Tom Belfort's AMA about SEO/Siloing/PBNs/Link Building 2019+

[splishsplash]

Thanks for this. I don't think this has or will be asked so:

What are your views on Sape? I have seen real business websites ranking for years with just Sape links. I also used it on sites before and had mixed results.

I've not used it myself, but I have clients that have had success with it, even using it for businesses.

 

[Riders On The Storm]

Excellent discussion going around. I have few queries as well. Going by your example,
L1 = level 1 silo. L2 = level 2 silo. L3 = level 3 silo and C = Child post, ie, article.
L1 = animals
L2 = animals/dogs, animals/cats
L3 = animals/dogs/akita, animals/cats/siamese

1. You have said to make pages for the silos (ie, dogs/cats/etc). Why can't the category pages act as silos if we mod the category pages to add some content at top?

2. And if we make pages then why don't we make the child articles pages itself as well? There are plugins to list all sub pages of a parent page.

3. Do we keep the tags or no-index them or totally disable them?

 

[ranga]

I am testing this silo on one of my website. Have a few questions:

Lets assume that my silo is L1 L2 L3 and M1 is MoneyArticle at L3

1. Do you link from content on Silo Pages to either SubSilo or Money Articles other than the navigation block below the posts
2. Should I show post excerpts on Silo Pages or Image/Title of MoneyArticles is enough. What's the effect of this on topical relevance
3. If I understand correctly, if L3 is my last silo page then there would be no navigation block below posts on L3 Silo Page and would only have MoneyContent Posts
4. I understand that this Silo will work well for deep sites with lots of content, but is it suitable for sites where Silo is only 2 or 3 level deep.
5. Should I link from Money Articles to Top of Silo / Its Parent Page / Other Sister Articles in the same level or No links (I think no links will waste the links coming into the Money Articles)

 

[splishsplash]

Excellent discussion going around. I have few queries as well. Going by your example,
L1 = level 1 silo. L2 = level 2 silo. L3 = level 3 silo and C = Child post, ie, article.
L1 = animals
L2 = animals/dogs, animals/cats
L3 = animals/dogs/akita, animals/cats/siamese

1. You have said to make pages for the silos (ie, dogs/cats/etc). Why can't the category pages act as silos if we mod the category pages to add some content at top?

2. And if we make pages then why don't we make the child articles pages itself as well? There are plugins to list all sub pages of a parent page.

3. Do we keep the tags or no-index them or totally disable them?

1. Because you can't make a proper hierarchy out of category pages. You can't have men/trousers and women/trousers. There's other issues too that I forget. Pages are FAR more powerful. You can do a real hierarchy and create your own templates for them.

2. I like to separate my money pages from my silos. You don't use plugins to list the child posts anyway. That's what categories are for. You just aren't displaying the wordpress category pages. Only using the category internally.

3. no-index them. They're not needed and not good for seo.

I am testing this silo on one of my website. Have a few questions:

Lets assume that my silo is L1 L2 L3 and M1 is MoneyArticle at L3

1. Do you link from content on Silo Pages to either SubSilo or Money Articles other than the navigation block below the posts
2. Should I show post excerpts on Silo Pages or Image/Title of MoneyArticles is enough. What's the effect of this on topical relevance
3. If I understand correctly, if L3 is my last silo page then there would be no navigation block below posts on L3 Silo Page and would only have MoneyContent Posts
4. I understand that this Silo will work well for deep sites with lots of content, but is it suitable for sites where Silo is only 2 or 3 level deep.
5. Should I link from Money Articles to Top of Silo / Its Parent Page / Other Sister Articles in the same level or No links (I think no links will waste the links coming into the Money Articles)

1. Yes.

2. I show post excerpts. Small changes like that won't make or break. I can't see there being any real difference with or without.

3. Correct

4. You'd almost never have 4-5 levels deep. That's a mega authority site. 2-3 silo levels is the norm. Some silos might have a 4th, with a few articles in it if it makes sense. It works with smaller sites where you only have "1 silo", but it's not really siloing and it's not going to have the full effect, but it's still a good way to structure a small site. To get the real power of it you need 100's of thousands of words. It really kicks off at about 1 million words.

5. You can have breadcrumbs. I do. But I don't often link contextually back to silos unless, as always, it makes sense. For internal links, just do what makes sense.

Also, remember, guys. Outbound links help your ranking. Link link link. Relevant sites, authority sites.. Anywhere good. You are connecting yourself with the good parts of the web when you do. Spammers never link.

 

[Riders On The Storm]

1. Because you can't make a proper hierarchy out of category pages. You can't have men/trousers and women/trousers. There's other issues too that I forget. Pages are FAR more powerful. You can do a real hierarchy and create your own templates for them.

2. I like to separate my money pages from my silos. You don't use plugins to list the child posts anyway. That's what categories are for. You just aren't displaying the wordpress category pages. Only using the category internally.

3. no-index them. They're not needed and not good for seo.

Thanks for the response. Almost everything is clear. I have some more queries.
1. For the final money content articles, can't we go with pages instead of posts if pages seems to have more power?
2. And what to do with the 2 link structure if we follow the pages+post route? Or we no-index the category pages?
www.animals.com/dogs/akita
&
www.animals.com/categories/dogs/akita

 

[splishsplash]

Thanks for the response. Almost everything is clear. I have some more queries.
1. For the final money content articles, can't we go with pages instead of posts if pages seems to have more power?
2. And what to do with the 2 link structure if we follow the pages+post route? Or we no-index the category pages?
www.animals.com/dogs/akita
&
www.animals.com/categories/dogs/akita

1. Pages have more power than category pages. By power, I just mean the ability to customize them easily. Not any sort of SEO power.

Posts have dates, pages don't. Pages are for static content where date doesn't matter. Pages don't appear in rss feeds and there's also some styling issues that arise with some themes when you use pages rather than posts. I cannot remember specifics, but I do recall my web guy had issues and he recommended we use posts instead of pages.

2. You noindex tags and category pages. They are also not linked to from anywhere on the site.

 

[Riders On The Storm]

1. Pages have more power than category pages. By power, I just mean the ability to customize them easily. Not any sort of SEO power.

Posts have dates, pages don't. Pages are for static content where date doesn't matter. Pages don't appear in rss feeds and there's also some styling issues that arise with some themes when you use pages rather than posts. I cannot remember specifics, but I do recall my web guy had issues and he recommended we use posts instead of pages.

2. You noindex tags and category pages. They are also not linked to from anywhere on the site.

Thanks for the detailed explanation. Will follow this thread and come back when i face any more issues in setting up my niche projects.

 

[Ozzyzig]

Brilliant idea, Tom. Hopefully this'll help a lot of people get their silos set up properly.
In terms of the silo examples, Asus also do a pretty great job with this (imo), and the Samsung example was spot on.
For some of my sites, it's a slightly different setup with news/previews being set as posts on the home page, but the pages that are really making me money from affiliate sales are the silo'd pages.
I've been a bit of dingbat though; I didn't mention the brand name in the URL, but after looking at some pages on my site, I should have included it in the page title, just like the Samsung example you've given.
Oh, and as for the haters out there, think of it this way; @splishsplash has already made a huge thread and answered a boatload of questions to help people. He has also been sound enough to start up this AMA. He's not selling a guide like some guru, so why the hell would he put anything sketchy in it?

 

[EliG_SEO]

I've built over 1000 pbns with a combined value of $150k-$200k from the domains alone.

I have helped dozens of clients achieve extraordinary levels of success and 100+ good success. (I'm not going to lie here and say I've helped every client get crazy results. This isn't possible, but I've helped a lot of clients get anything from small boosts to huge 10x+ increases in traffic)

I have direct experience helping clients make on-page changes and seeing both positive and negative impacts. Learning from both.

I have direct experience siloing existing sites for clients.

I have direct experience analysing client sites, recommending changes for positive growth and pointing out issues that are causing problems. In 70%+ of cases I have been able to help clients get a good result.

I have built and silo'd both my own affiliate sites, and client projects from scratch. I currently have a 100% success rate and my best affiliate sites have reached 5 figures per month.

Overall I have a broad range of SEO experience due to my exposure to a LOT of client sites, in a lot of niches. All sorts of sites.

All my knowledge comes from practical experience. I don't read about SEO. The occasional case study, but generally the SEO blogs are all full of overly complicated and conflicting advice. Hence I am not regurgitating information from other sources.




Exactly as outlined in my guide on the forum. https://www.blackhatworld.com/seo/the-ultimate-guide-to-seo-siloing-dominate-google-in-2018.985967/



You need to silo an entire website. You can't pick and choose. I may be misunderstanding that part of your question. Ie, you can't just silo "some articles."

Here's the first re-usable question and answer, so just to further explain from above, I will re-word what you're asking here into a more re-usable question and answer.

Q1) Do I silo using pages or posts. What's the difference?

A1) Both. You need pages, post categories, posts and 2 plugins. Here's the procedure. (Note, there's several ways to silo, but this is an easy way to do it)

I'll use an example to make it more understandable. L1 = level 1 silo. L2 = level 2 silo. L3 = level 3 silo and C = Child post, ie, article. This is my standard terminology from now on.

L1 = animals
L2 = animals/dogs, animals/cats
L3 = animals/dogs/akita, animals/cats/siamese

a) Install this plugin https://en-gb.wordpress.org/plugins/permalinks-customizer/
b) Create the following post categories. animals, dogs, cats, akita & siamese. You can organize them with the correct parents, but this isn't needed. It makes it easier to view your silo structure in the category section so I do recommend this.
c) Create your first child for animals/cats/siamese. Normal wordpress post.
d) Select categories animals, cats & siamese. It is all 3.
e) Under 'document' on the right, you'll see the permalink section.

Ok, so now we've got animals/cats/siamese/article-name. These aren't categories. They do not exist just now. They're just a permalink structure. They have NOTHING to do with the post categories we created above. We will have a use for those later.

f) Create a PAGE 'animals'
g) Create a page 'cats', make its parent page 'animals'. (You do this on the right in the editor, "page attributes"->"parent page")
h) Create a page 'siamese', make its parent page 'cats'.

Now, these are your SILOs!

i) Create 75-200 words of text at the top of them. No more.
j) Install a plugin that lets you list all posts in post categories. I am not going to tell you the one I use, because I don't want a bunch of copy cat sites looking the same as mine There's plenty. Find one.
k) On the animals page, list all posts in the animals category AND all L2/L3 silos, which each have a post category. Ie, animals, dogs, cats, akita, siamese. This would literally be EVERY SINGLE animal category, L2, L3, L4 etc.
l) At the bottom, under the posts, link to every silo under animals, in a tree structure. Format it any way you want. The key is to link from animals to dogs, cats, siamese, akita, everything, so juice is flowing down everywhere from the animals silo.
m) Do the same for dogs and cats, all the way down your silos. So dogs displays all posts in dogs, akita and any dog breed silo.

Remember, you could have a general animal article, just in the animal silo, a general dog article, just in animals/dogs, or then an akita specific article, in animals, dogs and akita. So an akita article will appear on the homepage, animals, dogs and akita. You do not want to try to rank your silos for too many keywords. That isn't the point. You are not trying to rank for "akita" or "dogs". Of course if you build up a beast of a site, you might very well hit page 1 for dogs with a silo structure. BUT, you know you're on the right track when you're page 6 or 7 for 'dogs' and page 4-5 for akita etc. Your silo title will be like "Animals", "Dog Guides, Breeds & Training". General, generic, broad. You'll rank on page 4+ for "dog guides", "dog breeds", "dog training", "dogs", "breeds of dog" and so on. The goal here is to build topical relevance for dog guides/breeds/training/info. The broad stuff, and pass that juice down to all your articles. You are grouping it all together so google sees your broad dog topic and your sub-topics and understands you have a lot of content about all these topics. You become an authority in animals, when you have 30 level 1 animal silos, each with another 30-40 level 2's, each with another 30-40 level 3's You'll become an authority in akita, when you have 5, 10, 20 articles in there. The more the better. Unique and high quality though, not repetitive junk. Then when you become an authority in akita, rotweiller, german shepherd and 10 other breeds, you'll become an authority on the parent silo. You see how it works? So focus in on 1 low level silo at a time. Don't have 1 article per silo. Build them up in groups, focus on 5-10 dog breeds and the dog silo, then 5-10 cat breeds etc.

You don't create a silo with 3000 words of content. That's not a silo, it's a child page. Google will never see you as an expert in dogs, if you have 1 big generic dog article. It wants to see 100's of articles on a broad topic like dogs, covering every topic, breed, training, health etc Imagine from the example above you just have a 3000 word article on dogs. That's just going to rank for some longtails, and even worse, the silo page will compete with inner pages. It'll be a mess.



Don't over-think it. Link what's natural. If you need to link from cat to dog, do it. You'll more often than not link from dog breeds, to training, and other dog breeds and so on, but cats ARE related to dogs, and it is natural to link, so all you are doing is strengthening your topical authority and helping google understand how all your content connects together. With the above structure, you've got the core covered and google will understand all the topics you write about.



No, no, no You don't rank silos for long tails. Don't try to rank 1 page for something another ranks for.



You don't want to rank silos. They are for passing link juice. If you eventually rank your broad keyword silos, then cool, but 80-95% of all traffic comes from longtails, and the best converting traffic comes from longtails. Ranking your silo in the top 100 for the broad terms is enough. That tells you google knows what your silo is. If you aren't ranking in the top 100 for your silo for any broads, then you've done something wrong. Note, SOME broad. You probably won't rank for 'dogs', but you should rank for 'dog information' or 'dog info' or something broad. Check ahrefs/semrush and this tells you how google sees your silo. If it doesn't rank at all, or it's ranking for longtails, then you have done something wrong.



It's a good question. I will make it a re-usable

Q2) Can I rank a silo'd site without backlinks, or with limited backlinks and if so, how much content do I need?

A2) Yes, no and probably. Zero backlinks? Probably, yes. But for that I would estimate you need 1 million+ words of content on the site and 18 months to 2 years.

Minimum backlinks.. Perhaps a 2-5 guest posts and a couple of good pbns a month, around 300k words of content and 1 year.

And if you're backlinking more aggressively, 5-20 guest posts a month, and 5-10 pbns per month on an aged domain(I only use aged domains if I'm doing more aggressive backlinking, especially pbns. You don't want more than 10-15% of your links to be from pbns, ideally 5-10% max. It was different a couple of years ago, but things have changed in the pbn world in 2019.)

I don't do any sort of backlinking other than guest posts and pbns. I don't like niche edits. Had mixed results. web 2's, comments, forum posts, press releases and all that other stuff is just fluff. Even on a completely fresh domain I wouldn't bother. Some web 2's, sure, the rest, no need. Press releases if you're a real business. Just regular guest posts. Paid links. Contextual can be relevance or not relevant. Doesn't matter. An article about dogs on a tech site is relevant. Tech for dogs. A story about an engineer's dog. A robotic dog. For non-contextual, sidebar, footer, paid directories, any sort of list you want RELEVANT. Footer must be relevant. Get a footer from a tech site to your dog site and you're in trouble. pbns, starting with a couple in month 1, maybe 3-4 in month 2, 5-6 in month 3 then 5-10 per month. But I always start with relevant aged domains for money sites. Makes things easier. You've already got a ton of links, so you just start building plenty of guest posts/pbns and rank. So, finally, if you are backlinking like that, 3-6 months on an aged domain, 6-12 months on a fresh domain and about 100k words of content.



You don't want to rank silos, category pages, tag pages, archive pages or anything like that. Even your homepage you don't really want to rank. Just child pages for your longtails. That's where the money is. Siloing is BIG. You go big or go home. 100k words MINIMUM. Ideally 1 million words if you want to absolutely slaughter your competition, then stand on top of a mountain of corpses, laughing hysterically. I'm not joking. Do my silo structure above with 1 million+ words and you will be utterly amazed at what you see on semrush for your site.

Thanks for your answers. Siloing is a big investment. I created 5 pages of 3000 words each, wrapped by my silo page, but I see it's not enough. Just creating for 300K words seems like a montain.

I have another question : you speak of plugins to show posts in a silo. Can I create the silo manually, or I need the plugin? I can't find a plugin that display pages. They all only display posts, and I blog on pages to not be limited by post dates and stuff like that.

 

[splishsplash]

Thanks for your answers. Siloing is a big investment. I created 5 pages of 3000 words each, wrapped by my silo page, but I see it's not enough. Just creating for 300K words seems like a montain.

I have another question : you speak of plugins to show posts in a silo. Can I create the silo manually, or I need the plugin? I can't find a plugin that display pages. They all only display posts, and I blog on pages to not be limited by post dates and stuff like that.

Building authority sites is expensive.. SEO/site building isn't good unless you have some money to invest. Sadly the days of being able to build a micro niche site with 20k-30k words and making $1k/mo with it are over.

I don't understand how you feel limited by post dates though. If you don't like dates, then don't display them. Just use posts and one of the plugins to display posts. Pages are static, you aren't meant to categorize them and display them. They are set pages that you list in your menu, or somewhere. So if you want to go that route, then you create your own custom silo pages listing your other pages, rather than automatically displaying the latest posts within a silo(ie, in a category).

 

[Dark Sky]

@splishsplash Question regarding silo. *using knife niche as example*

My homepage is an article for "Best knifes"

I then have on navigation bar:

"best knifes for beginners" - 4000 word buyers guide
"best knifes for killers" - 4000 word buyers guide
"best knifes for hunters" - 4000 word buyers guide

Then under each buyers guide I have supporting articles.

So the URL structure I have is this:

http://www.knifeexample.com/best-knifes (Homepage)

http://www.knifeexample.com/best-knifes/best-knifes-for-beginners (Buyers Guide)
http://www.knifeexample.com/best-knifes/best-knifes-for-killers (Buyers Guide)
http://www.knifeexample.com/best-knifes/best-knifes-for-hunters (Buyers Guide)


http://www.knifeexample.com/best-knifes/best-knifes-for-beginners/how-to-use-knife-for-beginners (Supporting Article for buyers guide)
http://www.knifeexample.com/best-knifes/best-knifes-for-beginners/what-should-beginners-be-aware-of-with-knifes (Supporting Article for buyers guide)
http://www.knifeexample.com/best-knifes/best-knifes-for-beginners/beginners-tips-with-knifes (Supporting Article for buyers guide)


and so on....


Is this the way to Silo? Or would google get confused with all the buyers guides containing "best knifes" do you have any recommendations? I am planning on reorganising everything if it needs any adjustments. Any input would be much appreciated.

 

[uncharted88]

Is it possible to silo a local business like landscaping? You have the homepage, individual service pages, about, and contact to name a few. How would you go about that?

 

[splishsplash]

@splishsplash Question regarding silo. *using knife niche as example*

My homepage is an article for "Best knifes"

I then have on navigation bar:

"best knifes for beginners" - 4000 word buyers guide
"best knifes for killers" - 4000 word buyers guide
"best knifes for hunters" - 4000 word buyers guide

Then under each buyers guide I have supporting articles.

So the URL structure I have is this:

www.knifeexample.com/best-knifes (Homepage)

www.knifeexample.com/best-knifes/best-knifes-for-beginners (Buyers Guide)
www.knifeexample.com/best-knifes/best-knifes-for-killers (Buyers Guide)
www.knifeexample.com/best-knifes/best-knifes-for-hunters (Buyers Guide)


www.knifeexample.com/best-knifes/best-knifes-for-beginners/how-to-use-knife-for-beginners (Supporting Article for buyers guide)
www.knifeexample.com/best-knifes/best-knifes-for-beginners/what-should-beginners-be-aware-of-with-knifes (Supporting Article for buyers guide)
www.knifeexample.com/best-knifes/best-knifes-for-beginners/beginners-tips-with-knifes (Supporting Article for buyers guide)


and so on....


Is this the way to Silo? Or would google get confused with all the buyers guides containing "best knifes" do you have any recommendations? I am planning on reorganising everything if it needs any adjustments. Any input would be much appreciated.

You can't silo that, and the way you're trying it there is just going to get a spam penalty.

A silo is like

kitchen/knives
kitchen/cookware
kitchen/bakeware
kitchen/glassware
kitchen/storage


There's only a few articles you can have for knives, assuming it's kitchen, and if your whole site is about knives, hunting and kitchen, then that's a mish-mash.

'best knives for beginners' has < 10 searchers

best knives for killers ????

A silo isn't a best-something, containing a best-something-for-X then a guide and supporting article. That's just a spammy mess.

Sites like that are just useless.

Google best knives for beginners.

There's a knife micro niche site ranking for that. Looks promising, but look at it on ahrefs. It's ranking for 2k keywords with 400 organic traffic.. Complete and utter waste of time.

You can't do anything with micro niche sites. If you try to add content, you end up triggering panda with "best white toaster", "best red toaster", "best toaster for girls", "best toaster for boys" etc

You can't build topical relevance, because you're just about 1 single topic, and to build topical relevance you need a broader topic, containing lots of single topics.

Google doesn't like affiliate sites at the best of times, let alone pure affiliate sites, with thin, repeated content, with an EMD or PMD and only a few articles.

Things are getting even worse for smaller sites.

In summary small sites aren't good, and you definitely can't silo them.

 

[Dark Sky]

You can't silo that, and the way you're trying it there is just going to get a spam penalty.

A silo is like

kitchen/knives
kitchen/cookware
kitchen/bakeware
kitchen/glassware
kitchen/storage


There's only a few articles you can have for knives, assuming it's kitchen, and if your whole site is about knives, hunting and kitchen, then that's a mish-mash.

'best knives for beginners' has < 10 searchers

best knives for killers ????

A silo isn't a best-something, containing a best-something-for-X then a guide and supporting article. That's just a spammy mess.

Sites like that are just useless.

Google best knives for beginners.

There's a knife micro niche site ranking for that. Looks promising, but look at it on ahrefs. It's ranking for 2k keywords with 400 organic traffic.. Complete and utter waste of time.

You can't do anything with micro niche sites. If you try to add content, you end up triggering panda with "best white toaster", "best red toaster", "best toaster for girls", "best toaster for boys" etc

You can't build topical relevance, because you're just about 1 single topic, and to build topical relevance you need a broader topic, containing lots of single topics.

Google doesn't like affiliate sites at the best of times, let alone pure affiliate sites, with thin, repeated content, with an EMD or PMD and only a few articles.

Things are getting even worse for smaller sites.

In summary small sites aren't good, and you definitely can't silo them.

Ahh now I understand... cheers much appreciated, it isnt about knives but i do not want to give away my niche It is a good keyword dw, easy competition, top sites only have 40k words content and its 3000 searches PM for my keyword.

Just didnt quite understand how to build topical relevance for the site but now I fully understand, thank you

 

[splishsplash]

Ahh now I understand... cheers much appreciated, it isnt about knives but i do not want to give away my niche It is a good keyword dw, easy competition, top sites only have 40k words content and its 3000 searches PM for my keyword.

Just didnt quite understand how to build topical relevance for the site but now I fully understand, thank you

A niche isn't a keyword, and a site should contain several niches.

Take a look at some mid-level sites ranking top 5 for different searches. They rank for 10's to 100's of thousands of keywords. Trying to rank for 1 single keyword is what we did in 2010.

Try to rank for 50k keywords. I don't bother with single keywords. I don't track keyword rankings. Just traffic and overall stats on ahrefs/semrush. Only local sites should be bothered about tracking keywords these days. Anything going for google.com shouldn't.

 

[KishoSRB]

Welcome back, Tom.
As an ex-client, I need to say a few words.

Tom has really big knowledge and experience about Seo game, based and collected on their own sites.

I can confirm that this silo is working great, the problem is that webmasters are complicating a lot.

Answering questions here can confuse someone who already done good silo, so I think that making some live example will help a lot.

Before you start to make silo you need to do complete keyword research, it's much harder to make silo on the live website.

You need to use a plugin to list post on pages.
Keep URL clean, do not repeat any words twice, use your domain brandable in order for easier use of URLs.
Connect your pages (subsilos), let juice pass around all your website.

I hope this is the beginning of your new service.

 

[splishsplash]

Welcome back, Tom.
As an ex-client, I need to say a few words.

Tom has really big knowledge and experience about Seo game, based and collected on their own sites.

I can confirm that this silo is working great, the problem is that webmasters are complicating a lot.

Answering questions here can confuse someone who already done good silo, so I think that making some live example will help a lot.

Before you start to make silo you need to do complete keyword research, it's much harder to make silo on the live website.

You need to use a plugin to list post on pages.
Keep URL clean, do not repeat any words twice, use your domain brandable in order for easier use of URLs.
Connect your pages (subsilos), let juice pass around all your website.

I hope this is the beginning of your new service.

Yep, spot on. You do need to do DEEP research. That is the hard part about siloing. It's not as simple as just guessing a few pages. You need to understand the topics, what people search for in relation to those topics, and how google views the topic.

Yeah I'll get around to doing a full example.

 

[WIZDAHL]

Yep, spot on. You do need to do DEEP research. That is the hard part about siloing. It's not as simple as just guessing a few pages. You need to understand the topics, what people search for in relation to those topics, and how google views the topic.

Yeah I'll get around to doing a full example.

For example, you have a "dog site". How would the different levels of categories look like (as in Dog-breeds/akita and other categories/topics for the entire site)? Thanks.

 

[splishsplash]

For example, you have a "dog site". How would the different levels of categories look like (as in Dog-breeds/akita and other categories/topics for the entire site)? Thanks.

For the entire site?

I would need to spend a few hours researching the niche and do a silo plan. That's not a question, it's asking me to do a full consulting service for you.

 

[Sheepp]

Thanks for taking the time to do this. Read it all and it's very informative.

Have questions as well :

1. what do your homepage looks like on a siloed website ? Do you show latest articles (whatever their silo) ? links to L1 pages ?
2. do you recommend building one silo at a time ? for example if I would do a website doing /dogs/akita on month 1 then /dogs/other-breed on month 2 etc. then once all breeds are done /dogs/another-silo and only after all those dogs silos starting another like /cats (if, let's say, the website is about domestic animals). or building /dogs and /cats in the same time ? (or if that makes no difference at all)