Does A Virtual Silo Work?

by 14 replies
16
After my research, I have 2 questions that Warriors may be able to answer.

First question: Am I correct in that:

With a physical silo you have:
domain/topic-page/article1-on-topic
domain/topic-page/article2-on-topic
domain/topic-page/article3-on-topic
domain/topic-page/article4-on-topic
and all articles under topic-page are inter-linked.

With a virtual silo, you can have all articles in the same directory such as:
domain/article1-on-topic-1
domain/article2-on-topic-1
domain/article3-on-topic-1
domain/article4-on-topic-1
domain/article1-on-topic-2
domain/article2-on-topic-2
domain/article3-on-topic-2
domain/article4-on-topic-2

The silo is created by inter-linking all topic 1 articles together and all topic 2 articles together, but not linking any topic 1 articles to topic 2 articles.

With a virtual silo, the silo is created by links and not by url structure.

Second question: Does a virtual silo work as well as a physical silo? Is either one better for SEO than the other?

Thanks!
#search engine optimization #silo #virtual #work
  • Both are good. For more refer to this link - http://www.themezoom.com/info/What_t..._is_a_Silo.pdf
  • Banned
    When it comes to SEO it doesn't matter If it's a physical silo or a virtual silo both will help rank pages.

    The advantage with a virtual silo is site maintenance, it's far easier to pump out pages on a CMS than building HTML pages in folders. Both will rank, the HTML/folders would be brutal to maintain for a large site (ex: 100s/1000s of pages) but very doable on a small site (ex: 50 pages).
    • [2] replies
    • Thanks lance and yukon.

      Since a virtual silo does not have the directory or folder name to help identify the silo to a search engine, are there things I can do other than linking that will help id a virtual silo?

      Thanks again!
      • [1] reply
    • I was thinking from the original post what he thought was a physical silo, is not what you know as a physical silo (html pages in folders).

      Looks like he's asking the difference between a wordpress site where you change the permalinks to /%category%/%postname%/ vs one that just has a postname and relies on linking for the silo.

      If you go the second route you need your linking structure really tight IMO.
  • This is called being organized in the web development world. Where did the word silo come from?
    • [1] reply
    • Banned
      Web developers are usually horrible at site structure.

      Look at Themeforest, thousands of web developers making pretty themes but horrible at SEO.

      • hxxp://www.bruceclay.com
      • [1] reply
  • Yukon, I really appreciate your help. I am not trying to beat a dead horse, but I am really trying to understand silos.

    As I understand it, my second example of:
    hxxp://cars.com/mustang
    hxxp://cars.com/focus
    hxxp://cars.com/escape
    hxxp://cars.com/sentra
    hxxp://cars.com/maxima
    hxxp://cars.com/altima
    really isn't 2 virtual silos because neither has a parent page or a directory or folder even though the first 3 are inter-linked and not linked to the second 3 (which are also inter-linked to themselves). Rather, they would be considered to be 6 individual pages.

    Have I finally got it right?

    Thanks very much.
    • [1] reply
    • Pretty much. If you created two pages, /ford and /nissan, that were linked to on the homepage. And on /ford there were links to the 3 cars (and on Nissan links to those 3 cars), and all the supporting car pages were links back to the /ford or /nissan page, it'd be a silo too probably. But the links need to be really tight.
  • Thanks, deezn!

    My confusion comes from reading that physical silos have a directory or folder name with support pages linked to it and virtual silos are silos where same topic pages are linked together, but where there is not a directory or folder name.

    Apparently, for a silo, both physical and virtual, you need the url structure with a directory, folder, or parent page name and then the supporting pages linked to it. Basically, physical and virtual silos are the same thing and both require more than linking same topic pages together.
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