Site Structure: Short Term and Long Term

6 replies
  • SEO
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I'm creating a site and need a little advice about the structure. I generally use what I'll call a silo structure for the simplicity of this discussion. I basically have a homepage that links to category pages, and then you have all the normal silo stuff from there.

I don't want to get into a discussion if that's the right way to structure a site necessarily, but we can if it doesn't turn into a big flame war between people selling SEO services.

My question is I'm in the early stages of developing a large site. It will have a lot of what I would call traditional category pages, so it seems like I need a "silo" landing page where all of these category pages reside.

Something like this:

Home
Silo
Category
article
article
Category
article
article
Silo
Category
article
article
Category
article
article

That's all well and good when the site is large enough to support it. But in the early stages it seems like it's going to be a little odd having just a couple silo pages and a couple category pages.

Any advice? As it stands right now I'm going to have approximately 8-10 silo pages and 10-15 categories per silo landing page, then an unknown number of articles over time.

The intent is for the site to be structured in a way to grow to a very large site.

I'll be doing the content creation my self (insert content in place of article if you'd like), so it will be a long process. I don't want to wait until I have 100 pieces of content up before flipping the switch, so to speak.

My plan right now is to focus on two Silos and get a reasonable amount of content on them. They will each start with one category, and probably 5-10 articles each.

The homepage will have some text, possibly a video or two, and then navigation to the silos.

With only 2 silos to get to from the homepage I'm afraid visitors will want more.

I'm really at a loss here.

Option 2 is to just skip the Silo landing pages all together and link the categories directly from the homepage. Considering there will over a 100 eventually it seems like that get's a little daunting to have all that on the homepage, but maybe the best approach since I'm building it slowly.

I'm that case I'm thinking the structure would be:

Home
Category
Article
Article
Category
Article
Article
Category
Article
Article

It's a flatter structure, but maybe that's better.

Any thoughts?

Sorry for the long rambling post. I just don't want to end up spending 1,000 hours on a site only to wish I'd organized it differently.

For those wondering, all navigation will be in a sidebar, no static navigation. It will be a true silo structure (or that's the plan anyway).

All articles link to the category, articles link within the silo, etc.

I'm looking at it from an SEO perspective and a user experience perspective.

So fellow warriors - Please help! I'm starting the development tonight.
#long #short #site #structure #term
  • Profile picture of the author WareTime
    I don't think it matters much either way. Just make sure your visitors can find things easily.
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    • Profile picture of the author packerfan
      That's the thing. On day 1 my visitors can find the categories they're looking for very easily because there will be 2. On day 300 there might be 50 or 100.

      Right now I'm leaning towards just categories and no "silo" page between the home page and category page. It just seems like the site will eventually outgrow this structure if things go as planned.

      I'll wait for some more replies and see if there's any other thoughts.
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      • Profile picture of the author yukon
        Banned
        Originally Posted by packerfan View Post

        That's the thing. On day 1 my visitors can find the categories they're looking for very easily because there will be 2. On day 300 there might be 50 or 100.

        Right now I'm leaning towards just categories and no "silo" page between the home page and category page. It just seems like the site will eventually outgrow this structure if things go as planned.

        I'll wait for some more replies and see if there's any other thoughts.
        On my sites the category page is the top of the silo, there's no extra pages between the Index page & category pages.

        A category page is just a web page, you can do anything you want with that page, it doesn't have to be some boring default blog page.
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        • Profile picture of the author packerfan
          Originally Posted by yukon View Post

          On my sites the category page is the top of the silo, there's no extra pages between the Index page & category pages.
          This is what I normally do. But on large sites when you have something like 100 categories doesn't the home page become an issue?

          I guess I can always just organize them in groups and put them under headings that aren't really links.

          Topic A
          category
          category
          category
          category

          Topic A isn't a link, and then each category just links to the category page.

          Seems like a reasonable compromise to me. I think I'm overthinking it.
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          • Profile picture of the author yukon
            Banned
            Originally Posted by packerfan View Post

            This is what I normally do. But on large sites when you have something like 100 categories doesn't the home page become an issue?

            I guess I can always just organize them in groups and put them under headings that aren't really links.

            Topic A
            category
            category
            category
            category

            Topic A isn't a link, and then each category just links to the category page.

            Seems like a reasonable compromise to me. I think I'm overthinking it.
            Have a look at amazon.com, notice the left sidebar nav. links.

            ...or, If you have a lot of categories that aren't relevant, have a look at how about.com has their sub-domains setup.
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  • Profile picture of the author xenter
    Don't get too technical with this. Just make sure your site architecture is flat as possible without getting messy. What matters most is the contents' quality and your marketing tactics.
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