Are you using Silos as part of your SEO?

10 replies
  • SEO
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Silos are used to categorize themed content in an effort to help the search engines determine relevancy. The tighter the focus, the more relevant Google will see each page of your website.

For example, suppose you have a website on guitars. If you offer up relatively dissimilar topics such as how to play acoustic guitar, how to play electric guitar, and even how to play classical guitar, all on the same page, the relevancy will be diluted. Even though your content may be far better and more useful than your competitors, poor structure will hurt you at some level.

To aid the LSI process along, the webmaster can structure the site into one of two types, Physical or Virtual. Both silo types are highly effective for SEO because it creates a working ecosystem for the content.

Physical Silo Structures

A physical silo is a means of theming or grouping your website content into like categories. Also referred to as a directory silo, they are known to be the easiest to set up and maintain. Think of a directory silo as a filing cabinet. Everything in a file must be distinctly associated within the category to remain relevant.

The directory-style silo structure is the easiest for both search engines and visitors to follow, and most times should be the starting point when designing your site.

Virtual Silo Structures

Once a website becomes established, the structure can break down over time. The virtual silo model can enforce the structure once again through highly targeted internal linking strategy.

Virtual silos use a drill-down cross-linking structure to enforce distinct categories. In other words, the top landing page of each silo is supported by the pages linking to it.

Internal linking is a major component of virtual silos. Linking should be done between like-topics, avoiding unrelated categories as much as possible.

Obviously, there will be times when you need to link to different silos to make a point or improve an article. When cross linking between unlike silos, use the Rel=”NoFollow” attribute to reinforce the structure.

For new websites, a physical silo structure should almost always be used. Directory silos are much easier to set up and manage. Established sites, on the other hand can find value in virtual silos if the physical structure is non-existent, or breaks down over time.

Siloing your content is a form of on-page SEO that deserves special attention throughout the life of your website.

The main objective of siloing is to create a website that ranks well for both short and long-tail keywords
#part #seo #siloing #silos
  • Profile picture of the author connorbringas
    Thats pretty random. Basically, you are explaining how to categorize your website according to various topics. Blogging is a great way to "silo" things. I've never heard this terminology and I have been working for numerous companies doing SEO for years. However, diluting a page is somewhat true. Having a page with the optimum number of keywords to content is important. You can see this by viewing google webmaster tools and other programs.
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    • Profile picture of the author SEOSteveO
      Silo's are nothing new, its just that 95% of online website builders dont create silo's. Not sure if its because they dont know of it or just lazy because it does take more work. It is a very effective way to do onpage seo however.

      Say your main keyword you want to rank for your site is dog training. You can create different pages, one for dog walking, dog obedience, how to stop dog from barking, etc. Then you create posts or pages with in those sub categories, So as an example say dog walking would have posts related to dog walking, such as how to walk your pitbull.

      The posts or pages link back to the categories and into on another from one post to the other all with in the same category and then the category back to your main page.
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      • Profile picture of the author nik0
        Banned
        Originally Posted by SEOSteveO View Post

        Silo's are nothing new, its just that 95% of online website builders dont create silo's. Not sure if its because they dont know of it or just lazy because it does take more work. It is a very effective way to do onpage seo however.
        Yeah, 95% of online website builders like to push out 1-5 page sites so then silo'ing won't have much of a effect.
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        • Profile picture of the author Oranges
          Originally Posted by nik0 View Post

          Yeah, 95% of online website builders like to push out 1-5 page sites so then silo'ing won't have much of a effect.
          ROFL
          Touche!
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  • Profile picture of the author GodMode52
    Thank you for this useless copy & paste thread. At least link the original source.

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  • Profile picture of the author apjames
    Took me a while to get this. Basically silos are a necessary creation for Google because of relevance.

    Everything on your site is classified. Remember the old school Yahoo directory categories? Maybe a flower delivery company is like;

    Business > United States > Local > Rochester > Florists
    Gifts > Romantic > Flowers

    But Google has automated this - and each page is probably within several categories. Let's say that linking to things more than 1 category above your classification damages relevance. You don't want a page about a dog walking company in Albany

    Pets > Dogs > Dog Activities > Dog Walking
    Businesses > United States > Local > Albany > Pets

    linking to a page about a dog grooming parlour in Albany (although they share 1 category)

    Pets > Dogs > Dog Welfare > Dog Grooming
    Businesses > United States > Local > Albany > Pets

    So a virtual silo or physical silo must be implemented on websites with crossover categories. The categories and sub-categories MUST be tight enough to ensure relevance (I'd use Google AdWords category search for inspiration here although I doubt it's what they use internally to classify) so that the same page doesn't link to disparate topics. But you must also consider the "click journey" - ideally you would want to be able to reach ANY page on your site within 3 clicks - or at least any valued page.

    A necessity for the silo is to have good internal linking but only within each silo - i.e. sideways linking - especially contextual linking - related posts, etc. If you run with the whole "100 links per page" thing, it seems that your main categories should only be virtual and that your site menu system presents your subcategories on the homepage. 100 categories would be confusing so the highest level should only exist in the mind of the browser to find the correct subcategories.

    This creates questions - popular posts - recent comments - recent posts - all these things are good tools which aid the user experience. How should they be implemented. Even the front page on an article site will contain very different topics. Perhaps there's something I'm missing.
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  • Profile picture of the author gearmonkey
    No, I think Silo's are useless, the attraction is people think it's complicating so it must be true. There are better (and more effective) ways to build backlinks that will give better results.
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    • Profile picture of the author yukon
      Banned
      Originally Posted by gearmonkey View Post

      No, I think Silo's are useless, the attraction is people think it's complicating so it must be true. There are better (and more effective) ways to build backlinks that will give better results.

      I think your talking about external links, which isn't the same thing.
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    • Profile picture of the author Michael_Le
      Banned
      Originally Posted by gearmonkey View Post

      No, I think Silo's are useless, the attraction is people think it's complicating so it must be true. There are better (and more effective) ways to build backlinks that will give better results.
      it's obvious you have no idea of basic seo, i.e. site architecture. then again why would you when you think silo'ing is a form of backlinks
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  • Profile picture of the author ilee
    It's not just bein lazy though, some sites really don't make sense being split up into silos.
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