffery
            Originally Posted by yukon View Post

            Talking about home pages.

            Really I don't care If my home page every ranks in the SERPs, it's nice that it does, but most of my sales/conversions happen on internal pages, mainly because I have so many pages picking up long tail traffic.

            The traffic doesn't care what the URL is, all they care about is If you can give them what their looking for.
            ^ This ^

            About the home page ranking in the SERPs: that pretty much "sums it up" from my own experience as a webmaster...

            ...Google has always assigned high rank to my home pages in the SERPs for many reasons, but more importantly for these two elements:

            1) Navigation. Heavy emphasis on a navigation structure that starts with the home page: Links to all content: categories,pages,posts with a link back to the home page.

            2) Monetization. Only the site's internal pages are monetized and no more than three types of monetization. Usually just one.

            Note: Most of my sites are WordPress and I prefer a theme that allows me custom sidebars for individual pages, so I can place a different ad per sidebar. Thus when I send targeted traffic to the target page there is a single product in the sidebar.

            Jeffery 100% :-)
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          • Profile picture of the author WittyBlogger
            Originally Posted by yukon View Post

            Talking about home pages.

            Really I don't care If my home page every ranks in the SERPs, it's nice that it does, but most of my sales/conversions happen on internal pages, mainly because I have so many pages picking up long tail traffic.

            The traffic doesn't care what the URL is, all they care about is If you can give them what their looking for.
            That's right. The big thing is that if your home page ranks, most of the time your long-tailed keywords (if there is correct onpage SEO implemented) will rank. No doubt about that.

            Page juice flows down a flatter site architecture more easily. (just as I've noticed.)

            I'm not trying to go against the contrary here. I'm just presenting what I've found...

            -wittyblogger
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            7-figure entrepreneurs aren't made overnight. You can make money online with a full time income through blogging and making words crackle with energy. ;)
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          • Profile picture of the author Headstart
            Hey guys, sorry I can't answer PM's I only have 9 posts and it requires 15. When I'm at 15 I will answer all of the pm's and also update OP with a pretty good video explaining Siloing.
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  • Profile picture of the author bryanbian
    I think silo is a new challenge for me
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    • Profile picture of the author WittyBlogger
      Originally Posted by yukon View Post

      Not sure why you said a Silo is a theory & in the same comment said a Silo works?
      Okay, maybe I won't say its a theory. It's a speculation.

      I've never said it works. I merely said that it helps with user experience, and thus will pass manual inspections.

      Originally Posted by kennyall View Post

      hmm, I agree with the "won't rank well" I will go back and change the title. But to say it doesn't work is ridiculous... I've been told by just about all of the best SEO people I know that it's a must.
      it's only a must because of the users. It's also good for crawlers but the big problem is the loss of link juice down the silo.

      Cross linking is flatter and better. Why do you think SEOs promote maximum of 3 tiers? It's because anymore would remove any benefit of page juice flowing down from the main domain. Hence if you keep a 2 tier structure, it's not called a silo - and its far more suited to ranking.
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  • Profile picture of the author madison_avenue
    If you properly silo the site, it can mitigate the need to get lot of domain names, as each
    category in the silo can become a 'micro niche site' by itself. It can contain independent mini-niches, for example, for weight loss diets: weight loss can be the main niche and each category can be a sub-niche: Daken diet, Atkins diet etc.
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  • Profile picture of the author pangolin123
    Are these subtopics you mention LSI keywords from the Google keywords tool?
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    • Profile picture of the author madison_avenue
      Originally Posted by pangolin123 View Post

      Are these subtopics you mention LSI keywords from the Google keywords tool?
      They don't have to be LSI words. For example if it's a 'diet' site If you do a search for 'diet' on the google adwords tool, keyword phrases like 'daken diet' and 'south beach diet' will come up, use these as your categories.
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  • Profile picture of the author Fernando Veloso
    A closer look at some of the most competitive markets and you'll see WHY and HOW silo structures do so well. It's not BS, it's not a "theory".

    I mean, you don't have to believe it or discredit it - just look at Google rankings for foinkin sake...

    Problem is: most people can't follow a silo structure when developing websites cause it can be tedious and a slow process - instead is faster/cooler to just drop new content with no idea whatsoever of using it to reinforce your previous content...

    That's about it.
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    • Profile picture of the author Headstart
      Originally Posted by Fernando Veloso View Post

      A closer look at some of the most competitive markets and you'll see WHY and HOW silo structures do so well. It's not BS, it's not a "theory".

      I mean, you don't have to believe it or discredit it - just look at Google rankings for foinkin sake...

      Problem is: most people can't follow a silo structure when developing websites cause it can be tedious and a slow process - instead is faster/cooler to just drop new content with no idea whatsoever of using it to reinforce your previous content...

      That's about it.
      This... thank you

      Also, I'm not negating the user experience factor at all. I even mentioned it's definitely something thats looked for upon manual reviews. Google is all about the user experience. Better user experience... better rankings.
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      • Profile picture of the author tylerherman
        Lol "silo structure" you can call it whatever you want. This is the basic site structure of almost all websites except for blogs.

        You can build a site like this, or a blog, there really isn't any other way of doing it, unless you just go one level deep and have a billion links off your homepage.

        You guys are reading way too much into a pretty much basic principal of web design.
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        • Profile picture of the author yukon
          Banned
          Originally Posted by tylerherman View Post

          Lol "silo structure" you can call it whatever you want. This is the basic site structure of almost all websites except for blogs.

          You can build a site like this, or a blog, there really isn't any other way of doing it, unless you just go one level deep and have a billion links off your homepage.

          You guys are reading way too much into a pretty much basic principal of web design.
          Lol, apparently 99.99% of Wordpress theme designers didn't get the "How to build a Useful Site Structure" memo.

          Before anyone says, you can use plain html sites, true, but good luck creating a site over 25 pages & building all the 100% related internal linking by hand. The internal linking alone would be a total nightmare on say a 100 page site, which 100 pages is not even a big site.

          If you goal is a small site then by all means build an html site, but I guarantee If you plan on building out a larger site you'll be working your butt off trying to structure a plain html site, folders on an html site will only get you so far.
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          • Profile picture of the author tylerherman
            Originally Posted by yukon View Post

            Lol, apparently 99.99% of Wordpress theme designers didn't get the "How to build a Useful Site Structure" memo.

            Before anyone says, you can use plain html sites, true, but good luck creating a site over 25 pages & building all the 100% related internal linking by hand. The internal linking alone would be a total nightmare on say a 100 page site, which 100 pages is not even a big site.

            If you goal is a small site then by all means build an html site, but I guarantee If you plan on building out a larger site you'll be working your butt off trying to structure a plain html site, folders on an html site will only get you so far.
            Sounds like Wordpress is your problem. I'd suggest using a real cms if you plan on building large sites where the structure needs to be deep and unique. Of course that means you can't just **** out a million sites a year, it takes more work setting it up.

            A large site is going to take time any way you slice it. People use Wordpress for niche sites because they can dump out a ton of sites quick but they can't make deep sites with the Wordpress blog layout. You can but it takes a high level of customization to the themes, in which case I'd just use Joomla, Drupal, EE, MODx or whatever your CMS of choice happens to be.

            This might actually be the way for people to go now. Build large powerful sites that hit on one central topic and 4-5 niches all wrapped up in one. Save on buying as many domains but put a lot more effort into become an authority on a broad topic.
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            • Profile picture of the author yukon
              Banned
              Originally Posted by tylerherman View Post

              Sounds like Wordpress is your problem. I'd suggest using a real cms if you plan on building large sites where the structure needs to be deep and unique. Of course that means you can't just **** out a million sites a year, it takes more work setting it up.

              A large site is going to take time any way you slice it. People use Wordpress for niche sites because they can dump out a ton of sites quick but they can't make deep sites with the Wordpress blog layout. You can but it takes a high level of customization to the themes, in which case I'd just use Joomla, Drupal, EE, MODx or whatever your CMS of choice happens to be.

              This might actually be the way for people to go now. Build large powerful sites that hit on one central topic and 4-5 niches all wrapped up in one. Save on buying as many domains but put a lot more effort into become an authority on a broad topic.



              Wordpress isn't a problem, I use it on multiple self hosted sites, it's theme source code customization that takes time, which isn't a big deal IMO, considering I like WP & it's what I'm used to running.

              I've always built larger sites but that first happened by giving my traffic more & more of what they wanted which is useful content that was easy to find.

              Anyone that has a site that's an authority on a subject/niche knows fresh pages tend to carry some SERP weight when the new internal pages are backed up with existing ranked internal pages, it's like a snowball effect.

              The way I look at Silo sites is basically multiple small sites (Silos) on a single domain, all 100% related to the root keyword. The key is hammering the heck out of the niche, which doesn't mean stuffing the root keyword. Google likes when multiple pages are all linked & share the same keyword theme.

              Example, If I had a Silo & the root keyword is dog collars, I might have these as page titles for supporting the Silo (category) landing pages root keyword (Dog Collars):
              • Dog Collars
                • How do I know what size dog collar to order?
                • Personalized dog collars
                • How do I measure my dog for a collar?
                • Can I exchange a dog collar for the correct size?
                • How to clean a dog collar?
                • Best dog training collars
                • etc...

              A lot of people would look at that list of page titles above & say, yeah big deal, just put them in a WP category & call it a day, but I guarantee most would have a large amount of random internal links on every single page on the list of pages above.

              Basically Silos are removing the junk from the page, theme the entire single Silo (category) to support the Silo landing page.

              The extra random links/junk on a page is sending Google mixed signals on what the heck the page is trying to accomplish with it's content. Are we talking about dog collars on this page or animals in general (dogs, parakeets, etc...)?

              People shopping for dog collars don't care about some random latest post/link in the sidebar that's explaning why parakeets shouldn't eat certain types of bird seeds.

              Might sound funny, but the above example happens on most sites, especially CMS type sites, not only Wordpress.

              Here is a classic example of a sidebar fail, keep in mind this is on Ezinearticles.com, they should know better than this but as you can see they don't.

              Here on ezines auto insurance category the right sidebar links to totally random insurance categories. If I'm on Google searching for auto insurance info. I could care less about workers compensation insurance. They've diluted the auto insurance category page for both the traffic & SEO.

              What that auto insurance category should have done is remove all those random insurance links from the right sidebar, they are irrelevant & have nothing to do with auto insurance.

              Ezine could easily build up that category pages authority considering that specific category has 25K+ related pages, IMO their not even trying to create authority on the auto insurance niche.
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            • Profile picture of the author Mike Anthony
              Originally Posted by tylerherman View Post

              This might actually be the way for people to go now. Build large powerful sites that hit on one central topic and 4-5 niches all wrapped up in one. Save on buying as many domains but put a lot more effort into become an authority on a broad topic.

              It is but people won't want to hear it. From the sites people PM me to look at the MFA is the most popular idea on WF. Thin sites that require the least amount of work (they think) and then building a lot of the same junk sites that will eventually get dinged by Google
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  • Profile picture of the author Pawprints34
    I'd love to use the silo structure but I must admit most people (myself included) just don't have the skills to jump into the code of a wordpress theme and modify it.

    I've heard people mention themes such as Thesis or Clickbump that are close to a Silo structure.

    Any other good wordpress themes people could recommend?
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  • Profile picture of the author Mantasmo
    A lot of you people imagine/use the "silo" completely wrong, because you're so focused on maximizing SERP benefits that you completely ignore user experience. IF you really studied some of the top ranking sites out there, you'd know what I mean (hint: they don't use tight and closed silo structures - for a good reason).
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  • Profile picture of the author Pawprints34
    Well its pure speculation but people may need to be careful that their silo structures don't look too "search engine only" rather than user friendly. It only takes a nice Google algo change and silos might be on the outer?

    I've been thinking about how silos could be incorporated into my sites and what navigation my users would want to see to find out about the topic. Maybe start with the silo but "break the rules" if common sense calls for it and the user experience dictates it depending on what your site is about ...etc.

    Besides... there are many people like me who just don't have the technical skills to modify a wordpress theme to be a true silo. Might have to go for something close to it but if it isn't perfect.... well Google is moving towards the human and the less perfect by the sounds of it so maybe this natural element to the site structure is not a bad thing?
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  • Profile picture of the author Fernando Veloso
    Are you guys trippin or what? Silo structures ARE IN FACT user friendly. You get the best of both worlds using one.

    hint: they don't use tight and closed silo structures - for a good reason
    Closed? What?

    How can you close/tighten a Silo IF that thing is where you put your content? And who said anything about closing anything?

    Shhessh.
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    • Profile picture of the author Mantasmo
      Originally Posted by Fernando Veloso View Post

      Are you guys trippin or what? Silo structures ARE IN FACT user friendly. You get the best of both worlds using one.



      Closed? What?

      How can you close/tighten a Silo IF that thing is where you put your content? And who said anything about closing anything?

      Shhessh.
      Not sure why so defensive? Who is trippin what? Are you sure you know what that means? You're on a forum with lots of people, not every post is a personal attack.

      I was addressing the OP - that graph makes no sense and isn't how authority sites are built.
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    • Profile picture of the author Tony Hayes
      "Silo structures ARE IN FACT user friendly" Thats the key point IMHO

      Originally Posted by Fernando Veloso View Post

      Are you guys trippin or what? Silo structures ARE IN FACT user friendly. You get the best of both worlds using one.



      Closed? What?

      How can you close/tighten a Silo IF that thing is where you put your content? And who said anything about closing anything?

      Shhessh.
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  • Profile picture of the author gtk29
    Isn't SILO same as a well structured site? In that case SILO is certainly a good strategy for better SEO.
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  • Profile picture of the author MagicWhisper
    Can someone post or PM me a sample of a silo-ed site? I would learn better that way.
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  • Profile picture of the author boxoun
    I still don't understand. Are you linking from the sub category to supporting pages or supporting pages to sub category? Or does this have nothing to do with linking but navigational structure?

    What is silo? Always looking to try new things. Please explain.
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    • Profile picture of the author Headstart
      Originally Posted by gtk29 View Post

      Isn't SILO same as a well structured site? In that case SILO is certainly a good strategy for better SEO.
      Yes, there's a lot of debate as far as the actual linking and loss of link juice to unrelated pages. Not as straight forward when you're trying to accomplish that.

      Originally Posted by MagicWhisper View Post

      Can someone post or PM me a sample of a silo-ed site? I would learn better that way.
      PM'd .. Edit: Dammit I can't PM with only 9 posts..

      Originally Posted by boxoun View Post

      I still don't understand. Are you linking from the sub category to supporting pages or supporting pages to sub category? Or does this have nothing to do with linking but navigational structure?

      What is silo? Always looking to try new things. Please explain.
      The actual results of keeping links tightly kept is up for debate. Some people believe Google only likes Silo because of the improved user experience while others believe keeping the link juice tightly kept within your site allows for less external SEO as your basically maximizing the links you have.

      To answer your questions keep pages and categories linking only to related pages. Using that Dog example again, you wouldnt link Dalmation Food to Pitbull Chew Toys...
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  • Profile picture of the author EdwardDennis
    Yukon,

    Do you have to use an exact anchor text when linking to another page or phrase match will do the trick? Thanks in advance!
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    • Profile picture of the author yukon
      Banned
      Originally Posted by EdwardDennis View Post

      Yukon,

      Do you have to use an exact anchor text when linking to another page or phrase match will do the trick? Thanks in advance!
      I use both & there's a reason why.

      I don't want to try & make this sound complicated but there are ways to do more advanced linking than running the pages main keyword as anchor-text. It's possible to rank multiple pages with a single keyword/phrase.

      When I create a page my ultimate goal is to rank that single page for a single keyword/phrase. That main keyword/phrase per page will be in the page title & <h1> tag, that's the basics for how I run all my pages.

      Lets say I have an existing page that is already ranked on the first page of Google SERPs (example). The existing ranked pages keyword phrase is Best dog training collars. This ranked page is already showing some authority since it's ranked on page #1 in the SERPs, it's not a lot of authority, we can do better.

      The trick here is to pass this keyword phrase authority (Best dog training collars) to another related internal page, a new page that doesn't target the first pages main keyword, it's a related keyword but it's not the exact same keyword.

      My new pages keyword is Pros & Cons of a dog collar (example). I'll do the usual keyword/phrase in the new pages title & <h1> tag.

      Here is where the existing ranked page kicks in & the authority gets passed to the new page that's not targeting the existing ranked page keyword/phrase as the main keyword.

      My new page will include multiple <h2> tags in the content. One of the <h2> tags on the new page will be targeting the first page keyword/phrase that is already ranked for Best dog training collars.

      Example:
      <h2>Best dog training collars</h2>
      Blue dog collars are the best collars you can buy...
      This 2nd new page will only have a single <h2> tag & paragraph of text below the tag that is 100% targeting the already ranked page.

      This is more advanced internal linking & the goal of this is to rank multiple pages for a single keyword.

      So even though my 2nd page is only targeting the first page keyword/phrase from a single <h2> tag & 100% related paragraph of text I can point internal/external links at the 2nd page that's main keyword is Pros & Cons of a dog collar with anchor-text that is Best dog training collars.

      That's how you rank multiple pages per single keyword/phrase.

      I hope I didn't make it sound complicated because really it's pretty simple once you've done it a few times.

      A Silo comes into play by grouping both pages into a single Silo (category) & only having 100% related links on both pages.
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      • Profile picture of the author EdwardDennis
        Originally Posted by yukon View Post

        I use both & there's a reason why.

        I don't want to try & make this sound complicated but there are ways to do more advanced linking than running the pages main keyword as anchor-text. It's possible to rank multiple pages with a single keyword/phrase.

        When I create a page my ultimate goal is to rank that single page for a single keyword/phrase. That main keyword/phrase per page will be in the page title & <h1> tag, that's the basics for how I run all my pages.

        Lets say I have an existing page that is already ranked on the first page of Google SERPs (example). The existing ranked pages keyword phrase is Best dog training collars. This ranked page is already showing some authority since it's ranked on page #1 in the SERPs, it's not a lot of authority, we can do better.

        The trick here is to pass this keyword phrase authority (Best dog training collars) to another related internal page, a new page that doesn't target the first pages main keyword, it's a related keyword but it's not the exact same keyword.

        My new pages keyword is Pros & Cons of a dog collar (example). I'll do the usual keyword/phrase in the new pages title & <h1> tag.

        Here is where the existing ranked page kicks in & the authority gets passed to the new page that's not targeting the existing ranked page keyword/phrase as the main keyword.

        My new page will include multiple <h2> tags in the content. One of the <h2> tags on the new page will be targeting the first page keyword/phrase that is already ranked for Best dog training collars.

        Example:


        This 2nd new page will only have a single <h2> tag & paragraph of text below the tag that is 100% targeting the already ranked page.

        This is more advanced internal linking & the goal of this is to rank multiple pages for a single keyword.

        So even though my 2nd page is only targeting the first page keyword/phrase from a single <h2> tag & 100% related paragraph of text I can point internal/external links at the 2nd page that's main keyword is Pros & Cons of a dog collar with anchor-text that is Best dog training collars.

        That's how you rank multiple pages per single keyword/phrase.

        I hope I didn't make it sound complicated because really it's pretty simple once you've done it a few times.

        A Silo comes into play by grouping both pages into a single Silo (category) & only having 100% related links on both pages.
        Nahhh, it's very simple, indeed. I can actually picture how this is done! Will have to try this ASAP! Thanks a ton.
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        • Profile picture of the author mraffiliate
          If you were trying to rank a local business web site who is a wedding photographer how could it be converted over to a silo structure?

          city wedding photographer
          wedding photographer city state
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          • Profile picture of the author yukon
            Banned
            Originally Posted by mraffiliate View Post

            If you were trying to rank a local business web site who is a wedding photographer how could it be converted over to a silo structure?

            city wedding photographer
            wedding photographer city state
            Existing sites that already have ranked keywords is a touchy subject.

            If you start messing with ranked URLs you can lose internal/external backlinks If they don't have a proper 301 redirect setup, which in turn will sink a ranked SERP listing fast. You have to be very careful with URLs on money sites.

            How many pages does the site have & what's the expected max. pages the client wants? A lot of times local offline business are small sites, in that case you can use the plain html method of structured folders. Again, If they have any existing ranked pages be very careful with the old URLs. A broken URL will kill a SERP ranking.
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            • Profile picture of the author mraffiliate
              Originally Posted by yukon View Post

              Existing sites that already have ranked keywords is a touchy subject.

              If you start messing with ranked URLs you can lose internal/external backlinks If they don't have a proper 301 redirect setup, which in turn will sink a ranked SERP listing fast. You have to be very careful with URLs on money sites.

              How many pages does the site have & what's the expected max. pages the client wants? A lot of times local offline business are small sites, in that case you can use the plain html method of structured folders. Again, If they have any existing ranked pages be very careful with the old URLs. A broken URL will kill a SERP ranking.
              I was thinking the same thing. I might try to and write articles / posts including current news and place the internal pages links on these articles / posts. I don't want to take a chance on breaking any of the currently ranked URL's.

              Yukon, Do you know anything about Charles Heflin's "The Master Plan" I know he teaches Silo Structuring but the course was last updated on March 2007 according to the sales page.
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        • Profile picture of the author yukon
          Banned
          Originally Posted by EdwardDennis View Post

          Nahhh, it's very simple, indeed. I can actually picture how this is done! Will have to try this ASAP! Thanks a ton.
          You know, If you look at the SERPs & guys/gals are usually only trying to rank a single page per keyword. I just look at things like that & don't understand why they don't try & rank multiple pages for the exact same keyword. They've already done the hardest work there is to rank that keyword, which is getting the first internal page ranked on page #1 in the SERPs.

          Everyone wants position #1 in Google per keyword & for good reason, but positions #2 & #3 in Google SERPs still have traffic that their leaving on the table.

          Now I know some keywords are just difficult to get multiple pages ranked per individual keyword, but I've seen hundreds of keywords that should easily be able to get multiple ranked pages per keyword.

          Maybe people just don't know it's possible?

          Anyways, glad you picked up the concept in the last comment, test it out on some easy keywords just to get the hang of it, then work backwards towards the more complicated keywords, that way you should at least see some results & know your on the right track.
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          • Profile picture of the author EdwardDennis
            Originally Posted by yukon View Post

            You know, If you look at the SERPs & guys/gals are usually only trying to rank a single page per keyword. I just look at things like that & don't understand why they don't try & rank multiple pages for the exact same keyword. They've already done the hardest work there is to rank that keyword, which is getting the first internal page ranked on page #1 in the SERPs.

            Everyone wants position #1 in Google per keyword & for good reason, but positions #2 & #3 in Google SERPs still have traffic that their leaving on the table.

            Now I know some keywords are just difficult to get multiple pages ranked per individual keyword, but I've seen hundreds of keywords with keywords that should easily be able to get multiple ranked pages per keyword.

            Maybe people just don't know it's possible?

            Anyways, glad you picked up the concept in the last comment, test it out on some easy keywords just to get the hang of it, then work backwards towards the more complicated keywords, that way you should at least see some results & know your on the right track.
            Just want to clear some things up first. Would it be efficient to rank a page first, and then start SILO-ing or simply start silo-ing right off the bat? My understanding of having a silo architecture is to pass link authority or juice from one page to another, hence making it easier for other pages to rank for the same keyword.
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            • Profile picture of the author yukon
              Banned
              Originally Posted by EdwardDennis View Post

              Just want to clear some things up first. Would it be efficient to rank a page first, and then start SILO-ing or simply start silo-ing right off the bat? My understanding of having a silo architecture is to pass link authority or juice from one page to another, hence making it easier for other pages to rank for the same keyword.
              If the site is new, defiantly get the theme setup first that you plan on running long term. You don't want to have to go back & deal with broken URLs & 301 redirects to compensate for a different theme.
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  • Profile picture of the author boxoun
    I guess I've been doing it backwards. Supporting pages linking back to Target page.
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    • Profile picture of the author _sleeper_
      Can I achieve the same results using Wordpress if I use Pages instead of Categories and Posts? You can create the 'parent' pages as the 'green landing pages' and then each page in the silo can be attached to the parent page using the Page Attributes.

      That gives the desired URL structure of:

      domain.com/parentpagename/silopagename

      Then just use text links at the bottom of the Parent page as the user links to the silo supporting pages.

      I don't have any silo friendly themes, so I'm trying to find a workaround.
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    • Profile picture of the author yukon
      Banned
      Originally Posted by boxoun View Post

      I guess I've been doing it backwards. Supporting pages linking back to Target page.
      No, your doing it right.

      Cross link both the target page & supporting pages, so long as their 100% related. That's what you want is themed keywords/links.

      Think of the category/silo as a box, the target page & all supporting pages are in the box. Anything that's inside the box can be linked to each other. Assumes the entire contents (target page & supporting pages) are 100% related to each other.

      Don't be afraid to link to other related pages, the links are what tells Google "Hey, look at all these other pages that are 100% related to the page your looking at now".
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  • Profile picture of the author yukon
    Banned
    Originally Posted by _sleeper_ View Post

    Can I achieve the same results using Wordpress if I use Pages instead of Categories and Posts? You can create the 'parent' pages as the 'green landing pages' and then each page in the silo can be attached to the parent page using the Page Attributes.

    That gives the desired URL structure of:

    domain.com/parentpagename/silopagename

    Then just use text links at the bottom of the Parent page as the user links to the silo supporting pages.

    I don't have any silo friendly themes, so I'm trying to find a workaround.
    I suppose you can do that. Watch out for RSS feeds/links, etc... because they still might display the category page, I haven't tested the setup your talking about.

    If your going to use an existing theme make sure to cleanup the rest of the page by removing unrelated links. I would look for a very simple theme to customize, it will make the cleanup easier.
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    • Profile picture of the author birdman87
      It's not always that easy or simple to categorise the pages on your site. I'm trying to do this at the moment and I have no idea how to go about it.

      I guess the only way I could do it is have my main 8 landing pages that come directly from the home page and then a section called articles for everything else.

      I wish it was as easy as the dogs example you gave.
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      • Profile picture of the author Jeffery
        Originally Posted by birdman87 View Post

        It's not always that easy or simple to categorise the pages on your site. I'm trying to do this at the moment and I have no idea how to go about it.

        I guess the only way I could do it is have my main 8 landing pages that come directly from the home page and then a section called articles for everything else.

        I wish it was as easy as the dogs example you gave.
        My own categories are built as Mike Anthony suggested in a previous post.. Common Sense

        ..and I also create categories based on the keyword that people type into Google and eBay. Note: keyword can be one word or a keyword phrase.

        My own best results are also based on "Not Overdoing" categories and keywords. Meaning, keep it simple when the niche is a "simple niche". Some webmasters call it "Less is more".

        My most active and profitable niche sites are designed to solve problems and the categories are of two types:

        1) How-To Categories that link to...

        2) ...Problem Solving Categories

        How-to niches provide topics of personal interest to visitors, answers to all sorts of problems that people experience all the time, and even entertainment.

        Landing Pages? I do not use them outside the Make Money Online sites at all because my niche site's internal pages are monetized. Usually Google and Bing index those pages and most are on page 1 in the SERPs, so landing pages are not necessary. Honestly, over the years they were sometimes detrimental to my sites, so I quit using them. Just saying.


        Jeffery 100% :-)
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        • Profile picture of the author birdman87
          Does the URL's keyword have to be relevant. One of my "big" pages in the uk starts with "can i get a mortgage". It then goes into many different types of bad credit problems and a few others in the form of a very long article. Should put any new articles to do with credit as a child of that page, even though the actual url for that page is "can-i-get-a-mortgage" and doesn't contain the keywords?

          Hope that jibberish i just wrote makes some sort of sense.

          Just to clarify, it's not your typical salesy landing page. It starts with images and forms, with a small amount of text and big links pointing directing them to places (contact forms etc).

          Below that on each of these "landing pages" contains massive articles with a load of advice in them.

          Originally Posted by Jeffery View Post

          My own categories are built as Mike Anthony suggested in a previous post.. Common Sense

          ..and I also create categories based on the keyword that people type into Google and eBay. Note: keyword can be one word or a keyword phrase.

          My own best results are also based on "Not Overdoing" categories and keywords. Meaning, keep it simple when the niche is a "simple niche". Some webmasters call it "Less is more".

          My most active and profitable niche sites are designed to solve problems and the categories are of two types:

          1) How-To Categories that link to...

          2) ...Problem Solving Categories

          How-to niches provide topics of personal interest to visitors, answers to all sorts of problems that people experience all the time, and even entertainment.

          Landing Pages? I do not use them outside the Make Money Online sites at all because my niche site's internal pages are monetized. Usually Google and Bing index those pages and most are on page 1 in the SERPs, so landing pages are not necessary. Honestly, over the years they were sometimes detrimental to my sites, so I quit using them. Just saying.


          Jeffery 100% :-)
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          • Profile picture of the author Jeffery
            Originally Posted by birdman87 View Post

            Does the URL's keyword have to be relevant. One of my "big" pages in the uk starts with "can i get a mortgage". It then goes into many different types of bad credit problems and a few others in the form of a very long article. Should put any new articles to do with credit as a child of that page, even though the actual url for that page is "can-i-get-a-mortgage" and doesn't contain the keywords?

            Hope that jibberish i just wrote makes some sort of sense.

            Just to clarify, it's not your typical salesy landing page. It starts with images and forms, with a small amount of text and big links pointing directing them to places (contact forms etc).

            Below that on each of these "landing pages" contains massive articles with a load of advice in them.
            This is how I do it and others may differ, so keep an open mind.

            Depends if my site is HTML/PHP or WordPress. The main reason is I always avoid duplicate URLs because some search engines do not index URLs on a domain considered to be duplicates.

            Wordpress wise. Personally, I publish my articles inside categories that are keywords that people use to search for information in Google and Bing, so the URL always includes the category/keyword by default. See how that works? Also, in this way you may also use the same keyword or NOT in the title of the article, but I seldom do.. rather I use a long tail keyword in the title <H1>. This way I cover all of my bases SEO wise. The URL would be similar to this:
            domain / category / title of article
            Note 1: Again the category is the main keyword
            Note 2: Again the 'title of the article' is a longtail keyword

            Sorry, but I may misunderstand the rest of your questions, but I always advise my clients in the UK to focus on including UK or United Kingdom in the majority of the URLs and article titles if the content is specific to the UK. Search engines have multiple data centers all around the world and the UK has 5 the last time checked. The idea is to help or direct the SEs to target your market.

            Jeffery 100% :-)
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            • Profile picture of the author mraffiliate
              Originally Posted by Jeffery View Post

              This is how I do it and others may differ, so keep an open mind.

              Depends if my site is HTML/PHP or WordPress. The main reason is I always avoid duplicate URLs because some search engines do not index URLs on a domain considered to be duplicates.

              Wordpress wise. Personally, I publish my articles inside categories that are keywords that people use to search for information in Google and Bing, so the URL always includes the category/keyword by default. See how that works? Also, in this way you may also use the same keyword or NOT in the title of the article, but I seldom do.. rather I use a long tail keyword in the title <H1>. This way I cover all of my bases SEO wise. The URL would be similar to this:
              domain / category / title of article
              Note 1: Again the category is the main keyword
              Note 2: Again the 'title of the article' is a longtail keyword

              Sorry, but I may misunderstand the rest of your questions, but I always advise my clients in the UK to focus on including UK or United Kingdom in the majority of the URLs and article titles if the content is specific to the UK. Search engines have multiple data centers all around the world and the UK has 5 the last time checked. The idea is to help or direct the SEs to target your market.

              Jeffery 100% :-)
              Hey Jeff,

              I have a religious personal HTML site. I'm going to add 1 silo and later add more. The HomePage is already ranking on page 1. The site is about salvation so here is my silo structure:

              www. my-salvation-site.com

              Silo landing page = How to become a Christian

              Silo sub-pages = baptist plan of salvation
              ---------------- mormon plan of salvation
              ---------------- plan of salvation for children
              ---------------- plan of salvation verses
              ---------------- plan of salvation church of christ

              Since it is an HTML site should I have my URL like this:

              /folder/baptist-plan-of-salvation.htm

              or

              /how-to-become-a-christian/baptist-plan-of-salvation.htm

              If using the "folder" - "category for wordpress" option this is where I get kind of confused on the point of using "folder" or "category"
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              • Profile picture of the author Jeffery
                Originally Posted by mraffiliate View Post

                Hey Jeff,

                I have a religious personal HTML site. I'm going to add 1 silo and later add more. The HomePage is already ranking on page 1. The site is about salvation so here is my silo structure:

                www. my-salvation-site.com

                Silo landing page = How to become a Christian

                Silo sub-pages = baptist plan of salvation
                ---------------- mormon plan of salvation
                ---------------- plan of salvation for children
                ---------------- plan of salvation verses
                ---------------- plan of salvation church of christ

                Since it is an HTML site should I have my URL like this:

                /folder/baptist-plan-of-salvation.htm

                or

                /how-to-become-a-christian/baptist-plan-of-salvation.htm

                If using the "folder" - "category for wordpress" option this is where I get kind of confused on the point of using "folder" or "category"
                The answer assumes that you want your pages indexed in Google with the intent to get organic search engine traffic.

                When I see this question I suggest that an understanding of the basic essentials of web development and SEO, so I point them to the official guide published by Google. The guide explains how to create the URL structure that Google needs to index your pages.
                1) Go here:
                Google-friendly sites - Webmaster Tools Help
                2) Get the guide:
                Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide!

                In short, on an HTML site, the most important factor is the <meta> title with your main keyword. This appears in the top left of your browser. This tells the search engines (SE) what the site is about. Also, the inner page's keywords of the site are extensions of the meta title.

                Example.

                The meta title may be: my-salvation-site.com | Christian salvation

                Silo wise and SEO wise the term 'Christian salvation' is all encompassing. From this you can maintain the SILO method without too much in-depth work.

                Your folders are your categories which are the keywords or phrases that people input in the SEs. Note: You need to research it.

                Read the guide about how to create folders and sub-folders aka main directory and sub directories.

                Me, personally, since the keyword 'salvation' is in the domain name, and the meta title of the site - I would not overuse it in the folders/categories and article titles.

                Jeffery 100% :-)
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                • Profile picture of the author mraffiliate
                  Originally Posted by Jeffery View Post

                  The answer assumes that you want your pages indexed in Google with the intent to get organic search engine traffic.

                  When I see this question I suggest that an understanding of the basic essentials of web development and SEO, so I point them to the official guide published by Google. The guide explains how to create the URL structure that Google needs to index your pages.
                  1) Go here:
                  Google-friendly sites - Webmaster Tools Help
                  2) Get the guide:
                  Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide!

                  In short, on an HTML site, the most important factor is the <meta> title with your main keyword. This appears in the top left of your browser. This tells the search engines (SE) what the site is about. Also, the inner page's keywords of the site are extensions of the meta title.

                  Example.

                  The meta title may be: my-salvation-site.com | Christian salvation

                  Silo wise and SEO wise the term 'Christian salvation' is all encompassing. From this you can maintain the SILO method without too much in-depth work.

                  Your folders are your categories which are the keywords or phrases that people input in the SEs. Note: You need to research it.

                  Read the guide about how to create folders and sub-folders aka main directory and sub directories.

                  Me, personally, since the keyword 'salvation' is in the domain name, and the meta title of the site - I would not overuse it in the folders/categories and article titles.

                  Jeffery 100% :-)
                  I have a basic grasp of the essentials of web development and SEO since I have several clients sites and personal sites ranking well. I am just learning about Siloing and am considering incorporating it into one of my sites to see if it will bring in more organic traffic. Even within the "Siloing crowd" there are several variations, so I will just take the basics of what I have learned and incorporate it into a site and see what happens.
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                  • Profile picture of the author yukon
                    Banned
                    Originally Posted by mraffiliate View Post

                    I have a basic grasp of the essentials of web development and SEO since I have several clients sites and personal sites ranking well. I am just learning about Siloing and am considering incorporating it into one of my sites to see if it will bring in more organic traffic. Even within the "Siloing crowd" there are several variations, so I will just take the basics of what I have learned and incorporate it into a site and see what happens.
                    Really the key is to stay laser focused on the subject that your promoting with your site.

                    Looking at your example above strictly from an SEO perspective, both Mormon & Baptist should have their own individual Silo/Category landing page. They both are based on the same root keyword (religion) but they're not the exact same things, they are individual sub-categories.

                    If I had a site that was based on the root keyword automobile (instead of religion), I wouldn't include Chevy & Ford in the same Category. They are both automobiles & they both serve the exact same purpose but you need to keep them in their own Silo/Category to keep them laser focused on the sub-niche for both traffic & SEO.
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                    • Profile picture of the author mraffiliate
                      Originally Posted by yukon View Post

                      Really the key is to stay laser focused on the subject that your promoting with your site.

                      Looking at your example above strictly from an SEO perspective, both Mormon & Baptist should have their own individual Silo/Category landing page. They both are based on the same root keyword (religion) but they're not the exact same things, they are individual sub-categories.

                      If I had a site that was based on the root keyword automobile (instead of religion), I wouldn't include Chevy & Ford in the same Category. They are both automobiles & they both serve the exact same purpose but you need to keep them in their own Silo/Category to keep them laser focused on the sub-niche for both traffic & SEO.
                      Thanks Yukon,

                      I thought about the same thing but if I restructure the above Silo to this: what sub-pages could go under the "Baptist plan of salvation" and "Mormon plan of salvation" silo landing pages? I searched GKW and didn't see anything that could go under these Silo landing pages.

                      1- How To Become A Christian
                      --plan of salvation for children
                      --plan of salvation verses
                      --salvation prayer

                      2-                       Baptist Plan Of Salvation
                      -- ?

                      3-                       Mormon Plan of Salvation
                      -- ?
                      Signature

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                      • Profile picture of the author yukon
                        Banned
                        Originally Posted by mraffiliate View Post

                        Thanks Yukon,

                        I thought about the same thing but if I restructure the above Silo to this: what sub-pages could go under the "Baptist plan of salvation" and "Mormon plan of salvation" silo landing pages? I searched GKW and didn't see anything that could go under these Silo landing pages.

                        1- How To Become A Christian
                        --plan of salvation for children
                        --plan of salvation verses
                        --salvation prayer

                        2-                         Baptist Plan Of Salvation
                        -- ?

                        3-                         Mormon Plan of Salvation
                        -- ?

                        The first thing I would do is use what's already working in the SERPs to get the Silo started.

                        I searched for the root keyword baptist, Wikipedia ranks #1, BINGO, free source of 100% related keywords to build an entire Silo/category of supporting page titles.

                        Example Silo supporting page titles:
                        • Baptist
                          • Etymology
                          • Origins
                          • English separatist view
                          • Anabaptist influence view
                          • Perpetuity view
                          • Baptist Origins in the UK
                          • Baptist Origins in North America
                          • Baptist affiliations
                          • Qualification for membership
                          • Baptist beliefs and principles
                          • Beliefs that vary among Baptists
                          • Controversies that have shaped Baptists

                        You don't have to use the list above as the exact page titles, just don't stray to far from the original keywords. Be creative with the page titles, don't stuff the word baptist in every single supporting page title. Make the supporting page content 100% unique & focused.

                        This will get you started & eventually flush out higher traffic keyword/phrases that you haven't found in Google Keyword Tool.
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    • Profile picture of the author tedives
      Lots of good comments here. I actually just put out a posting on website architecture last week that goes through some of these siloing issues in detail, as well as other architecture principles you should consider when designing a website for SEO purposes.

      Unfortunately I can't drop any links in here (yet - I'm up to a grand total of 7 posts - woo hoo - 8 to go) but you can check it out at "Coconut Headphones" - look for the post on "Website Architecture". - Ted
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    • Profile picture of the author _sleeper_
      Originally Posted by yukon View Post

      I suppose you can do that. Watch out for RSS feeds/links, etc... because they still might display the category page, I haven't tested the setup your talking about.

      If your going to use an existing theme make sure to cleanup the rest of the page by removing unrelated links. I would look for a very simple theme to customize, it will make the cleanup easier.
      I don't have RSS or tags on my sites, and I found a widget that will let me display different sidebar widgets per page. So I can set up a 'Related Posts' widget for the main topic page - to link to each supporting posts. For each supporting post, I'll only link back to the main topic page right?

      If I could find a way to add unique content to a category page, that would be ideal for my existing sites, but I'll try out setting up the silo pages on a couple sites that aren't ranking yet. I'll 301 redirect the posts to the new page structure though just in case.
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    • Profile picture of the author zecke
      Yukon, As I understand Your silo graph here: warriorforum.com/adsense-ppc-seo-discussion-forum/492756-silo-arcitecture-linking-question.html#post5115542

      Index Page: Dog

      Internal links to silos pages:

      1. Stop Dog Barking
      2. Stop Dog Jumping

      Silo page: Stop Dog Barking

      Internal links to:

      1. Stop Dog Barking in the Crate
      2. Stop Dog Barking at Night
      3. Stop Dogs Barking at Other Dogs
      4. Stop Dog Barking on Walks
      5. Stop Dog Barking When Left Alone
      6. Index Page: Dog (link back to index page)

      Supporting page: Stop Dog Barking in the Crate

      Internal links to all other supporting pages:

      1. Stop Dog Barking at Night
      2. Stop Dogs Barking at Other Dogs
      3. Stop Dog Barking on Walks
      4. Stop Dog Barking When Left Alone
      5. Silo page: Stop Dog Barking (link back to silo page)

      And this is my modification:

      Index Page: Dog

      Internal links to silos pages:

      1. Stop Dog Barking
      2. Stop Dog Jumping

      Silo page: Stop Dog Barking

      Internal links to:

      1. Stop Dog Barking in the Crate (link to first supporting page)
      2. Index Page: Dog (link back to index page)

      First Supporting page: Stop Dog Barking in the Crate

      Internal links to:

      1. Stop Dog Barking at Night (next supporting page)
      2. Silo page: Stop Dog Barking (link back to silo page)

      Second Supporting page: Stop Dog Barking at Night

      Internal links to:

      1. Stop Dog Barking in the Crate (previous supporting page)
      2. Stop Dogs Barking at Other Dogs (next supporting page)
      2. Silo page: Stop Dog Barking (link back to silo page)


      My question for Yukon is: When one silo have about 50 supporting pages, You put all 49 internal links to other supporting pages on the supporting page ? Or do You use only small chunk (next and previous) or for example only 5 links ?

      I`m asking because I`m worring about loosing linkjuice passing back to silo page. If You have only 3 internal links for me it`s better than have 49 internal links ?

      Thank You in advance
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      • Profile picture of the author yukon
        Banned
        Originally Posted by zecke View Post

        My question for Yukon is: When one silo have about 50 supporting pages, You put all 49 internal links to other supporting pages on the supporting page ? Or do You use only small chunk (next and previous) or for example only 5 links ?

        I`m asking because I`m worring about loosing linkjuice passing back to silo page. If You have only 3 internal links for me it`s better than have 49 internal links ?

        Thank You in advance
        As long as all 49 pages are focused around the main keyword in that silo, having 49 internal links on a single page isn't a big deal. Just make sure you need the links & also look at the page from the traffics point of view.
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    • Profile picture of the author Obosh
      Brothers,
      i posted this message in this forum and GGpaul redirected me to this thread.....
      adsense-ppc-seo-discussion-forum/619621-internal-page-linking-confused-please-help.html#post6443512

      I need experts' help here. Recently (6th June) I launched my first website(NameStall.com). I took a lot of care and it took 4 months to finish the website and submitted my website to 4 forums for review. In one forum a guy with 500+ forum posts PMed me and told

      "Your content is unique but your internal linking will kill your SEO. Google doesn't like this kind of internal links."

      Then I send him 4 PMs and asked - him what was wrong and what my mistakes were - but never got any reply from that guy.

      Guys I am really very scared now. This guy has more than 500 forum posts, so he must know something I don't.

      This is my first website and I spent 4 month to develop all the tools and just launched it.

      Please please please brother help me out here. what did I wrong with my internal linking? Or what is the safest or best practice to build your internal linking. Or who do you link your website pages?

      after reading this thread i am not sure whether i did my links properly...can anybody please visit my site and advise me what i doing wrong? and what should i do now...

      Please help me out here guys...i am bagging....and requesting for help....
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      • Profile picture of the author guzpra
        Originally Posted by Obosh View Post

        Brothers,
        i posted this message in this forum and GGpaul redirected me to this thread.....
        adsense-ppc-seo-discussion-forum/619621-internal-page-linking-confused-please-help.html#post6443512

        I need experts' help here. Recently (6th June) I launched my first website(NameStall.com). I took a lot of care and it took 4 months to finish the website and submitted my website to 4 forums for review. In one forum a guy with 500+ forum posts PMed me and told

        "Your content is unique but your internal linking will kill your SEO. Google doesn't like this kind of internal links."

        Then I send him 4 PMs and asked - him what was wrong and what my mistakes were - but never got any reply from that guy.

        Guys I am really very scared now. This guy has more than 500 forum posts, so he must know something I don't.

        This is my first website and I spent 4 month to develop all the tools and just launched it.

        Please please please brother help me out here. what did I wrong with my internal linking? Or what is the safest or best practice to build your internal linking. Or who do you link your website pages?

        after reading this thread i am not sure whether i did my links properly...can anybody please visit my site and advise me what i doing wrong? and what should i do now...

        Please help me out here guys...i am bagging....and requesting for help....
        let me see your site first and see if I can give a suggestion
        Signature

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        • Profile picture of the author Obosh
          Originally Posted by guzpra View Post

          let me see your site first and see if I can give a suggestion
          Waiting for your valuable suggestions...
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    • Profile picture of the author tutor
      Hello Ladies And Gents:

      I have a question for the creator of this thread (or anyone else who might be able to help).

      The idea of siloing makes perfect sense to me, but what if my MAIN domain doesn't have a keyword. (The example given was "mydogblog" or something to that effect.)

      Let's assume I have a site called academic life dot com but the focus of the site was essay writing help.

      It's a wordpress site, and the "home" page will be academic life dot com

      Anyone understand my problem? If so, could you provide some advice?

      I'd sure appreciate it.
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      • Profile picture of the author yukon
        Banned
        Originally Posted by tutor View Post

        Hello Ladies And Gents:

        I have a question for the creator of this thread (or anyone else who might be able to help).

        The idea of siloing makes perfect sense to me, but what if my MAIN domain doesn't have a keyword. (The example given was "mydogblog" or something to that effect.)

        Let's assume I have a site called academic life dot com but the focus of the site was essay writing help.

        It's a wordpress site, and the "home" page will be academic life dot com

        Anyone understand my problem? If so, could you provide some advice?

        I'd sure appreciate it.

        Create a landing page like:
        • hxxp://academic-life.com/essay-writing-help/

        Then create supporting pages like:
        • hxxp://academic-life.com/essay-writing-help/
          • hxxp://academic-life.com/essay-writing-help/essay-writing-ideas/
          • hxxp://academic-life.com/essay-writing-help/creative-writing/
          • hxxp://academic-life.com/essay-writing-help/scholarship-essay-writing/
          • hxxp://academic-life.com/essay-writing-help/essay-outline-help/
          • etc...
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  • Profile picture of the author adamcm
    Probably a stupid question, but when doing these silo structures do related posts plugins help or hurt? For instance the plugin I use relates pages by tags. I assume I can link all of the pages in my silo with a certain tag but wasn't sure if this was the most effective way.
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  • Profile picture of the author rwilson89
    Generally agree. For SEO alone, the silo approach is great. Often, it's just not that easy though. You may start working on a site that where the core business isn't as simple as one keyword, or your bosses don't want to make the site about one thing. I'd recommend auditing sites like that for frivolous content and try to get as much off as possible. If something doesn't relate directly to the core business, move that content off site or delete it.
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  • Profile picture of the author Curtis2011
    Lol. This "silo" structure is nothing new. I used it on my first website that I made like 4-5 years ago.

    Also it's the same sort of structure that's taught by SBI (Site Build It), which has been around for something like a decade now.
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    • Profile picture of the author yukon
      Banned
      Originally Posted by Curtis2011 View Post

      Lol. This "silo" structure is nothing new. I used it on my first website that I made like 4-5 years ago.

      Also it's the same sort of structure that's taught by SBI (Site Build It), which has been around for something like a decade now.
      Nobody on this forum claimed it was anything new (that I've seen).

      What matters is, you can easily build authority on a keyword/page. Everyone has their own SEO style, I prefer to milk on-page linking for all it has, makes external link building less work.
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    • Profile picture of the author atomAnt
      Originally Posted by Curtis2011 View Post

      Lol. This "silo" structure is nothing new. I used it on my first website that I made like 4-5 years ago.

      Also it's the same sort of structure that's taught by SBI (Site Build It), which has been around for something like a decade now.
      that's right, SBI was all about this, making site content telescoped through siloed design. Ken Evoy was ahead of the curve with silo structure, but I don't remember him referring to it as "silo." It was taught as the strict but natural way to correctly theme a website. It was definitely what is now called silo structure.

      To him, siloing content is not SEO. It is a common sense design method. It tells both the engines and visitors precisely what you want to convey about your site. I've gotten it to work extremely well.

      Ken often tangled with SEO practitioners, calling search engine optimization a pseudo-science and insisting that only great content with well designed (silo) sites will survive future Google changes. And this was back in 2006.

      He'd go to these SEO conferences and then lay this on them, suggesting they scrap SEO entirely. It was like poking a stick into a hornets nest.

      Most of what he said about it has turned out to be accurate.
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      • Profile picture of the author yukon
        Banned
        Originally Posted by atomAnt View Post

        that's right, SBI was all about this, making site content telescoped through siloed design.

        It's a solid course, and that was when I saw it 5 years ago. Ken Evoy was ahead of the curve with silo structure.

        To him, siloing content is not SEO. It is a common sense design method. It tells both the engines and visitors precisely what you want to convey about your site. I've gotten it to work extremely well.

        Ken often tangled with SEO practitioners, calling search engine optimization a pseudo-science and insisting that only great content with (silo) designed sites will survive future Google changes.

        He'd go to these SEO conferences and then lay this on them, suggesting they scrap SEO entirely. It was like poking a stick into a hornets nest.

        Most of what he said about it has turned out to be accurate.

        I had to Google SBI (lol), looks like all that guy was doing was milking $$ from selling proprietary tools & way overpriced web hosting ($300 per domain/year).

        Anyways, IMO Bruce Clay is the man behind silos, from way back in the day. I know some people will argue that silos originated from basic HTML structure, but I don't think that's true. HTML folders are just folders, it's what you put in those folders (staying focused on the subject) that matters.
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        • Profile picture of the author atomAnt
          Originally Posted by yukon View Post

          I had to Google SBI (lol), looks like all that guy was doing was milking $$ from selling proprietary tools & way overpriced web hosting ($300 per domain/year).

          Anyways, IMO Bruce Clay is the man behind silos, from way back in the day. I know some people will argue that silos originated from basic HTML structure, but I don't think that's true. HTML folders are just folders, it's what you put in those folders (staying focused on the subject) that matters.
          (chuckle... ) The annual renewal is costly for new internet marketers, considering it takes time to assimilate all that is involved in learning how to produce income.

          the SBI-SiteSell course gives someone new a solid foundation for internet marketing, niche and keyword research, and site structure. Aside from the course, Ken Evoy's 495-page internet marketing textbook "Make Your Site Sell" is a classic and even now can be found at Amazon.

          Over a decade these ideas have evolved and effective silo design for Wordpress is trickier than what was taught back then for static sites. Now, it seems that structure is more important than ever, eclipsing other factors in traditional SEO.

          I've gotten good information from these posts for more complex CMS site builds. Thanks for sharing so much good advice.
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  • Profile picture of the author Baadier Sydow
    Good advice and an easy path to building an authority site in any niche.
    Signature
    Baadier Sydow
    Budget Furniture

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  • Profile picture of the author mraffiliate
    I thought about the same thing but if I restructure the above Silo to this: what sub-pages could go under the "Baptist plan of salvation" and "Mormon plan of salvation" silo landing pages? I searched GKW and didn't see anything that could go under these Silo landing pages.

    1- How To Become A Christian
    --plan of salvation for children
    --plan of salvation verses
    --salvation prayer

    2-     Baptist Plan Of Salvation
    -- ?

    3-     Mormon Plan of Salvation
    -- ?
    Signature

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  • Profile picture of the author ghedman
    Silo Strukture certainly very good, thanks for the share.
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    • Profile picture of the author zecke
      yukon - Your tips are great. Thank You for that. I have just implemented Your internal links (silo) strategy to one of mine static websites and I see results in no time.

      But, have You thought about realesing Your own product called: "yukon silo theme" or plugin to Wordpress ? If You do, I will be first to pay for that kind of theme or to test

      Btw. Do You know any of ecommerce engine that provides silostructure ? That would be something.

      I`m not programmer, so it`s easy for me to implement silos in static pages but hard to implement into dynamic pages...

      Thanks
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      • Profile picture of the author birdman87
        could i PM somebody on here with my website? Maybe, if you have some spare time, you could take a really quick look at it and tell me what you think site structure wise. We are going to start adding regularly updated articles soon so I will be needing to figure out how I'm going to do this.

        thanks
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  • Profile picture of the author nest28
    How would I silo structure this site Ultrasound Technician on blogger.

    I always wanted to try this but thought it wouldn't work because blogger has a no follow feature on it's category pages to prevent duplicate content.
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  • Profile picture of the author PathofLeastResistance
    Yukon,

    What are your thoughts on outgoing links? I have read that outgoing links to other authority sites may help in the serps, but I also know by definition outgoing links introduce leakage.
    Signature
    300IM.com
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  • Profile picture of the author sethczerepak
    Silo structure is important, but user responses are becoming the most important part of SEO: repeat visits, high click through rates, longer times on site. It might take some time for the results to show, but if your site is engaging it will climb the ranks.
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    • Profile picture of the author birdman87
      Hi Guys

      Am currently in the process of re-structuring my site into a much bigger authority silo site. I'm a bit stumped as to what categories to put certain keywords into.

      Say, for example, I have some main pages linked to from the home page.

      www.mydomain.co.uk/buytolet (keyword: buy to let)
      www.mydomain.co.uk/mortgagebroker (keyword: mortgage broker)
      www.mydomain.co.uk/bestmortgagerates (keyword: best mortgage rates)

      Now I'm trying to make the more broader categories break up into smaller subcategories.

      One keyword might be, for example, "buy to let mortgage broker" or "best buy to let mortgage rates".

      Which URL do I put it under? /buytolet/buytoletmortgagebroker? Or /mortgagebroker/buytoletmortgagebroker?

      I was thinking that perhaps I should make it an extension of "buy to let" but also make a page for mortgage broker that re-directs towards the buy to let page.


      Thanks for any advice you guys can give me.

      Dave
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      • Profile picture of the author yukon
        Banned
        Originally Posted by birdman87 View Post

        Hi Guys

        Am currently in the process of re-structuring my site into a much bigger authority silo site. I'm a bit stumped as to what categories to put certain keywords into.

        Say, for example, I have some main pages linked to from the home page.

        www.mydomain.co.uk/buytolet (keyword: buy to let)
        www.mydomain.co.uk/mortgagebroker (keyword: mortgage broker)
        www.mydomain.co.uk/bestmortgagerates (keyword: best mortgage rates)

        Now I'm trying to make the more broader categories break up into smaller subcategories.

        One keyword might be, for example, "buy to let mortgage broker" or "best buy to let mortgage rates".

        Which URL do I put it under? /buytolet/buytoletmortgagebroker? Or /mortgagebroker/buytoletmortgagebroker?

        I was thinking that perhaps I should make it an extension of "buy to let" but also make a page for mortgage broker that re-directs towards the buy to let page.


        Thanks for any advice you guys can give me.

        Dave

        I would keep it simple & build a new category for each main keyword, then all the supporting pages below that main keyword page.

        • hxxp://mydomain.co.uk/buy-to-let/
          • hxxp://mydomain.co.uk/buy-to-let/supporting-page/
          • hxxp://mydomain.co.uk/buy-to-let/supporting-page/
          • hxxp://mydomain.co.uk/buy-to-let/supporting-page/
          • hxxp://mydomain.co.uk/buy-to-let/supporting-page/
          • etc...


        • hxxp://mydomain.co.uk/mortgage-broker/
          • hxxp://mydomain.co.uk/mortgage-broker/supporting-page/
          • hxxp://mydomain.co.uk/mortgage-broker/supporting-page/
          • hxxp://mydomain.co.uk/mortgage-broker/supporting-page/
          • hxxp://mydomain.co.uk/mortgage-broker/supporting-page/
          • etc...


        • hxxp://mydomain.co.uk/best-mortgage-rates/
          • hxxp://mydomain.co.uk/best-mortgage-rates/supporting-page/
          • hxxp://mydomain.co.uk/best-mortgage-rates/supporting-page/
          • hxxp://mydomain.co.uk/best-mortgage-rates/supporting-page/
          • hxxp://mydomain.co.uk/best-mortgage-rates/supporting-page/
          • etc...

        Try to keep the URLs as short & focused as possible.
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  • Profile picture of the author guzpra
    as I experienced, using SILO does help maintain ranking, even post penguin attack
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  • Profile picture of the author Crew Chief
    This is how I built my SILO. Notice how everything is tightly knit together, LOL?



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    Tools, Strategies and Tactics Used By Savvy Internet Marketers and SEO Pros:

    ProSiteFlippers.com We Build Monetization Ready High-Value Virtual Properties
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  • Profile picture of the author teachingking
    I'm not sure I understand why Wordpress is not silo friendly. Isn't this as simple as creating parent pages for the silos and child pages underneath? What am I missing?
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  • Profile picture of the author ceilbleu
    i dont understand at all lol
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  • Profile picture of the author markowe
    OK, long post coming up, but bear with me. Just been back and reread this thread - I have been applying a lot of these principles, but realise I have possibly been selling my sites short and I could do much more to implement a tighter silo structure. Thing is, as we all agree, Wordpress doesn't lend itself very well to this structure, the main problems being as follows:

    - sidebar navigation that displays the ENTIRE site's navigation (waters down the silo structure, relatively easily fixed, though)
    - difficulty in implementing the structure:

    -Main category page
    - Supporting-page 1
    - Supporting-page 2
    There are several ways you could go about it, each requiring hacking of Wordpress - what do people think?:

    1) Create a hierarchy of pages:

    Dogs (root topic)
    Dog collars (level 1 category)
    Blue dog collars (level 2 - if we want to go that deep)
    Red dog collars etc...

    ADVANTAGES: easy to implement out-of-the-box in WP; preserves a logical URL structure, i.e. dogs.com/collars/blue; you can relatively easily add widgets to link only to "sister pages" and back to the root page.
    DISADVANTAGES: you lose all the advantages of "posts", and if you have an existing site based around category/post, like I do, it is a pig to have to convert all the posts to pages and make sure URL structure is preserved etc.
    Any more disadvantages there that I have missed, or difficulties in implementing this, because this does seem like the easiest way to me?

    2) Use a category/post structure:

    This is probably what most of us have been doing, writing posts and filing them under categories.

    ADVANTAGES: you can still use the "post" taxonomy - as we know, posts and pages are not actually that different really, but posts do have extra "dynamic" functionality, like being readily filed in date order, category, tags etc. (is that really a big deal though, you can do almost everything with pages?)
    DISADVANTAGES: this approach has a LOT of problems - regular category pages are JUST a listing of POST TITLE + EXCERPT, which we tend to noindex anyway to avoid duplicate content problems. Also, category pages cannot have unique content on them, at least not without a plugin, so even if you eliminated the excerpt and only showed the list of post titles/links from the same category you would have to find a way to put the content for your "landing page" at the top of this list. A hack for this in WP would be quite complicated.

    3) Use a hybrid page/category post structure.

    This would have a PAGE as the main "landing page", the one we want to rank - we might have to hack WP so it can also belong to a category.

    Then each landing page would list its support POSTS below with a widget/plugin that would display links to all posts from the same category, either automatically, if we gave the page a category, or manually, by specifying a category to pull a list of posts from.

    On the supporting pages (posts), we would also have a similar plugin linking a list of posts from the same category.

    ADVANTAGES: quite neatly does what we want;
    DISADVANTAGES: takes some hacking; I THINK it messes up URL structure, since I don't think WP will let you have a page have the same URL slug as a category, i.e., if your main silo landing page is:

    - dog collars (slug: dog-collars)

    ...you can't then also have posts in a category called (dog-collars) since this will create ambiguous URL paths (I am not sure about this though).

    I am sure there are other variants of this that you could try.

    So it seems to me that the "page" hierarchy approach is easiest to implement in WP? Or has anyone got any other implementations of this silo type of structure in WP that they care to share, that preferably reduce to a minimum the need for hacking (though I do know a bit about Wordpress and can make it do most things I want with a bit of coding).
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    • Profile picture of the author yukon
      Banned
      Originally Posted by markowe View Post

      Also, category pages cannot have unique content on them, at least not without a plugin, so even if you eliminated the excerpt and only showed the list of post titles/links from the same category you would have to find a way to put the content for your "landing page" at the top of this list. A hack for this in WP would be quite complicated.
      I've got that covered (100% unique content on category pages), it's in the new theme I'm working on. I've been working on this theme/project all night (10PM - 7AM), it's still not ready but I'm getting there.

      My unique WP-Category pages don't require any hacks, other pages, 301 redirects, etc... I can post anything on the category pages, that can be posted in a regular blog post (text, images, video, etc...).
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  • Profile picture of the author Mantasmo
    ^ I've done it using both categories and pages. It's really simple and requires very little "hacking". There's also no need for stupid stuff like "silo" themes or anything else "special".

    I do link to the main "landing" pages from everywhere on the site, but that's just a personal preference and can be changed easily. I do it, because nearly 99% of authority websites in the niche I was going after do it (large PR6+ sites). You can change the menu type to not be "seen" by Google, but my opinion is that it's basically a big waste of time (note: opinion).

    I'll make a full explanation later tonight, just finishing a huge project right now and feel like sharing something useful for a change.
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    • Profile picture of the author yukon
      Banned
      Originally Posted by bnetwork View Post

      ^ I've done it using both categories and pages. It's really simple and requires very little "hacking". There's also no need for stupid stuff like "silo" themes or anything else "special".
      You might change your mind about that soon.

      I'm stripping WP down to the bare minimum, then rebuilding with the silo structure & SEO as a priority, of course usability is also a priority. My goal is to eliminate all the crap that ships with most Wordpress themes.

      I do plan on selling this theme, but I guarantee it will be more affordable than a lot of other premium WP themes & with better on-page SEO than the average premium blog/theme, I'm not talking about meta-tags either (lol).
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      • Profile picture of the author Mantasmo
        Originally Posted by yukon View Post

        You might change your mind about that soon.

        I'm stripping WP down to the bare minimum, then rebuilding with the silo structure & SEO as a priority, of course usability is also a priority. My goal is to eliminate all the crap that ships with most Wordpress themes.

        I do plan on selling this theme, but I guarantee it will be more affordable than a lot of other premium WP themes & with better on-page SEO than the average premium blog/theme, I'm not talking about meta-tags either (lol).
        I look forward to trying it out.

        But I do like my Genesis and Thesis setups, plus I can do pretty much anything with WP no problem, including silo structures. I do see how a theme like this would be convenient for non-coders, absolutely.
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  • Profile picture of the author markowe
    Thanks, I will certainly appreciate that, I am pretty experienced with building sites and what-not but I feel like there's a bit of the puzzle missing there for me.
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  • Profile picture of the author Mantasmo
    Basically, most premium themes allow you to add any content you want to category pages. Or you can edit one of the WP files and assign them appropriately. Or get a special theme (like yukon is working on) that does it for you. From my experience, every single premium theme I used had this functionality built in already, it's right under your category options.

    yukon, how long until your theme is ready? I'd love to try it out.
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  • Profile picture of the author markowe
    I like the sound of a theme that can handle all that - I can set something up myself but I don't really want to be doing any more WP coding than I have got on my plate already, so that's definitely something I would be willing to pay for.

    Only thing that concerns me with handling it within the theme is that you then have to live with the other design aspects of the theme. It's why I never went with Thesis - it doesn't QUITE do what I want on the front page (I prefer a "portal" type home page) and I don't want to have to start making my own changes to that, not after paying $xxx for the Developer option, and especially not to make changes to core theme or WP files that I have to then migrate when a new udpate/version of WP or the theme come along.

    I sort of reckoned on coding this functionality as a plugin, i.e. WP hooks, filters and post meta settings (avoiding changes to the database too, if poss), but as I say, I really don't want to be writing any new plugins, so I'd rather just go with whatever is available.

    I have a site that got a bit of a Penguin slap a week or two ago (probably some crappy backlinking coming back to haunt me, or a blog network getting deindexed), so that would be a candidate to take to pieces and create some sort of silo-like structure to come up with a decent solution in WP (pending Yukon's ).
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    • Profile picture of the author birdman87
      Thanks for all the feedback guys.

      Maybe I'm doing something wrong here, but I find that googles new beta keyword groups tool is fantastic for site siloing.

      I type in something related to mortgages and it gives me keyword groups.

      lets say on of my main inner pages is "buy to let". I type in buy to let mortgages into the keyword tool and it gives me new groups of keywords.

      buy to let mortgage rates
      buy to let advice
      buy to let mortgage deals
      buy to let deposit
      compare buy to let mortgages
      buy to let remortgage
      buy to let comparison
      buy to let tax
      interest only buy to let mortgage
      buy to let mortgage broker

      etc. etc. etc.

      i think this new google keyword tool.. tool... is fantastic for site siloing as it gives you the sub-categories based on highly searched terms.

      Play about with it and you'll see what I mean. There will be various related keywords for each subcategory. just try to incorporate each keyword into the page in a way that sounds natural.

      Am I missing something here? Or does this seem like a fantastic way to figure out the site structure to you guys as well?

      Also, if you're going to get all the content written up before you upload it I highly recommend a piece of free software called treepad. It's really simple and it's a great way to create and visualise all the categories and subcategories that are going to be incorporated onto the website before it's done.

      Hope this helps someone. Let me know if you think I'm doing something wrong here.
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      • Profile picture of the author Mantasmo
        Originally Posted by birdman87 View Post

        Maybe I'm doing something wrong here, but I find that googles new beta keyword groups tool is fantastic for site siloing.
        Awesome, thanks!
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        • Profile picture of the author lutherlars
          I have learned a lot about Siloing from Yukon and reading around here and am using it for, ironically a dog site.
          Siloing works very well but you still need to point a few quality external links at your index page as well as your landing pages. I am building up a site ironically enough about Labrador Retrievers and have two silos on my index page, one of which sits 4th on Google, the other 9, and I have no external backlinks currently pointing at them. They are not very competitive keyword phrases so I did not need to point any external links at them because the juice from the index page, plus the interlinking of child pages in each silo was enough to crack page one. I do have competitive phrases as titles of landing pages for silos that I am building out but these will take more work as there is much more competition. I will continue adding child pages to these silos, interlinking them as best I can with keyword anchor text and adding a few quality external links at their landing pages.
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          • Profile picture of the author smorse1
            Siloing is a great concept, and should be used. In fact, this is straight out of Bruce Clay's playbook. The whole idea is to distribute the link juice to relevant pages for any given keyword, while not diluting it so much as to make it ineffective.
            Look into some of Bruce Clay's blog posts for some great insight into this "theory" -- it does make perfectly logical sense when it's explained properly.
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          • Profile picture of the author yukon
            Banned
            Originally Posted by lutherlars View Post

            I have learned a lot about Siloing from Yukon and reading around here and am using it for, ironically a dog site.
            Siloing works very well but you still need to point a few quality external links at your index page as well as your landing pages. I am building up a site ironically enough about Labrador Retrievers and have two silos on my index page, one of which sits 4th on Google, the other 9, and I have no external backlinks currently pointing at them. They are not very competitive keyword phrases so I did not need to point any external links at them because the juice from the index page, plus the interlinking of child pages in each silo was enough to crack page one. I do have competitive phrases as titles of landing pages for silos that I am building out but these will take more work as there is much more competition. I will continue adding child pages to these silos, interlinking them as best I can with keyword anchor text and adding a few quality external links at their landing pages.
            Yes, you'll always have to have good external links when first starting up a new site, there's no way around it.

            Once you get the site established & start ranking a couple of landing pages for decent keywords, you'll find that you can repeat the whole silo process on a new landing page keyword & piggy back off the already ranked Index page & landing pages built up authority.

            So say you have a structure like:
            • hxxp://my-dog-site.com/golden-retriever/
              • hxxp://my-dog-site.com/golden-retriever/supporting-page/
              • hxxp://my-dog-site.com/golden-retriever/supporting-page/
              • hxxp://my-dog-site.com/golden-retriever/supporting-page/
              • etc...


            • hxxp://my-dog-site.com/labrador-retriever/
              • hxxp://my-dog-site.com/labrador-retriever/supporting-page/
              • hxxp://my-dog-site.com/labrador-retriever/supporting-page/
              • hxxp://my-dog-site.com/labrador-retriever/supporting-page/
              • etc...


            • hxxp://my-dog-site.com/great-dane/
              • hxxp://my-dog-site.com/great-dane/supporting-page/
              • hxxp://my-dog-site.com/great-dane/supporting-page/
              • hxxp://my-dog-site.com/great-dane/supporting-page/
              • etc...


            If I rank 1st page for the keywords "golden retriever" & "labrador retriever", then create a new landing page + supporting pages for the keyword "great dane" I've already built up authority & relevancy from the already ranked landing pages, because the focus is on dog breeds on the Index page. The more dog breeds you create silos for, the stronger the Index page gets for the keyword "dog breeds" assuming that's the keyword were trying to rank the Index page for.

            It's like a snowball effect, the more relevancy you create, the easier ranking pages gets. Obviously not all keywords are the same (competition), when you find tough competition for a specific keyword, repeat the external links like you did when first starting out with the new site, only this time focus on the new keyword.

            Repeat...
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            • Profile picture of the author SerpSlayer
              I'm doing a site with a silo structure, but I have just a couple questions about silo structure.

              Does each landing page or supporting link back to the homepage?

              And also do you hide any links from google, if so how?
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            • Profile picture of the author lutherlars
              For each landing page, you link back to the index page. Right now I have two main silos on my home page, and the first link on each landing page, is back to my index page.
              However, a little twist, continuing with my own example, I have mini silos inside silos and in cases such as this, I link the landing page of the mini silo back to the landing page of the silo it is a part of. I would appreciate Yukon's thought on this.
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              • Profile picture of the author WraithSarko
                also if anyone knows, would having breadcrumbs in a silo count as the link back to the home page from the category pages...as well as the link back from the child pages to the category pages?
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                • Profile picture of the author yukon
                  Banned
                  Originally Posted by WraithSarko View Post

                  also if anyone knows, would having breadcrumbs in a silo count as the link back to the home page from the category pages...as well as the link back from the child pages to the category pages?
                  Breadcrumbs are good for both Google & traffic, I have my sites breadcrumbs setup as conditional php code to show hyperlinks & plain text depending on whatever page your on.

                  If I'm looking at the Landing page my breadcrumb is like this:

                  Index page > Silo landing page > Supporting page


                  If I'm on a supporting page the breadcrumb hyperlinks look like this (notice the Index page is plain text):

                  Index page > Silo landing page > Supporting page
                  That's the way I do my breadcrumbs (conditional php code).
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              • Profile picture of the author yukon
                Banned
                Originally Posted by lutherlars View Post

                For each landing page, you link back to the index page. Right now I have two main silos on my home page, and the first link on each landing page, is back to my index page.
                However, a little twist, continuing with my own example, I have mini silos inside silos and in cases such as this, I link the landing page of the mini silo back to the landing page of the silo it is a part of. I would appreciate Yukon's thought on this.
                Personally I try & keep it as simple as I can, I don't nest the landing pages very deep. I do this:

                Index page > Landing page > Supporting page


                Sounds like your nesting deeper like:

                Index page > Landing page-1 > Landing page-2 > Supporting page
                I can understand needing to nest deeper like on a large site (ex: Amazon), but I have a 1,000+ page site that still only nest 1 landing page deep. Just saying.
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            • Profile picture of the author lutherlars
              Yukon:
              So you are saying that it would be better for me to keep all content maximum 2 clicks from the home page?
              In some cases, for my dog health category for example, I have made mini silos dealing with certain aspects of dog health that are too broad for one article. Would I be better just breaking up the mini silos and turning them into more child pages for my main landing page?
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  • Profile picture of the author Mantasmo
    Originally Posted by markowe View Post

    Only thing that concerns me with handling it within the theme is that you then have to live with the other design aspects of the theme. It's why I never went with Thesis - it doesn't QUITE do what I want on the front page (I prefer a "portal" type home page) and I don't want to have to start making my own changes to that, not after paying for the Developer option, and especially not to make changes to core theme or WP files that I have to then migrate when a new udpate/version of WP or the theme come along.
    ^ yea that's the main reason I never bought any of those MFA themes (CTRtheme, clickbump something..?). I build high quality websites (subjective) and I'm really picky about the design options and all that stuff. A custom header and a background/sidebar color setting just won't do, lol.

    This is also why I've been using Genesis over thesis a lot lately. My latest project is about 200 pages right now and growing. The site looks AWESOME, I love it! Obviously most of the structure I had to customize myself, but that's not a problem tbh.
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    • Profile picture of the author markowe
      Originally Posted by bnetwork View Post

      ^ yea that's the main reason I never bought any of those MFA themes (CTRtheme, clickbump something..?). I build high quality websites (subjective) and I'm really picky about the design options and all that stuff. A custom header and a background/sidebar color setting just won't do, lol.

      This is also why I've been using Genesis over thesis a lot lately. My latest project is about 200 pages right now and growing. The site looks AWESOME, I love it! Obviously most of the structure I had to customize myself, but that's not a problem tbh.
      Right, think we're on the same wavelength there. But I always understood Genesis just to be a framework and you still had to buy actual themes on top, or is there a basic framework theme that looks OK and can be worked with? The LAST thing I want is to be designing themes - I don't mind buying them, but just wondering about the "hidden cost" as it were. Genesis is a fair bit cheaper than Thesis - I just don't feel like coughing up $167 for the developer licence of Thesis right now, especially if it doesn't do what I want out of the box. Genesis is $60, but I am wondering how much more work it requires...

      P.S. Oh yes, I see from the Genesis demo it is a very basic framework theme that would need a bit of work. However, I also see the "Category description" at the top of the category listing here, though I obviously wouldn't list the full posts the way they have done.
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      • Profile picture of the author Mantasmo
        Originally Posted by markowe View Post

        Right, think we're on the same wavelength there. But I always understood Genesis just to be a framework and you still had to buy actual themes on top, or is there a basic framework theme that looks OK and can be worked with? The LAST thing I want is to be designing themes - I don't mind buying them, but just wondering about the "hidden cost" as it were. Genesis is a fair bit cheaper than Thesis - I just don't feel like coughing up $167 for the developer licence of Thesis right now, especially if it doesn't do what I want out of the box. Genesis is $60, but I am wondering how much more work it requires...

        P.S. Oh yes, I see from the Genesis demo it is a very basic framework theme that would need a bit of work. However, I also see the "Category description" at the top of the category listing here, though I obviously wouldn't list the full posts the way they have done.
        Yea, I've been using Thesis for years now, so I'm kind of used to all the customization options and have a folder with dozens of custom hooks, etc for all my website layout needs. The default Thesis theme looks crap. I've made maybe 20 customizations to the layout and structure to make it perfect for my authority sites. It does have custom category content options, along with many other settings. I don't need SEO plugins when using Thesis. It is a bit pricey, I suppose.

        Genesis is great, I like how their themes "feel", if you know what I mean. I own all of them, but have only used "prose" and "lifestyle" (link). Prose is a great theme that's easy to customize (link).

        And yea, most premium themes come with custom category descriptions, which can be pretty much any HTML code or whatever you like.
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    • Profile picture of the author clickbump
      Originally Posted by bnetwork View Post

      ^ yea that's the main reason I never bought any of those MFA themes (CTRtheme, clickbump something..?). I build high quality websites (subjective) and I'm really picky about the design options and all that stuff. A custom header and a background/sidebar color setting just won't do, lol.
      Hi bnetwork, I can't speak for the new owner of CTRtheme, but as for my software, while its super easy to setup a site monetized for Adsense (or any other ad network you want to partner with), the software is optimized for building fast loading, mobile optimized, hybrid web/blog websites built around categories. Category landing pages, graphical sliders, integrated social sharing, designer web fonts, and on the fly design options, etc - without the need of plugins.

      Its definitely got a strong Adsense pedigree no doubt, but I'd challenge you to show me a "high quality" website that I cannot build with this framework. And I can personally guarantee that my version will be faster, mobile optimized, ipad/iphone friendly, fully validating html5 and easier to maintain.

      What makes a "true" silo?
      I think people, especially those new to this business and searching for direction, get a bit sidetracked at chasing the "perfect" or "ideal" site architecture and we can see a whole cottage industry beginning to form around tools promising to help them realize the idea that the "true silo" represents.

      The concept of building well-structured sites, organized around topical themes, is nothing new. People have been using these concepts to build user friendly, high ranking, algorithm immune websites for many years before we started referring to them as silos.

      Lisa Parmley, as one noted example, has been championing this same concept long before the word "silo" became de rigueur. She uses the term "theming", but the characteristics of what is being described here as "Silo" are the same.

      Now, as with in the early days of the adoption of the html standard, there's various flavors being offered as ideal for this (new but old) concept, depending on who you are talking to, or in some cases, what someone is trying to sell you (I've actually seen a "silo plugin" being sold for $99).

      Originally Posted by Woodie Guthrie

      "Any fool can make something complicated. It takes genius to make it simple."
      The coalescing of these concepts into the term "silo" has spurred lots of discussion because there is not a common agreement on exactly how to implement it as a standard. And its been further obfuscated by the overcomplication of what is essentially a simple concept.

      The common thread, is that your website should be thoughtfully organized around a set of core topics (or themes) with articles flowing from them which are purposefully associated to their parent topic or category.

      In WordPress, we call these categories. Its really not much more complicated than that.

      The most important part of the process is what happens *before* you build the website, during the planning stages of deciding what your site is about and organizing that structure.

      In A Nutshell
      Before you build a website, sit down with a piece of paper, turn it to its side and write down your primary keyword phrase at the top. Below that, write 3-5 topics that further refine your primary keyword phrase. *These are your primary categories*. Below each of these jot down the names of several articles you can write in that category. These are the pages/posts that will be created and assigned to their respective category. You now have the basis for a silo/themed/categorized/organized/topical website.

      This is the general idea of organizing your website into topical themes. I prefer a flat structure of a single layer of categories (between 3 and 10 depending on the size of the niche) followed by articles categorized in a single category with little to no overlap. You can have more layers and less articles or more layers, more articles, as your site naturally and organically grows into itself.
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      • Profile picture of the author Mantasmo
        Originally Posted by clickbump View Post

        Hi bnetwork, I can't speak for the new owner of CTRtheme, but as for my software, while its super easy to setup a site monetized for Adsense (or any other ad network you want to partner with), the software is optimized for building fast loading, high quality hybrid web/blog websites built around categories. With that comes category landing pages, graphical sliders, integrated social sharing, designer web fonts, and on the fly design options without the need of plugins.

        Its definitely got a strong Adsense pedigree no doubt, but I'd challenge you to show me a "high quality" website that I cannot build with this framework. And I can personally guarantee that my version will be faster, mobile optimized, ipad/iphone friendly, fully validating html5 and easier to maintain.
        I know what you're saying, but while I could build pretty much any structure/website using your framework, I have other ways to do it quicker. I absolutely hate every single site that uses your theme (that I've seen), but that's obviously not something that you have a lot of control over - most people simply choose the easiest/simplest approach.

        I give you credit for creating a popular theme and marketing it well. Putting together a decent WP theme isn't easy (I've done it as a side project just to learn the ropes, nothing fancy).

        I think people, especially those new to this business and searching for direction, get a bit sidetracked at chasing the "perfect" or "ideal" silo site arthictecture and I can see a whole cottage industry beginning to form around tools promising to help them realize the idea it represents.
        Agreed. Site structure is extremely important, but it's just one part of a much bigger puzzle. Buzzwords sell products, it's always been that way. Adsense-ready, silo, Amazon-ready, etc.

        The common thread, in a nutshell, is that your website should be thoughtfully organized around a set of core topics (or themes) and flowing into a set of subtopics (or sub-themes, if you will).
        No doubt. That's common sense really (which isn't so common these days). I don't use categories at all (unless the site has a blog or news section), but that's just my approach.
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      • Profile picture of the author markowe
        Originally Posted by clickbump View Post

        The common thread, in a nutshell, is that your website should be thoughtfully organized around a set of core topics (or themes) and flowing into a set of subtopics (or sub-themes, if you will).

        In WordPress, we call these categories. Its really not much more complicated than that. The most important part of the process is what happens *before* you build the website, during the planning stages of deciding what your site is about and organizing that structure.

        In A Nutshell
        Before you build a website, sit down with a piece of paper, turn it to its side and write down your primary keyword phrase at the top. Below that, write 3-5 topics that further refine your primary keyword phrase. *These are your primary categories*. Below each of these jot down the names of several articles you can write in that category. These are the pages/posts that will be created and assigned to their respective category. You now have the basis for a silo/themed/categorized/organized/topical website.

        This is the general idea of organizing your website into topical themes. I prefer a flat structure of a single layer of categories (between 3 and 10 depending on the size of the niche) followed by articles categorized in a single category will little to no overlap.
        Agreed that this is an area where overthinking things becomes a danger.

        However, wasn't the point that Wordpress actually ISN'T terribly well-structured out of the box? Key problems being:

        - category pages effectively showing "duplicate" content and no way of adding unique content, to make them function as the "top level" of a "silo" (or whatever you want to call it)
        - no built-in way to show "sister" pages/posts on any given page/post
        - no built-in way to display a "route" (e.g. breadcrumbs) back up the hierarchy, or even just the parent page.

        ...and it all gets even more tricky if you want more than one tier of "silos".

        Most/all of this can be accomplished with plugins and a bit of tweaking, but still, it's not for the newbie, for sure - let's face it, Wordpress wasn't designed as a CMS, per se, but as a blog platform.

        Maybe you can comment from the point of view of your framework how you deal with those issues, which I think are not just nitpicking but quite fundamental from an SEO point of view?
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        • Profile picture of the author clickbump
          Originally Posted by markowe View Post

          Agreed that this is an area where overthinking things becomes a danger.

          However, wasn't the point that Wordpress actually ISN'T terribly well-structured out of the box?
          WordPress itself is actually fantastically structured for this type of thing. It was the first mainstream, widely available platform to really push the idea of categorization of content.

          The problem is that the available themes, heretofore, have not been particularly adroit at good structural organization (without introducing overlap and duplicate content issues)

          The WordPress backend provides all the tools you need to create a well structured site. Its entirely up to the theme to present it in a way that maximizes the benefit of that structure.

          Maybe you can comment from the point of view of your framework how you deal with those issues, which I think are not just nitpicking but quite fundamental from an SEO point of view?
          First off, credit has to go to Lisa Parmley (a fellow Warrior and creator of the inline-seo method) for her work in evangelizing and outlining the core benefits of site theming and categorization. She provided the theory, and I set out to provide the technology.

          The first step...
          is completely overhauling the "blog on homepage" mentality. What I've tried to do with my software is encourage (and most importantly, enable) a means of creating a traditional website home page, and leveraging the blog as an "off home page" asset. To do this, I introduced the concept of an "Inner Blog" in WordPress and provided tools to manage this section of the website, separately from the home page. If you take a look at Matt Cutts site, he does this same thing (and advocates for it as well).

          The second step...
          And one that's especially important for maximizing the benefits of themed/siloed sites is to completely rethink (and rewrite) the idea of a category page. From a technical perspective, this involved re-architecting archive.php.

          The "Category Landing Page" and the "Category Index"...
          To accomplish this task of rethinking and re-architecting the presentation of categories in WordPress to match Lisa's inline-seo method, I had to make the category landing page a true "landing page" so that it essentially becomes like a mini home page. I also introduced the idea of a "Category Index" on the home page - A graphical listing of the site's primary categories along with a clickable thumnbnail image, category title, and category summary.

          To make all this possible, I had to add tools to the category page editor: A full wysiwyg editor, a category image uploader, option for a custom category title, category metatags, category monetization options, etc. and I had to rewrite archive.php and index.php to showcase all of this content so that the category page itself was the focus, and the pages assigned to it where showcased in a way that they don't create duplicate content issues, but are introduced in an inviting way by the category landing page.
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  • Profile picture of the author markowe
    Thanks for those tips - Prose looks like little more than the basic framework theme to me..?
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  • Profile picture of the author markowe
    Oh yes, I could probably go with that Copyblogger approach as a simple fix. With that approach, though, your URL structure does not really reflect the silo structure you want to achieve, because you will have like:

    mysite.com/cornerstone-page-on-dog-collars, linking down to:
    mysite.com/category/collars/blue
    mysite.com/category/collars/red

    Which is obviously not very neat. Wonder if it really matters that much - I have always assumed it does...

    In any case you can achieve this really easily by using a plugin like WordPress › List category posts « WordPress Plugins to simply list the posts from the category you want, wherever you want - it's not automated, and far from a perfect silo, but it's a quick fix.
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  • Profile picture of the author markowe
    ROFL - I just went through a couple of sites of mine that could be performing better, one having taken a knock in a recent update, and one that lost a fair bit of long-tail traffic in a recent Panda.

    And they are absolute DISASTERS in terms of their structure! I couldn't believe what I was seeing - I have got so sloppy in my old age, it's a wonder they are ranking for anything! Flat URL structure, no interlinking with supporting pages, all KINDS of nasties. Just fixed both sites with a MUCH better structure, something more like a proper silo structure, all using free plugins.

    One of them I have basically totally changed the URL structure, so a ton of inner pages will show 404s for a while - I just don't care, it's too much hassle to set up individual 301 redirects to every single page (no simple way to do a wildcard redirect), and anyway, they have been ranking poorly for a while, Google will sort it out, I've done it before, it'll just take a week or two to fix itself, no worries.

    Quite interested to see the results, especially on the Penguinized site, and it would be nice to see some of that medium-to-long-tail traffic return on the other one.
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    • Profile picture of the author yukon
      Banned
      Originally Posted by markowe View Post

      ROFL - I just went through a couple of sites of mine that could be performing better, one having taken a knock in a recent update, and one that lost a fair bit of long-tail traffic in a recent Panda.

      And they are absolute DISASTERS in terms of their structure! I couldn't believe what I was seeing - I have got so sloppy in my old age, it's a wonder they are ranking for anything! Flat URL structure, no interlinking with supporting pages, all KINDS of nasties. Just fixed both sites with a MUCH better structure, something more like a proper silo structure, all using free plugins.

      One of them I have basically totally changed the URL structure, so a ton of inner pages will show 404s for a while - I just don't care, it's too much hassle to set up individual 301 redirects to every single page (no simple way to do a wildcard redirect), and anyway, they have been ranking poorly for a while, Google will sort it out, I've done it before, it'll just take a week or two to fix itself, no worries.

      Quite interested to see the results, especially on the Penguinized site, and it would be nice to see some of that medium-to-long-tail traffic return on the other one.
      You could do a site-wide 301 redirect for all 404 pages. Example, point all the broken links at a single page.
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      • Profile picture of the author markowe
        Originally Posted by yukon View Post

        You could do a site-wide 301 redirect for all 404 pages. Example, point all the broken links at a single page.
        Thanks for the idea - I actually did that once before to the same site (though I was getting rid of "search tags" pages created by that awful plugin) - I blasted the home page clean out of the SERPS for a week or two, LOL!

        But I might do that anyway, hmm, why not, let's see what happens, I love experimenting with stuff like that, I have never permanently lost rankings with those sorts of experiment.
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        • Profile picture of the author yukon
          Banned
          Originally Posted by markowe View Post

          Thanks for the idea - I actually did that once before to the same site (though I was getting rid of "search tags" pages created by that awful plugin) - I blasted the home page clean out of the SERPS for a week or two, LOL!

          But I might do that anyway, hmm, why not, let's see what happens, I love experimenting with stuff like that, I have never permanently lost rankings with those sorts of experiment.
          You can redirect the 404s to any page on the site, doesn't necessarily have to be the Index page.
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          • Profile picture of the author markowe
            Originally Posted by yukon View Post

            You can redirect the 404s to any page on the site, doesn't necessarily have to be the Index page.
            Ha, true, maybe I should try to boost an internal page by shoving all the juice at it! Yeah, let's give that a go . Might kill it, but worth a laugh anyway!
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          • Profile picture of the author paulgl
            Originally Posted by yukon View Post

            You can redirect the 404s to any page on the site, doesn't necessarily have to be the Index page.
            A soft landing is best. Taking a visitor to a page with no
            explanation is not a good visitor experience.

            In fact, error pages and redirects can be a gold mine if done
            properly.

            Paul
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  • Profile picture of the author Maddmula
    Yukon thanks for taking the time to explain Silo Structure as it's certainty something I need to implement in my new sites. Couple questions though.

    1. Do you know when your new theme might be released?
    2. Do you know of any example sites (preferably smaller size) that use Silo?

    Thanks!
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    • Profile picture of the author yukon
      Banned
      Originally Posted by Maddmula View Post

      Yukon thanks for taking the time to explain Silo Structure as it's certainty something I need to implement in my new sites. Couple questions though.

      1. Do you know when your new theme might be released?
      2. Do you know of any example sites (preferably smaller size) that use Silo?

      Thanks!
      1. Not sure when I'll be done with the theme. Things keep coming up off-line that I have to deal with, I have another off-line project that I'm working on tomorrow, so I'm having to work on the theme whenever I have free time. Hopefully things will soon slow down enough off-line so I'll have a few full days I can devote to the theme.
      2. There's another forum thread on that subject that might help. http://www.warriorforum.com/adsense-...-examples.html
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  • Profile picture of the author CYMac
    I have a blog but then I think the stuff I am talking about are kind of hard to silo because they are not common search terms, and I also have a few different topics there as well.. for example if I am talking about WEB DESIGN as main subject.. right.. then in the blog I also talk about computers, hardwares, audio, photography.. what the heck do I do? um.. split the blog?
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    • Profile picture of the author markowe
      Originally Posted by CYMac View Post

      I have a blog but then I think the stuff I am talking about are kind of hard to silo because they are not common search terms, and I also have a few different topics there as well.. for example if I am talking about WEB DESIGN as main subject.. right.. then in the blog I also talk about computers, hardwares, audio, photography.. what the heck do I do? um.. split the blog?
      Yeah, you've got one of those "all-purpose" blogs, they can be a problem if you don't really have a clear target audience - I mean, who is it for: people who like web design AND computers AND hardware AND audio AND photography? I always feel by maintaining a blog on a wide range of topics you are actually LIMITING your target audience since not so many people are into ALL those things, and also Google can't really decide what your blog is about so you are not seen as an authority on any one area. Categorising your posts more tightly might well benefit the blog, though again, some kind of structure as described in this thread would be better than just using Wordpress categories. It's just a case of whether that's easily doable with your current structure.
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  • Profile picture of the author markowe
    Scott, thanks for the explanation, I might be tempted by Clickbump yet Sounds like you have put a lot of work into that aspect - I notice that all the themes that allow unique content on category pages do not provide so much as a WYSIWIG editor, you have to just paste in the HTML from elsewhere, which is pretty cheesy... Good work!
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  • Profile picture of the author multiplecloud
    Umm, make sense! Silo structure can keep overall site to some niche topic which Google can judge easily what the site is about.
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  • Profile picture of the author yukon
    Banned
    My advice to everyone is know what your buying, before you buy.

    Do your own research & separate pitch from product.
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    • Profile picture of the author clickbump
      Originally Posted by yukon View Post

      My advice to everyone is know what your buying, before you buy.

      Do your own research & separate pitch from product.
      Good point. Another piece of advice is to look past those who would overcomplicate an issue to establish the appearance of an expert.
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      • Profile picture of the author yukon
        Banned
        Originally Posted by clickbump View Post

        Good point. Another piece of advice is to look past those who would overcomplicate an issue to establish the appearance of an expert.
        Even better advice is to watch out for clever people spamming their own products/links & other affiliate links on the free forums. I've seen one guy do that on just about every post they make on the free forums.
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  • Profile picture of the author cheech1981
    It might just be me but it seems like if you have a real blog with interesting content and you are adding content to it, it's only natural to create categories, subcategories, menus, and internal links.
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  • Profile picture of the author nasuryono
    I have seen the same result from my experience. It seems Google is paying more and more attention to the "SILO" a.k.a "LSI Keywords"

    You can do this not only for your category, but for your content as well. When you add more LSI keywords into it, it has a higher chance of ranking higher.
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  • Profile picture of the author seokid
    According to me It's defiantly not the only way to rank a page, but it does help lighten the external backlink workload.
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    • Profile picture of the author sideburn
      I'm no expert in this and am always learning...here's my question:
      I'm seeing there are some speculations that one of penalties from Penguin update was over-optimization on both external and internal links. So, I wonder if SILO method discussed in this thread is a risk of over-optimization on internal links?

      For example, would 'Dog' be over-optimized if every internal links includes 'Dog':
      Dog
      Dog Barking
      Stop Dog Barking
      Stop Dog Barking in the Crate
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      • Profile picture of the author yukon
        Banned
        Originally Posted by sideburn View Post

        I'm no expert in this and am always learning...here's my question:
        I'm seeing there are some speculations that one of penalties from Penguin update was over-optimization on both external and internal links. So, I wonder if SILO method discussed in this thread is a risk of over-optimization on internal links?

        For example, would 'Dog' be over-optimized if every internal links includes 'Dog':
        Dog
        Dog Barking
        Stop Dog Barking
        Stop Dog Barking in the Crate
        Those are only example page titles & No, Google isn't going to penalize a site for having multiple pages with relevant content.

        Structuring a site with relevant content has nothing to do with any Google updates.

        Obviously don't spam the keyword on your sites/pages.
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        • Profile picture of the author sideburn
          Ahh I see they're for the titles. Thanks bnetwork and yukon!

          yukon, how would you choose internal anchor keywords if the page titles are:
          Dog
          Dog Barking
          Stop Dog Barking
          Stop Dog Barking in the Crate

          Would you "loosen up" the anchor keywords as bnetwork suggested such as title: Dog Barking with anchor text: Canine pointing to Dog page or would you simply go for exact match keywords such as anchor text: Dog pointing to Dog page?
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          • Profile picture of the author Mantasmo
            Originally Posted by sideburn View Post

            Ahh I see they're for the titles. Thanks bnetwork and yukon!

            yukon, how would you choose internal anchor keywords if the page titles are:
            Dog
            Dog Barking
            Stop Dog Barking
            Stop Dog Barking in the Crate

            Would you "loosen up" the anchor keywords as bnetwork suggested such as title: Dog Barking with anchor text: Canine pointing to Dog page or would you simply go for exact match keywords such as anchor text: Dog pointing to Dog page?
            Again, I believe yukon posted those as an example, which should not be taken literally.

            In your example above, there are two options:

            1. If your root keyword is "dog", then your homepage title is like to be something like "all about dogs" or whatever your BRAND is. You're not going to get the domain dog.com.

            Then your silo will be "dog barking". Another silo might be something like "dog training" or whatever.

            And then you have pages under each silo, such as "stop dog barking", etc...

            2. If you website is about aminals, then you may have to add another "layer"... so your root keyword would be animals, then dogs/cats/whatever, then silos for each animal, and then inner pages for each silo.

            ^^all depends on the scale/size of you website/niche. Dogs is a better niche than animals, unless you have the resources AND dedication to build out massive 1000+ page websites.
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            • Profile picture of the author sideburn
              My question was about the anchor text itself when deciding which keywords to use to connect between silo pages:

              (Option A)
              Silo Level 2 Title: Stop Dog Barking -> Anchor Text: Canine Yapping -> Silo Level 1 Title: Dog Barking -> Anchor Text: Pooch ->Homepage Title: Dog Is Man's Best Friend

              OR

              (Option B)
              Silo Level 2 Title: Stop Dog Barking -> Anchor Text: Dog Barking -> Silo Level 1 Title: Dog Barking -> Anchor Text: Dog ->Homepage Title: Dog Is Man's Best Friend

              Anchor text keywords in Option B is more relevant and but am I at risk of over-optimizing the keyword 'Dog' if I have 1000s of inner anchor texts that contains the word 'Dog'?

              OR

              (Option C)
              Another better way?
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  • Profile picture of the author Mantasmo
    ^ probably not, though I don't use that structure (I think it was only an example though?). My sites are more like:

    eye health -> contact lenses -> contact lenses for dry eyes || types of contact lenses || some other title

    Basically, some of the URL's might contain the same word on all three levels, but most don't.
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  • Profile picture of the author markowe
    Woah, wait up.

    Firstly, someone having 500 posts on a forum does NOT them an expert make ! I think this forum is proof enough of that :-D.

    Second, your site looks fine to me, at first glance I have no idea what this "expert” is talking about, you just have a bunch of useful tools on there, with an almost flat structure, what is there for Google not to "like"?!
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    • Profile picture of the author Obosh
      Originally Posted by markowe View Post

      Woah, wait up.

      Firstly, someone having 500 posts on a forum does NOT them an expert make ! I think this forum is proof enough of that :-D.

      Second, your site looks fine to me, at first glance I have no idea what this "expert" is talking about, you just have a bunch of useful tools on there, with an almost flat structure, what is there for Google not to "like"?!
      thank you very very much Sir....

      i have no idea he why did he say - I will kill my SEO with this kind of internal links. and i sent him 4 PMs but still no reply. He mainly focused on my content links. if i receive any reply from that guy i will let you guys know his view....and -


      1. Another guy from another forum advised me to add a trailing slash "/" for my internal links using htaccess file. Is it a good idea?
      2. And anther fellow thinks my content internal links are annoying. Way to many.

      Totally confused now.....feels like removing all my internal links....
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  • Profile picture of the author Mantasmo
    ^^I wouldn't worry about over optimization, as long as you have plenty of valuable content. Basically, as long as it looks natural, you're probably good. I link my pages together using titles as anchors (and strip stop words from the URL's).
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    • Profile picture of the author sideburn
      Thanks bnetwork!
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  • Profile picture of the author Dropkova
    I am trying not to call them 'silos' anymore as it then takes another day to explain to the client. From a user perspective it it the logical thing to do and so I have simply adopted it as a best practice and make a habit of starting there with every new client.
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  • Profile picture of the author chmae73
    I never used this strategy.
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  • Profile picture of the author Enzo Ewens
    Originally Posted by kennyall View Post

    I've been doing SEO for well over a year and can tell you if you're not doing this it's a huge disservice. This is how Google creates an idea of what your website is about. When you silo your site you want to structure it so that the Main topic of the site is the home page. Within that main topic there are subtopics and that's how you can rank for long tails and more specific keywords.

    Website Silo Architecture Explained by SEO Design Solutions - YouTube

    I had a site stuck at #8 for months and went through and organized in a silo manner and within a few days it was up to #4 and then eventually #2 (#1 was one of the biggest companies in the world and a PR8)

    for example if your website was about "Dogs" (let's keep it general lol)

    Your Url May be MyDogBlog.com

    Now within that main topic you can have many different subtopics. So now you have a category about each type of dog.

    Dalmations Golden Retrievers Pitbulls Rottweiler



    and then within each of those categories you will have subcategories

    Food Toys Doghouses Exercise

    and so on... the purpose is to build a broad base of many different subcategories that support your main topic. This lets Google know that your site is about dogs first and foremost and then you can begin ranking for longtail keywords such as "Dalmation Health Food"

    I've attached an image of what silo structures look like for your website to give you a better idea.

    Do this and watch your rankings skyrocket

    If you have any questions just let me know and I'll give you a hand.
    This strategy still works great even after the updates. Thanks for sharing this!
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  • Profile picture of the author Slave1
    The silo format is also great for ranking local location since you cannot jam all that info on one page.
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  • Profile picture of the author Margarida
    Yukon:

    I am trying to use the Categories in Wordpress for the silo but it comes up as "category archive" does this matter?

    Also, I am using Smartlinks to use words as anchor text and that runs through most of the articles. I am wondering if this would screw up the effectiveness of the silos?
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    • Profile picture of the author yukon
      Banned
      Originally Posted by Margarida View Post

      Yukon:

      I am trying to use the Categories in Wordpress for the silo but it comes up as "category archive" does this matter?

      Also, I am using Smartlinks to use words as anchor text and that runs through most of the articles. I am wondering if this would screw up the effectiveness of the silos?
      I guess your talking about the .../category/... URL? I use this plugin to overwrite the default WP category URL.

      I've never used Smartlinks, I either manually place my links on page or use custom php on my theme templates, depends on what I'm working on.
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      • Profile picture of the author Michael_Le
        Banned
        Originally Posted by yukon View Post

        I guess your talking about the .../category/... URL? I use this plugin to overwrite the default WP category URL.

        I've never used Smartlinks, I either manually place my links on page or use custom php on my theme templates, depends on what I'm working on.
        hey yukon,

        could you have a look at the other thread you posted on http://www.warriorforum.com/adsense-...uestion-4.html

        posted a couple of questions for you a few months back but you seemed to have deserted that thread
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        • Profile picture of the author justmerob
          I have to say this concept has been running through my head for the past month and I think it's time to take action on it.

          This will be for a contractor I'm working with so I figure the set up will be something on this line:

          Main Site
          -Roofing
          --Roofing Repairs
          --New Roof Installations
          --Roof Replacements
          --ETC
          -Siding
          --Siding Repairs
          --Siding Damage Repairs
          --Siding Installations
          --ETC
          -You get the idea.

          The one questions I do have tho right now is: How could I structure locations into this model?

          Should I do the locations after the -Roofing--Roofing Repairs---Location?
          Or would it be better for SEO to do Locations-Roofing--Roofing Repairs?

          Thanks for sharing all the info everyone and knowing me... I will be back with questions along the way.

          Rob
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      • Profile picture of the author Margarida
        Originally Posted by yukon View Post

        I guess your talking about the .../category/... URL? I use this plugin to overwrite the default WP category URL.

        I've never used Smartlinks, I either manually place my links on page or use custom php on my theme templates, depends on what I'm working on.

        I wanted to tweak the category pages, but after second thought wanted to insert content in there as well. I guess I have to go in there and see if I can code it.

        Have you ever looked at the simple silo plugin for wordpress? Not sure if this is some of the marketing bs plugins that won't work.
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  • Profile picture of the author Becker13
    Banned
    Never used this and my clients rank for some of the toughest keywords imaginable...

    Not saying it doesn't work, but what I do seems to work just fine without it
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    • Profile picture of the author yukon
      Banned
      Originally Posted by Becker13 View Post

      Never used this and my clients rank for some of the toughest keywords imaginable...

      Not saying it doesn't work, but what I do seems to work just fine without it
      Cool,

      I doubt I rank pages with the same process as you, but I still rank pages & probably use 1/3 the external links as most people on this forum.
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  • Profile picture of the author Sarevok
    Interesting, hmm.

    I always preach that SEO is kind of like a blind dude shooting darts. If you're an expert, you'll be fine.

    But if someone moves the dart board, or you get pushed, you might be screwed.

    This is a good technique nevertheless
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