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Ranking Category Pages - Website Architecture

by Dr los3
10 replies
  • SEO
    • |
Hi.

So im in a the middle of a making a nice authority website and ive hit a wall. I crafting my content and what not, and traffic is looking good. However..after every couple of articles i keep second guessing my content structure strategy.

Currently im trying my crack at making my category pages a 'perfect' website silo. In my structure i try to rank the category page.

fruits.com/category/banana/benefits-of-bananas/
fruits.com/category/banana/‎Musa-acuminata/
fruits.com/category/banana/‎Musa/

fruits.com/category/apple/fuji/

etc.

Eventually i want to cover all 'fruits' but it seems like i will a lot of category pages. Should i be taking a different approach and do what most web masters do and put all my content under 5-6 different categories?

And again, im trying to tightly silo all of my content, and went with this way of doing it. It seems to be doing just fine in terms of traffic, but i could use some advise before i move forward.
#architecture #category #pages #ranking #website
  • Profile picture of the author Dan Brown
    Honestly if you are going to cover all fruits, you really need to work on a lot of pages considering the fruits' varieties we have. For me I'd categorized it the same way as you are doing, as I can see it is more organized that way.

    Let's hear some other opinions though.
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    • Profile picture of the author patco
      Originally Posted by Dan Brown View Post

      Honestly if you are going to cover all fruits, you really need to work on a lot of pages considering the fruits' varieties we have. For me I'd categorized it the same way as you are doing, as I can see it is more organized that way.

      Let's hear some other opinions though.
      Yes. That's a good idea. Not sure how he can do it with just 10-15 categories, but this way he can also make the domain name much better!
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  • Profile picture of the author savidge4
    Originally Posted by Dr los3 View Post

    Hi.

    Currently im trying my crack at making my category pages a 'perfect' website silo. In my structure i try to rank the category page.

    fruits.com/category/banana/benefits-of-bananas/
    fruits.com/category/banana/‎Musa-acuminata/
    fruits.com/category/banana/‎Musa/

    fruits.com/category/apple/fuji/
    I will assume you are using wordpress? Part of the issue is "category" you are pointing all of your "Silo" work to a basically non existing page.. well it exist... its simply dynamic, and not static. you need to remove the "Category" page from your structure.

    IF you go in and look you will see you are currently using 2 URL structures. Category structure, and post structure. a nice little plugin such as: https://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-no-category-base/ will actually remove the "category" from your URL. a simple fix to a more complicated issue.

    Part of the issue you are going to run into with attempting "Silo" structure with wordpress is how wordpress actually organizes the content behind the scenes. it does NOT follow silo structure in the least. It dictates structure based on date, and has nothing to do with category ( Silo )

    So if for example you wrote 3 articles today. One for Apples, another for banana's and the last for oranges... that is the structure chain that is present. Apples didn't go into apples... Oranges didn't go into oranges and bananas didn't go into bananas. SURE in the navigation portion of the site you can see... everything is where it needs to be, but that is not silo.

    I will bet most anyone that does silo structure actually has a folder for each silo they are creating. Apples and all of its related content goes into a "Apple" folder. Bananas into a "banana" folder. The structure itself dictates that content based on context is contained and separated. THAT is Silo.

    Unfortunately that becomes a bit difficult to accomplish with wordpress.

    Don't get me wrong in all of this. using the above plugin to clean up your URL structure is a great start. Publishing articles to your site in batches is a great thing to do. Submit 5 articles in any of your subject silos at once. 5 apple articles. 5 banana articles etc. basically the more the merrier.

    When setting up Silo structure within the confines of Wordpress you need to think of it more as a linking structure than a platform structure. YES you will get benefit from your labor. but mechanically it will never be as "good" as non wordpress based platform silo structure.

    Hope that Helps!
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    • Profile picture of the author Dr los3
      Yeah actually that helps alot. I am kind of disappointed to say the least. However, i will continue to keep doing what i am doing i guess.....

      Also, yes i do use that plug-in, i just wanted to emphsis that i am indeed using categories . Thanks for replying!

      So to 'silo' in wordpress you would have to say...publish 20 articles all at once in the same...content area to show ... authority.
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      • Profile picture of the author savidge4
        Originally Posted by Dr los3 View Post

        So to 'silo' in wordpress you would have to say...publish 20 articles all at once in the same...content area to show ... authority.
        I would use this method in an already existing environment. IF you are developing a site.. think about that in terms of long term usage. bundling content a year from now.. would be a pain in the ashtray. I do employ strategies that do follow a very similar method, but the reality is they are not as strong as developing as true a silo structure as you can.

        The EASIEST method to developing Silo structure with Wordpress is this. You develop a site fruits.com. All of your broad information is there. you then can do one of 2 things. you can create a sub directory bananas.fruit.com or you can create directories fruit.com/bananas.

        In either case you are loading the same theme in and you will want to make all of the needed changes to make them match ( aesthetically ). You will need to focus on the sites navigation and pointing, to ensure "Home" is going to fruits.com and apples is going to the correct apple sub directory or directory page.

        A trick here with the "home" page is to create the top of the silo in each sub directory pointed to the "Home" page. But I would go in and name each of these the designated fruit. IE apple for the apple directory, and Orange for the orange directory etc.

        Navigation and how you develop it is essential here. The less outward linking you have anywhere the better. in apples.fruits.com your top navigation should point ONLY to the cap pages IE home, Oranges and bananas. You CAN use a drop down for APPLES and only apples within the apples sub directory, if you choose to... but "True" silo structure would say don't even do that.

        I have been playing around with facetwp to use on the side bar as a method for the end user to have better access to content. Once you look at it, you will see it is Java script based. So any linking that takes place is in essence transparent. If you go looking at the plugin page, you will see they are using commerce products ( cars the last I looked) as an example of how it works. you can easily have it list your Posts instead of products.

        Hope that Helps!
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        • Profile picture of the author Dr los3
          Originally Posted by savidge4 View Post

          I would use this method in an already existing environment. IF you are developing a site.. think about that in terms of long term usage. bundling content a year from now.. would be a pain in the ashtray. I do employ strategies that do follow a very similar method, but the reality is they are not as strong as developing as true a silo structure as you can.


          Navigation and how you develop it is essential here. The less outward linking you have anywhere the better. in apples.fruits.com your top navigation should point ONLY to the cap pages IE home, Oranges and bananas. You CAN use a drop down for APPLES and only apples within the apples sub directory, if you choose to... but "True" silo structure would say don't even do that.


          Hope that Helps!
          Yeah, im doing that now and its become a pain already..deploying sets of articles all at the same time and what not burns me out quick ( I have to write it all myself) It does disappoint me that the posts aren't actually in category folders but rather just floating =/.

          Since i have already 'developed' my website, i don't think i can really switch over to doing different directories/sub-domains. I think for my next website i will try again, but for now i maybe stuck and will keep building the site the way i am until i make some passive income. Although im not opposed to it, rather do it right since i am looking to keep the site for a few years.

          how about navigation for the way i have it now, i recently put up a few related articles in the sidebar within the same category (5 to be exact) but my gut tells me to just have the single post link back to the category landing page and nothing else.



          Helps a ton actually. Thanks man.
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          • Profile picture of the author savidge4
            How far into this are you? a couple weeks? have you done any back linking? I mean really how F A R are you? if it is still mostly in the development aspect.. I would drop it out of the index so fast it would make your head spin LOL if you seriously are in a place you can do it right without the added work of 301'ing this and that and the other.. I would without question go that route!


            Originally Posted by Dr los3 View Post

            Since i have already 'developed' my website, i don't think i can really switch over to doing different directories/sub-domains. I think for my next website i will try again, but for now i maybe stuck and will keep building the site the way i am until i make some passive income. Although im not opposed to it, rather do it right since i am looking to keep the site for a few years.
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          • Profile picture of the author savidge4
            Originally Posted by Dr los3 View Post

            how about navigation for the way i have it now, i recently put up a few related articles in the sidebar within the same category (5 to be exact) but my gut tells me to just have the single post link back to the category landing page and nothing else.
            You can always link up the silo, and never down the silo. So those side bar links work fitting that model on a new piece of content. go to the 2nd piece of content in your chain, and that model no longer works for you, the 5 "related" posts are going to have been posted after that post.

            Sidebars are tricky to say the least. On my Silo sites, I never used them until recently and only with the plugin I mentioned before, facetwp
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  • Profile picture of the author ezeonlinebiz
    I Suggest you use Wordpress Plugin by Yoast. It will also remove the category slug off your post url and remember that you'll have to order your articles correspondingly with the categories.
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    • Profile picture of the author savidge4
      Originally Posted by ezeonlinebiz View Post

      I Suggest you use Wordpress Plugin by Yoast. It will also remove the category slug off your post url and remember that you'll have to order your articles correspondingly with the categories.

      If you are saying Youst does that..i wont argue that. but you don't need Yoast to do this for POST's. you can go in and set this in the taxonomy section of wordpress. Its the "Categories" that Wordpress creates that need special outside attention.
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