Thanks. I've done tons of research and testing with on-page and architecture. the URL would be: wwww.yourdomain.com/example/#1
You can add as many links as you want as long as you add a different hash tag. There was a post on www.moz.com where they tested this.
I had to get real creative on the site I am working on currently. About 250 keywords, and half of them are synonyms - it support, it services, it outsourcing, it support outsourcing, it consulting, it outsourcing services, etc.
Guys, this isn't about white hat vs. black hat. This is about site organization, and how your site organization can help Google understand what's happening in a mechanical language they understand. If you do it correctly, it will help your rankings regardless of your techniques.
Agreed. If you have more than 15 pages of content, it should be in silos. It goes beyond organization, though. We've been studying this, and if your content is tightly themed and structured with enough content, it puts the parent page on steroids. As I said above, we added 10 pages of content into a silo, and the parent page jumped from 76 to 12 without a single backlink of any kind on the page for a very competitive 2 word phrase. We've seen this many times. Nobody believes that you can get ranked with great content and structure, and a handful of backlinks. We try to get to the first page with content and architecture, and use backlinks to get us to #1.
I'm not knocking other strategies. This is what works for us.
It's a lot less risky, and the rankings will stay for a long time.
I'm just glad that there are a few people here that really get some of this stuff.
@Satans_Apprentice what I like about your comments is how you were able to see results just from strengthening the silo (without links). That says a lot.
By the way, if you want to know about another widget that will help you out on all of this, check out widget logic. I know you will get it.
What about restructuring an already 10 year old site, that has SEO? Will re doing everything into silos hurt your SEO? I mean, all those links that were once site.com/KW1 you now have to do SEO for site.com/nichecategory/KW1, what happens to all the past SEO will it hurt it?
I've heard mixed things about 301's actually passing the juice.. seems like 10 years of SEO down the drain.
301's automatically redirect everything to the new page. Google just needs to have visited your site and see the redirects. Their spiders are always looking for old links, and they need to resolve to a page, or else it creates errors that this and that page doesn't exist. So google wants and expects a 301 when things move. Websites change architecture all the time.
Under your theory no one could ever change their website. It doesn't work that way.
@satans_Apprentice - I'm sure it works well, i was just saying i don't build sites on that kind of level. Meaning i don't have any sites that have even 15 pages.
That said, i've just got a contract for a huge ecommerce site so i will defo be trying out your method for that one. Thanks for the info
Lol, never understood all the confusion around siloing, it most definitely works, but it ain't rocket science or magic guys... so don't be intimidated by it.
Just stop and think for a second and you'll see that it's a very basic concept and easy to understand.
Let's Forget About Link Juice and Talk About Relevancy.
First off, stop and remember that part of the way Google determines the relevancy score of a page is by the relevancy of the pages that link to it. This holds for your off-site efforts as well as your on-site efforts.
All you are doing is essentially boosting the relevancy score of pages by tightly controlling your interlinking and the flow of your relevancy. So if you have a "parent page" about blue widgets, it is common sense that if you linked down to further articles in more detail about blue widgets (ie longtails), and then linked these pages back into the parent page, you are sending a serious relevancy boost to the parent page. In addition you are flowing relevancy down from the parent page to the sub pages. Then if you interlink the sub pages you are further driving that "relevancy" nail into the coffin, because when you link from one related subpage to another, it slightly boosts the other subpages relevancy, and then guess what happens when that subpage (which is now even more relevant thanks to the link from the other relevant subpage) links up to the parent page.
Come on yall, interlinking 101.
When you jack up your relevancy score for your pages, it makes your offsite efforts much more effective!
You can achieve very similar results without going for a silo architecture, just by tightly controlling your contextual interlinking. You will need to chart it out (paper, diagram, spreadsheet, whatever), but once you set everything up you can get a pretty good birds eye view of your interlinking, and see which pages need more relevant incoming links (from other pages on your site) and just generally how your site is structured. If you do this stuff from the start its not a pain at all. You just track all your pages on your site and which pages are linking into it. (or out of it if you want to take it a step further).
Or you can just simply silo your pages.
People are so focused on building links off-site that they miss the opportunity to do some seriously powerful link building right smack dab on their own bloody website. It's auto-approve too. Fricken magiqqqueee.
Disclaimer: IMO of course.
grax1Professional SEO, UK | White Label SEO Provider
@jurky3fo and @Satans_Apprentice I read some posts you wrote about silo structure and wanted to ask you if the way I do this on my page is right. I'm learning about seo but wasn't concentrated so much on on-page seo, so now I want to improve my skills. So:
I want to rank 3 pages: Page 1 | Page 2 | Page 3
On my homepage my menu looks like this:
Home | Page 1 | Page 2 | Page 3
Each page is supported by posts:
Category 1: Posts within this Category link only to Page #1 and sometimes to authority sites
Category 2: Posts within this Category link only to Page #2 and sometimes to authority sites
Category 3: Posts within this Category link only to Page #3 and sometimes to authority sites
Should I have menu like this : Home | Page 1,2,3 | Category 1,2,3 or without Category on menu?
Should I change the way I name categories like in example above ?
Is it ok to use only exact keyword when linking from posts to page or should I diversify like when doing anchors ? I mean, it's a must to diversify anchors when doing offpage seo, but onpage also ?
I'm about to create static page for homepage with general information about website, should I link from this static page to Page 1,2,3/Category 1,2,3 in text/from widgets? Or is it enough to link to them from menu ?
I removed all widgets - no categories,menu widgets etc, simply because I didn't wanted to link from Page 2 to Category 1 for example, but I'm not sure if it's right.
Is it ok to use posts to strengthen Pages or should I use other pages to rank 3 Pages I mentioned above ?
@jurky3fo and @Satans_Apprentice I read some posts you wrote about silo structure and wanted to ask you if the way I do this on my page is right. I'm learning about seo but wasn't concentrated so much on on-page seo, so now I want to improve my skills. So:
I want to rank 3 pages: Page 1 | Page 2 | Page 3
On my homepage my menu looks like this:
Home | Page 1 | Page 2 | Page 3
Each page is supported by posts:
Category 1: Posts within this Category link only to Page #1 and sometimes to authority sites
Category 2: Posts within this Category link only to Page #2 and sometimes to authority sites
Category 3: Posts within this Category link only to Page #3 and sometimes to authority sites
Should I link from Page 1 to Category 1 ? No. In Wordpress you need to make the slug for Category 1 the same as Page 1. This eliminates category page 1 and makes Page 1 the default category page.
Should I put category widget on homepage ? Not sure what widget. The home page should only link to Page 1, page 2, page 3, etc.
Should I have menu like this : Home | Page 1,2,3 | Category 1,2,3 or without Category on menu? No categories. It's duplicate content. See above.
Should I change the way I name categories like in example above ? See above.
Is it ok to use only exact keyword when linking from posts to page or should I diversify like when doing anchors ? I mean, it's a must to diversify anchors when doing offpage seo, but onpage also ? Exact match is fine unless you have thousands of pages. If you are trying to rank a page for multiple keywords, use them.
I'm about to create static page for homepage with general information about website, should I link from this static page to Page 1,2,3/Category 1,2,3 in text/from widgets? Or is it enough to link to them from menu ? Again, no categories
I removed all widgets - no categories,menu widgets etc, simply because I didn't wanted to link from Page 2 to Category 1 for example, but I'm not sure if it's right. The category posts widget makes all of this easy
Is it ok to use posts to strengthen Pages or should I use other pages to rank 3 Pages I mentioned above ? You can use pages or posts to rank pages.
grax1Professional SEO, UK | White Label SEO Provider
Should I link from Page 1 to Category 1 ? No. In Wordpress you need to make the slug for Category 1 the same as Page 1. This eliminates category page 1 and makes Page 1 the default category page.
When I do this then I have something like this which I think is not correct:
mysite.com/page1 <- this is page with content X that I want to rank
And I create category for this page1 with slug "page1"
mysite.com/page1 -> shows page with content x
and then first when I go to mysite.com/category/page1 I get to the category for page1 with posts that support this page1. So is it ok that I have /category/ ? By the way by saying "Should I link from Page 1 to Category 1 ?" I mean if I should put on bottom/sidebar of page1 a widget that displays all posts/category that was created to support page1 and links only to this page ?
I will analyse the demo page and hope that more things will become clear, thank you a lot for showing us the real example, did you make it ?
I didn't make the site. it was part of some training i took.
You do not, under any circumstances want blog categories. It is duplicate content - snippets from your blogs. This will wreck your rankings.
Silo architecture is so simple, that when you figure it out, you will say "duh".
Most Wordpress themes, out of the box, are not set up for silo architecture. The trick is, you need the ability to create custom sub menus for each silo in the sidebar. You can buy premium themes that do this. You can also use the category posts widget (free) with widgets on pages (free) to use blog posts as children pages.
You are going through the same paralysis by analysis that I went through. Silo architecture is so simple. For the sake of semantics, the top of a silo is the parent. The posts or pages that link to the parent are the children.
Rules: 1. On the home page, there are top menu links to the parent pages. That's it. 2. On parent pages, you have links to the home page and other parents in the top nav. In the sidebar, you have menu links to the children in the silo. 3. On the children pages, there are sidebar menu links to the other children in that silo, as well as the links to the parents in the top nav. VERY IMPORTANT - you need to have a contextual link to the parent in the first paragraph of each child page. Try to use exact match keywords.
That's it. See how easy that is?
Now you can structure your silos in 3 ways: 1. Posts as children - you can do this by hand, but the category posts widget makes this easy. Networkempire.com sells a video series on how to do this for $50. I recommend it highly. 2. Pages as children- you will need a Wordpress theme that lets you create unlimited custom sidebar menus. Avada from themeforest is an attractive $50 theme that works great. It also has a ton of sneaky widgets. 3. Use posts and pages as silos. I am doing this. For parent pages, I am creating double silos. For a parent page 1, silo 1A is pages - sub products within a category. If parent page 1 is "widgets", then the children are "plastic widgets", "metal widgets", etc. Silo 1B is articles supporting parent page 1 - "how to use widgets", "5 creative ways to install widgets", etc. Think of a grain silo with a divider in it.
The confusing thing about silo architecture is its simplicity. Don't try and make this complicated. If you were going to super organize a website, that is silo architecture.
If you have the right theme and widgets installed, it is childishly simple. If you really want to get crazy, you can turn children pages into sub silos.
This architecture stuff is irrelevant if you have lousy content. 1. 750 words is the new minimum. 1000 words is the future. 2. On page seo is still vitally important. I use the SEOPressor plugin. It's $100, but worth it. Make sure to set up the Bing API for LSI keywords. 3. Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI) is here to stay. That's what Hummingbird is. LSI is simple: A. When you SEO a page, do a google and bing search. At the bottom of the SERP are related search terms. Use them in your copy, also use the autocomplete keywords on the page. B. Stem your keywords. If your main keyword is "IT Outsourcing•, use "outsourcing IT", "Outsource IT", "outsourced IT", etc on the same page. You can get ranked for all of them on one page if you silo your site and mix your anchor text links. C. Target Long Tails. If your title tag is "IT Outsourcing Services Company" you get a whole bunch of keyword combinations.
Hell of a read man, thanks! a few questions though.
1. Can you use silo structure if you want to rank homepage and homepage only. I have a a product site which is actually a good keyword but not many other longtails.
At main Nav i have : Home - Review - FAQ - Support/Contact
In footer i have : copyright "my url" -Privacy - Terms of Use- Sitemap
Should i change it?
2. Do you think its better to make a big site with silo structure and try to rank each parent page for one main kw, then making smaller sites that target separate micro niches?
Thanks
grax1Professional SEO, UK | White Label SEO Provider
edited October 2013
@Satans_Apprentice Thanks again for taking your time to explain everything, i'll save it and will use as a guide. I already saved this whole thread and read this in bus because it becomes more clear when I read everything once again at the next day. So what I did on my new site, first where I work with silo. I have 3 pages with content, images and video that I want to rank. They are included in menu(+ "home" - but I'll try to change home for something more keyword-rich). I installed Category Posts Widget and Widget Logic.
Dog training Page links(only) to every Dog Training Post (children) via sidebar
Weight loss Pagelinks(only) to every Weight loss Post (children) via sidebar
and so on...
Every Dog Training post links(only) to every Dog Training Posts via sidebar and to Dog Training Page in content. Now I need to add more content. There is one more think I wanted to ask. A lot of people claim first link counts, which means that the very first link and anchor text to a page A counts and when I link once again to the same site it doesn't count. So where I'm on Dog Training Post and it links to Dog Training Page in content, does it still count? Because there's already link to Dog Training Page in Menu that is shown everywhere on my page. So I'm not sure if I should include # method when linking from content or not.
grax1Professional SEO, UK | White Label SEO Provider
edited October 2013
2. Do you think its better to make a big site with silo structure and try to rank each parent page for one main kw, then making smaller sites that target separate micro niches?
In my noob opinion it's better to focus on bigger sites, if niches are related, so that the site has more and more content and looks better in google's eyes than some micro niche sites with a few posts. On the other hand, if you are not advanced, it's more likely that you may do something wrong and hurt your site, when you concentrate only on one single website then you may lose far more comparing to losing some one page niche site.
Amazing. you are asking all of the questions that i asked when I started researching silos.
The first link counts rule as far as I know, only applies to contextual links. The menu link and the first contextual link from Page a=>b both pass juice. The second contextual link from a=>b doesn't count.
Based on research, a contextual link in the first paragraph passes 5x the link juice of a menu link. Menu links pass about 5x the juice of a footer link.
There is a way around the first link rule. If you put a hashtag (ex: #1) on the second link, it counts. You can use this to:
1. Try and rank for 2 keywords 2. Overwhelm the header links. Ex: 5 links in header, 1 contextual link, each link in the header gets 10%. With 2 links, the header links get 6.6%.
Grax1 - your approach is spot on. IMHO larger sites that are contextually related are better because its easier to become an authority site. On the other hand, if your site gets nailed blackhatting it's a major screwing.
Should I link from Page 1 to Category 1 ? No. In Wordpress you need to make the slug for Category 1 the same as Page 1. This eliminates category page 1 and makes Page 1 the default category page.
So if i am correct , anyone searching for your category page 1 would end up on Main page 1, same goes for Search engines.
What permalink structure do you use in this case? %postname% ?
I can only echo what Satans Apprentice and jurky3fo are saying. I think it explains why some of my sites are "dominating" the SERPS even when I haven't done much/any work on some pages yet they are still in top 5.
Also for those interested there is a WP plugin that will embed relevant Youtube videos into your content and create separate pages for them - a la celebritynetworth (Google 'any celebrity+net worth they are always number 1). Can't recall the name of it now but I use it all the time and it works.
can i remove myself from notifications of this thread somehow? i lost interest in this discussion long ago and i keep getting notifications every morning thinking its something interesting form a new thread and alwyas disappointed to see its this blasted one coming back to haunt me again
I run into one problem when using same slug for Pages and Categories, when using breadcrumbs , when you go to the post and try to go back via breadcrumb it takes you to category page instead of silo page. you see why this can be a problem. Also, how does google look at it when you have 2 exact URL's pointing to different stuff.
Just to be clear , the end URL's would look like this ?
domain.com/silopage1/
domain.com/silopage1/post1
domain.com/silopage1/post2
do you strip category base /category/ or you leave it ?
Comments
Never thought about using alt tags on the menu like that.
Also, how would you structure a second contextual link between pages using a #tag?
Guys, this isn't about white hat vs. black hat. This is about site organization, and how your site organization can help Google understand what's happening in a mechanical language they understand. If you do it correctly, it will help your rankings regardless of your techniques.
I'm just glad that there are a few people here that really get some of this stuff.
@Satans_Apprentice what I like about your comments is how you were able to see results just from strengthening the silo (without links). That says a lot.
By the way, if you want to know about another widget that will help you out on all of this, check out widget logic. I know you will get it.
Will re doing everything into silos hurt your SEO? I mean, all those links that were once
site.com/KW1 you now have to do SEO for site.com/nichecategory/KW1, what happens to all the past SEO will it hurt it?
I've heard mixed things about 301's actually passing the juice.. seems like 10 years of SEO down the drain.
301's automatically redirect everything to the new page. Google just needs to have visited your site and see the redirects. Their spiders are always looking for old links, and they need to resolve to a page, or else it creates errors that this and that page doesn't exist. So google wants and expects a 301 when things move. Websites change architecture all the time.
Under your theory no one could ever change their website. It doesn't work that way.
Meaning i don't have any sites that have even 15 pages.
That said, i've just got a contract for a huge ecommerce site so i will defo be trying out your method for that one.
Thanks for the info
I'm not saying my way is right and yours is wrong, just offering another approach that works for me.
Im with you gooner
Are you using a "page" as the category base?
You do not, under any circumstances want blog categories. It is duplicate content - snippets from your blogs. This will wreck your rankings.
Silo architecture is so simple, that when you figure it out, you will say "duh".
Most Wordpress themes, out of the box, are not set up for silo architecture. The trick is, you need the ability to create custom sub menus for each silo in the sidebar. You can buy premium themes that do this. You can also use the category posts widget (free) with widgets on pages (free) to use blog posts as children pages.
You are going through the same paralysis by analysis that I went through. Silo architecture is so simple. For the sake of semantics, the top of a silo is the parent. The posts or pages that link to the parent are the children.
Rules:
1. On the home page, there are top menu links to the parent pages. That's it.
2. On parent pages, you have links to the home page and other parents in the top nav. In the sidebar, you have menu links to the children in the silo.
3. On the children pages, there are sidebar menu links to the other children in that silo, as well as the links to the parents in the top nav. VERY IMPORTANT - you need to have a contextual link to the parent in the first paragraph of each child page. Try to use exact match keywords.
That's it. See how easy that is?
Now you can structure your silos in 3 ways:
1. Posts as children - you can do this by hand, but the category posts widget makes this easy. Networkempire.com sells a video series on how to do this for $50. I recommend it highly.
2. Pages as children- you will need a Wordpress theme that lets you create unlimited custom sidebar menus. Avada from themeforest is an attractive $50 theme that works great. It also has a ton of sneaky widgets.
3. Use posts and pages as silos. I am doing this. For parent pages, I am creating double silos. For a parent page 1, silo 1A is pages - sub products within a category. If parent page 1 is "widgets", then the children are "plastic widgets", "metal widgets", etc. Silo 1B is articles supporting parent page 1 - "how to use widgets", "5 creative ways to install widgets", etc. Think of a grain silo with a divider in it.
The confusing thing about silo architecture is its simplicity. Don't try and make this complicated. If you were going to super organize a website, that is silo architecture.
If you have the right theme and widgets installed, it is childishly simple. If you really want to get crazy, you can turn children pages into sub silos.
This architecture stuff is irrelevant if you have lousy content.
1. 750 words is the new minimum. 1000 words is the future.
2. On page seo is still vitally important. I use the SEOPressor plugin. It's $100, but worth it. Make sure to set up the Bing API for LSI keywords.
3. Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI) is here to stay. That's what Hummingbird is. LSI is simple:
A. When you SEO a page, do a google and bing search. At the bottom of the SERP are related search terms. Use them in your copy, also use the autocomplete keywords on the page.
B. Stem your keywords. If your main keyword is "IT Outsourcing•, use "outsourcing IT", "Outsource IT", "outsourced IT", etc on the same page. You can get ranked for all of them on one page if you silo your site and mix your anchor text links.
C. Target Long Tails. If your title tag is "IT Outsourcing Services Company" you get a whole bunch of keyword combinations.
The first link counts rule as far as I know, only applies to contextual links. The menu link and the first contextual link from Page a=>b both pass juice. The second contextual link from a=>b doesn't count.
Based on research, a contextual link in the first paragraph passes 5x the link juice of a menu link. Menu links pass about 5x the juice of a footer link.
There is a way around the first link rule. If you put a hashtag (ex: #1) on the second link, it counts. You can use this to:
1. Try and rank for 2 keywords
2. Overwhelm the header links. Ex: 5 links in header, 1 contextual link, each link in the header gets 10%. With 2 links, the header links get 6.6%.
Also for those interested there is a WP plugin that will embed relevant Youtube videos into your content and create separate pages for them - a la celebritynetworth (Google 'any celebrity+net worth they are always number 1). Can't recall the name of it now but I use it all the time and it works.