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Silo Gurus

by lutherlars
9 replies
  • SEO
    • |
Hey guys, quick silo question here:
I have stumbled across a potentially easy to rank for, high cpc keyword phrase that ironically enough is the exact title of a child page belonging to a silo on a site of mine. Right now, I plan on pointing a few good external links to the exact page, but am wondering if there is any on page tweeking I can do to get some of my pr flow to this child page without messing up my silo? THX.
#gurus #silo
  • Profile picture of the author lutherlars
    Bump for Yukon.
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  • Profile picture of the author yukon
    Banned
    Really it depends on how tough the competition is for the keyword your targeting. If competition is very tough I would just build out a new category/silo & use that to build up the relevancy with supporting pages/links, then use the external links pointing at the new silo landing page.

    If competition isn't very tough I would use my existing pages in the same existing silo/category.

    Are you already pointing keyword anchor-text internal links from the rest of the pages in the silo, at the target page?
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  • Profile picture of the author lutherlars
    Hey Yukon:
    The keyword phrase I want to rank for, is actually a mini silo landing page that is found within one of my main silos, so I have already built it out a little. I have three child pages for it so far, because there are three products directly related to the landing page anchor text.
    When linking back to the mini landing page from the child pages, I am using the exact anchor text, and will be adding a few more child pages now that I know that I wanna rank for this. THX for reply.
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  • Profile picture of the author lutherlars
    Yukon:
    Because this is a mini silo, eg. a silo within a silo if you will, would it be ok to point links from the actual original siloed articles to the new mini silo landing page or no?
    LOL hope this is not confusing...
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    • Profile picture of the author yukon
      Banned
      Originally Posted by lutherlars View Post

      Yukon:
      Because this is a mini silo, eg. a silo within a silo if you will, would it be ok to point links from the actual original siloed articles to the new mini silo landing page or no?
      LOL hope this is not confusing...

      This might sound spammy (lol) but one thing you can do is a temporary site-wide link pointing at the new page, leave the links in place for at least a week, depends how often Google bots visit your page. Then keep an eye on the SERPs for that keyword & it's SERP position.

      What that does is shows you how tough the competition really is. If comp. is weak, you'll hit first page without much effort (besides the site-wide link). If comp. is tough (site-wide link not ranking the new target page) then you know for a fact that you need to build out a new category with relevant supporting pages & get some quality external links pointing at the new keyword target page.

      The more same niche internal pages you have, the better, for testing a new keyword with temporary site-wide links.

      It's the old throw some $hit at the wall & see what sticks technique (lol), however it does work for testing competition strength in the SERPs for new keywords.

      I use this site-wide temporary link technique for new keywords that are relevant to my existing already ranked keywords. My sites get indexed & re-indexed instantly when I create new post or edit old post (benefits of large established sites), so I usually know instantly how tough the competition is in the SERPs for my new keywords.

      One way to know for a fact which pages Google is looking at when doing the temporary site-wide link is to add your new keyword to the end of the <title> tag for the entire site (seriously) then watch the SERPs for intitle:"keyword" site:www.domain.com, that will tell you the number of pages re-indexed in Google SERPs & the exact pages Google found with the new keyword.

      Remember this site-wide keyword blast is temporary (for testing SERP competition).
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  • Profile picture of the author lutherlars
    Alrighty then, here goes. THX...
    PS: Assuming I rank pretty quickly, I confirm that the keyword phrase is easy to rank for. Do I remove the site wide and go with a few quality external links pointing at the ranked page?
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    • Profile picture of the author yukon
      Banned
      Originally Posted by lutherlars View Post

      Alrighty then, here goes. THX...
      PS: Assuming I rank pretty quickly, I confirm that the keyword phrase is easy to rank for. Do I remove the site wide and go with a few quality external links pointing at the ranked page?
      Yes, remove the site-wide link/title after testing is finished.

      Yes, once you have tested the SERP comp., keep the focus on the ranked page when adding new external backlinks.

      If you find that the traffic is good, I suggest you try ranking a 2nd page (at least) & use the first ranked page on the new keyword to boost the 2nd/future same keyword target page. Both pages can be in the same category/silo when ranking multiple pages per individual keyword/phrase.

      An example of a site-wide <title>:
      • Existing title text | New keyword here

      Do not remove old page titles, all your doing is temporary title edits.

      The way I do my temporary site-wide link/title is simply edit the theme/template, that way it's only two edits, I don't have to manually edit 500 pages (or whatever) on the whole site. It takes me maybe less than 5 min. total to edit hundreds of page links/titles.
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  • Profile picture of the author yukon
    Banned
    As an example of site-wide SERP comp. test.

    If you run the test for 1-2 weeks & don't see your page ranking on the first 3 SERP pages, it's defiantly a tough comp. keyword. [edit] or Google is not re-indexing your pages, do the intitle:"keyword" search to verify pages being re-indexed.

    Like I said above, my sites get indexed & re-indexed instantly so I know instantly (usually) how tough the SERP comp. is for my new keyword. The amount of days it will take for testing is going to depend on how fast Google keeps re-indexing your pages, I wouldn't go any longer than a week, maybe two weeks would be an extreme case.
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  • Profile picture of the author yukon
    Banned
    Just so others reading this don't try & abuse the site-wide SERP test.

    The reason you don't want to run this test long-term (months) is Google will reach a tipping point on the keyword being in the page title & start dumping the majority of pages with similar page titles into the Supplemental SERPs (will never get found by traffic).

    When/If Google dumps a few pages into Supplemenatal SERPs it's for the specific keyword search your blasting the site with, the pages in Supplemenatal SERPs could still rank for other keyword variations of the same target keyword.

    When Google bots visit your site they crawl the site in small chunks of pages, each bot visit.

    So don't freak out If a few pages get put into Supplemental SERPs for the target keyword, it's not a big deal. My point here is the tipping point that Google has for very similar page titles & how they handle those pages.

    Short term, the test is awesome for testing competition.
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