Anchor Text Strategy within Silo Architecture

That example is ok & actually the basics of a silo, relevancy with unique page titles (<title>).

Even though I suggest unique page titles keep in mind there are situations where you can get away with very similar page titles on multiple internal pages from the same domain. I've already mentioned this on another forum thread with a few examples so I'll paste that below. These examples happen to be Youtube videos but it doesn't matter because the same can be done on self hosted domains.

I would consider the Youtube examples below an extreme case & pushing the limits to avoid Supplemental SERPs, you can see they're still doing fine in the SERPs since my original forum comment dated 8th Feb 2015.

Don't be afraid to test/tweak things on your own. The SERPs aren't written in stone.

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That's also ok & will help generate multiple SERP positions for each keyword you target.

I'm curious why you think you need your deeper content physically (or virtually) located in deeper and deeper sub-folders?

A silo isn't generated by the physical location of the files or the virtual location of the files, it's the linking structure. What you have above looks really spammy, you can have everything at root level, so your final URL could be:

insurance.com/compare-affordable-insurance-rates

It's the links between related content which form the silo architecture, not the URL/folder structure. Silo SEO works by limiting unrelated content (especially anchor text) on a webpage, basically you attempt to make everything yell a particular niche by reducing non-niche content.

David

Thank you for the follow up, Yukon. And thank you for the reply, David.

I understand the perils of pushing content deeper down into folders and subfolders and don't necessarily think I need to do that. I used the example above (insurance.com/insurance-rates/affordable-insurance-rates/compare-affordable-insurance-rates) because many of the blogs I'm learning this stuff through suggest the above mentioned approach in order to build strength toward highly competitive words with supporting anchor text that echoes the competitive keyword, so long as it's in the silo.

I'm a little confused now because it seems like Yukon is saying that that kind of approach won't get flagged, where David is saying it may.

However, David, your reply brings another question to mind:
I'm building a business with various categories (WordPress Categories, not architecture categories) and my plan is to have an architectural category page for the sole purpose of preserving link flow and having a landing page where links from other silos can point to.

If I did what you suggest and keep all my content at the root level (not putting them into folders), what will happen with the WordPress categories I assign them? I was under the impression that if I have WP categories, that I would also necessarily have to have the content live in actual folders that reflected those categories.

If you're curious who the "experts" are that I've been reading much of this stuff about, they are Bruce Clay and Neil Patel.

Your input and replies are much appreciated! Thank you for taking the time.

Just a quick follow up...

David, the reason I'm confused about the folders altogether is because, if what you're saying is true and folders / subfolders aren't really necessary, and everything can simply be done through links and anchor text, then why would anybody have anything in folders?

When would the structure of nesting things inside folders be a good idea?

You've misunderstood me slightly.

You won't be penalized for having sub-folders like

example.com/keyword/keyword2/keyword3/keyword4/

I'm saying it's not needed and LOOKS a bit spammy. Looking a bit spammy doesn't mean it is SEO SPAM and Google will slap it.

If you went to two sites and one was:

example/com/keyword/keyword2/keyword3/keyword4/article-here.html

and the other was

example/com/article-here.html

which one would you consider more professional?

The reason why the likes of Bruce Clay etc... advised this type of niching content in folders is from a layman's perspective it makes sense, but Google doesn't see any difference between:

example.com/keyword/keyword2/keyword3.html
and
example.com/keyword-keyword2-keyword3.html

To Google these have the same SEO value.

Keywords in a URL is a small SEO factor (note they have to be separated by a separator Google recognizes: hyphen -, dot . or forward slash /) so you do want your keywords in the URL. Since there's no difference between the two examples above why would you use folders which limits the URL options?

From a WordPress perspective why would you want to force category keywords into a URL when you can add it via the slug (IF you want those words)?

If I'm targeting a page at say SEO Tutorial and I've put the post in the SEO Tutorials category which of these two is best at targeting the SEO tutorial SERP?

example.com/category/seo-tutorials/seo-tutorial/
example.com/seo-tutorial/

IME the second one, I don't want the word category, don't need SEO twice and though tutorials isn't a negative there's the argument the SEO Tutorials category should be targeting SEO tutorials.

what about another article in the SEO Tutorials category targeting Anchor Text Optimization

example.com/category/seo-tutorials/anchor-text-optimization/
example.com/anchor-text-optimization/

I'm targeting "Anchor Text Optimization", not "Category SEO Tutorials Anchor Text Optimization". Why would you water down the keywords you are targeting (Anchor Text Optimization) with additional words you aren't targeting (Category SEO Tutorials) on that page?

If you want seo-tutorials in the URL it can be added via the post slug without adding /category/:

example/com/seo-tutorials-anchor-text-optimization/

but, if you have the category permalink version you can't remove /category/seo-tutorials/ from the URL if you don't want it.

The URL SEO benefit is small fry, it's the interlinking and related anchor text where the real SEO power is and you don't have to have webpages in the same folder to link them together with relevant anchor text.

The real silo SEO power is in the links and anchor text. You can silo any webpages together via links and related anchor text. Tighter a niche (keyword wise) more related the links anchor text will be.

Take a look at the SEO theme link in my sig, the site uses WordPress and has built loose silos around categories. Go on a few random articles and look at the links including the widget links and note how the anchor text tends to be strongly niched: for example I have a Make Money Online category niche, I avoid linking to it from the SEO category niches (posts about making money tend to link to other posts about money).

David

I see mayhem setting in...

An old school site structure does indeed consist of folders/directories, there should be no confusion there, it's an obvious fact. It's literally a treeview structure (screenshot below) which is the same as a silo. Silos originate from old school HTML structure, the difference is they're virtual in the sense that a category folder/sub-folder doesn't exist on a CMS (ex: Wordpress, Drupal, etc..), it's all data in a MySQL database.





The same old school HTML treeview in the screenshot above can be done in a virtual silo (ex: Wordpress) by simply creating Pages in the CMS Admin. & using a Parent/Child hierarchy.

• hxxp://animals.com/dogs/small-breeds/italian-greyhound

My advice is forget Neil, he's all hype.

Pay attention to what Bruce Clay is actually doing on his site, not just his blog post about silos. Compare his live webpages to the Google cache (text versions), they're noticeably different because he's optimizing for Google SERPs on the text version of his webpages.

If it looks spammy and feels spammy then it probably is.

Ask yourself that before you start any SEO project.

For what it's worth, if you do deeply structure your site you run the risk of over-optimizing on main keywords.

So if you are targeting auto insurance and your URL looks like this:

autoinsurancerelateddomain.com/auto-insurance/teen-auto-insurance/keeping-your-teens-auto-insurance-rates-down/

then you can run into some Penguin problems.

Personally, I create my silos to be 2 levels, which is short enough to avoid Penguin and long enough to really target what I'm talking about.

site.com/silotopic/subtopic

I'm going to be 100% honest here.

I completely understand trees in programming. Binary tress, N trees, whatever.

But anytime somebody says "Silo" I'm like "da faq?"

The terminology just blows. Who ever coined that term should be kicked in the balls.

Normally, it's going to visually look more like a pyramid then a "Silo."

Ok so we want a pyramid with no more than three tiers. Four if we really need to because the site is that big. Ok. Easy, for me to understand.

I don't know maybe it's a gift or something, but I can easily visualize the structures of things like website links in my mind.

I'm sure many "visual thinkers" feel the same way, and many non-visual thinkers disagree.

I'm thinking here that it's too hard for people to understand so term "silo" was created because it's more linear sounding word. I actually kind of get it now, it's like you're looking across the tiers, instead of down them. Or like the way you might look at the structure in say Visio. The term "silo" has confused me for nearly 2 decades now.

Which Okay, the files are linear... But that's not what all the code behind them achieves...

With this structure



To me, the "silo" on the left makes no sense, it's not really describing what's going on at all.

If anybody looks at the right part of that diagram and what you need to do makes no sense, let me know.

If A has 250 links, B has 250 unique links, then C is 62,500 pages = Have fun sourcing that.

If A is say 50 links (drop down nav menus) and B averages 25 pages, then C is 1250 pages = will still take years to write yourself, unless it's auto generated or thin content.

Edit: and to anybody spends hours designing their "silo" (first time doesn't count) yesterday on one of my many sites, I deleted a category in wordpress, and put all the content into a different category oh noes! My silo kersploded! It doesn't matter, those pages I moved have zero external links and Google will instantly figure it out by the sitemap change, there might be a bunch of gbot 404s, but it's fine. The issue of "adjusting your silo" only occurs when you have external links pointed to those pages or you go full idiot mode and go from good structure to terrible.

This to me, makes 10,000% more sense then the word "Silo"