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menus/sidebars and links in a silo structure

by Wieli
5 replies
  • SEO
    • |
This is most likely going to be a long post so bear with me

I have read countless of posts about silos here but there is still some points that I haven’t got a grip of as of yet and I was hoping to get some answers and maybe the thread will help other people in the situation. Now to the actual questions.

1. Since (as I understand it) you don’t want to pass any linkjuice by crosslinking between your silos how does people handle the main navigation? I guess most people have the different silos in the main navmenu? Like:
Audi----Mercedes----BMW----Ford---ETC
If we don’t want to pass linkjuice from each silo to the next one how is this handled? With no-follow on the navmenu? Or are they just left as they are?

If they are no-follow is it a good way to have the different silos maybe in the content of your main page?

2. How do you handle the different links in one of your silos? Since you try to link all you subpages for that silo with each other and at the same time link to the main silo post.
• Is it with a dynamic sidebar that only show posts in the same silo?
• Do you add them as related posts in the bottom of the post?
• Or do you actually try to get them all linked within the content (seems unreasonable)

3. If you don’t use a dynamic sidebar as explained above. Do you use a sidebar at all? Since any types of links in this sidebar not closely related to your silo theme would hurt your silo structure.

4. As I can see if you try to make a completely perfect silo structure the site won’t be that user friendly as in a person coming into your site searching for “Audi” would have a hard time understanding that you actually have a section about “Ford” too. Any good pointers how to do this in a good way?

Anyway, that’s all I could think of right now. All help and pointers are appreciated.

/thanks
#links #menus or sidebars #silo #structure
  • Profile picture of the author ilikepie
    Read those two articles of seomoz.org and the comments below, most things are covered there.

    Internal Linking Strategies for 2012 and Beyond | SEOmoz

    Successful Site Architecture for SEO [SES London 2011] | SEOmoz
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  • Profile picture of the author guynextdoor
    • Is it with a dynamic sidebar that only show posts in the same silo?
    Yes - i use my own plugins for this.

    4. As I can see if you try to make a completely perfect silo structure the site won’t be that user friendly as in a person coming into your site searching for “Audi” would have a hard time understanding that you actually have a section about “Ford” too. Any good pointers how to do this in a good way?
    Yes, a perfect Silo is not the most user friendly solution. It is a compromise!.

    It depends on your content! Audi and Ford are related (CARS).. so i could target Audi and Ford in SUBSILOS! Each one having a own subsilo landing page (targetpage) - and both would help to rank the Mainsilo (Cars).

    Using relevance (MUST use interchangeable terms and synonyms) is the trick to make silos outrank other sites!
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    • Profile picture of the author Wieli
      Originally Posted by guynextdoor View Post

      Yes - i use my own plugins for this.



      Yes, a perfect Silo is not the most user friendly solution. It is a compromise!.

      It depends on your content! Audi and Ford are related (CARS).. so i could target Audi and Ford in SUBSILOS! Each one having a own subsilo landing page (targetpage) - and both would help to rank the Mainsilo (Cars).

      Using relevance (MUST use interchangeable terms and synonyms) is the trick to make silos outrank other sites!
      Thank you!

      Ye i was also thinking about doing something with subsilos. Im trying at the moment to modify a theme that works good for big sites with silo structures. Maybe im going to add my related posts in the sidebar instead.

      Right now im having them at the bottom of my Categorypage(mainsilo) and all related articles.
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  • Profile picture of the author justmoretravel
    1. On my site the only thing in my navigation is a link to my home page that has keyword in it instead of "Home". I used WordPress and to get the SILO structure I stopped using posts and use only pages for all my content. When you click on my homepage, you're taken to a static page that has links to different category pages. These category pages then have links to the main content in each SILO, these content pages then have links to their supporting articles.

    2. I do not use a sidebar. I use a plugin called Microkid's Related Posts which allows me to display related pages underneath each article.

    3. No sidebar.

    4. I've never had a problem because I link all the related pages together and people landing on my page about corn aren't usually interested in knowing I have a page about watermelon. If they are, they can just click the home page and see all the categories.
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