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

[splishsplash]

2. Build all the sites at once, with the 75-200 words in each silo + the tree arch below the posts(none to start). So you have your entire structure created ahead of time. Account for everything in your initial research.

Does this mean every single page that will exist within L1 and L2 will be published at lauch with 75-200 words?

Just the part i bolded that said (none to start) has confused me a little.

Yes, every single silo will exist. Not every single potential child/article.

It doesn't have to be pushing 200 words. 50-100 words is fine. It's just "up to 200". It's not an exact science. Just a little content to establish the topic. Less is more, because you don't want that page to be competing with articles.

Do you think sending links to guest posts is needed?

If the answer is yes do you think cheap 1 off payment PBNs are ok? It's just i don't have a big enough budget to spend on rented links for tier 2 at this point in time.

Backlinking guest posts is good. Just be somewhat ethical about it. Don't hammer someone's site with garbage. Some average quality pbns are fine. Especially ones where the post will roll off the homepage.

Just out of curiousity, the 500-1000 words content you place on the home page, what exactly do you write about? I mean 500-1000 words is an article, but i'm assuming your referring to 500-1000 words of generic content regarding your Sites topic and not an article about anything specific.

To be honest in practice 250-350 words is enough. Even none on the homepage will still work. These aren't make or break concepts.

I would just write about the site, what's on it etc.

So if I have a site about animals then something like

Welcome to AnimalHub. The goal here at AnimalHub is to provide a complete resource for everything animals. We absolutely love animals and our writing team are eager to share their knowledge with you, whether you're looking for <link>dog training advice</link> or you need to <link>find out how to clean a stable</link> then we have you covered. All our articles are written by experts in their relative field and are extra care and research has gone into them. We also have a growing community over on our facebook page and would love new readers to come and join us and share your animal stories or get advice. Animals are beautiful and majestic creatures that we are truly blessed to share the earth with..

blah blah blah

That kind of content.

I think it's good and and it helps to cover your broad niche, plus I think it makes the site seem more personal and real.

Important question (Also interesting)

How important is it to create generic articles specifically for L1 + L2?

Do you think its neccesary to have an article unique to the L1 only?

For example, the L1 contains all L2's and L3's but is it important to have articles in the L1 that are not in L2 or L3?

It's not really generic articles.

You'd have plenty of dog articles in your dog silo. You aren't suppose to put everything in the deepest silo. You do not need a silo for EVERY topic imaginable.

So far excellent info around this thread.
I have few more queries.
1. What is you menu structure? Per silo different menu?
2. What you have in your footer and sidebar?
3. Do you have social sharing options on your posts?
4. What is shown at the bottom of the final level child article? Same level child articles or parent silo page link?

1. l like just my L1's in the menu. It's cleaner.
2. Footer.. Nothing significant. The usual stuff, privacy policy, affiliate disclosure. Whatever makes it look nice and stuff that doesn't belong in the main menu. The sidebar.. Whatever you like. This stuff isn't make or break. Just make it look nice/user friendly.
3. Yes.
4. Related posts. Don't over-think this. You don't need some fancy linking structure. You're just grouping things together in a logical way to create topical relevance, that's all.

What's better for bulletpoint list titles, heading 2 or heading 3?

If heading 2 is used, in what cases should you use heading 3 on the things listed in bulletpoints?

Thanks.

In most cases a list title will be a better fit for an h3.

But again people are overthinking things. There is no better. You won't have 1 site ranking because it's got an h3 instead of an h2 somewhere in the article.

Awesome thread again, thanks Tom!

I have a question concerning the following scenario:

I have the blog content on my website siloed the way you described it in the old thread and it is working nicely.
Parallel to the blog content there is a wiki on the site. While the blog articles focus more on in depth details of a topic or show current developments in it, the wiki articles are more sort of pillar articles which shall bring the traffic in for the big search volume keywords.
What I do at the moment to power the wiki articles up, is internally linking them from every blogarticle where the keyword ist used.
But do you have another hint for me how to combine the silo structure with the wiki?

The wiki should be contained within the silo. Everything should be contained within the silo to build topical relevance. Just move the wiki articles over into the silo and 301 the old url.

 

[Kamillus]

very nice!
thank you

about "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. "
https://wordpress.org/plugins/list-category-posts/

 

[rioyee]

From my understanding, you have listed L1's articles in L1 page with using a post categories plugin, and also have links to L2 and L3, but you aren't listed L2's articles and L3's articles in L1 page right? So L2's articles and L3's articles are listed in L2 and L3 page respectively. Is my understanding correct?

 

[ElCamino]

Thank you for the quick answere, Tom!

I have a few more questions on the topic of siloing:

1. Article distribution
Is there a preferred distribution of articles in a structure of silos and subsilos? Let's assume there are 50 articles in one topic which have to be distributed over L1 and several L2. Does it make a difference on how many articles are in L2 in comparison to the subsilos? Is it for example ok to have 30 articles in L1 and only around 5 articles in the L2s of this silo?

2. Menu vs. Submenu
Another one which bothers me is the navigation: at the moment I have it say "blog" in the top navigation and the links to the silos are in the dropdown menu under "blog". Is this fine or should the L1 silos all be displayed in the main menu?

3. Silos rank for keywords
I have several silos rank for Importamt keywords. You put such an emphasis on the point that they should not do this. But I dont quite get whats wrong with them ranking for my money keywords. Could you clarify that one for me?

4. Virtual vs. physical silo
You destinguish between virtual and physical silo. What is the really important thing: following the correct url structure or setting it all up in a way that articles are interlinking in the described way so that articles are child elements of silo pages? Or the combination of both?

 

[OpenTheBible]

What is better for the main page? Just the domain.com or let's say domain.com/rankings & domain.com/forum

A question, I changed a url of one of my old guides, once changed I checked - it was indexed instantly, something that never happened before. Why is that? Is it because I focused on silo for the url or is it because google recognised that it is my old content?

 

[TooCorny]

Have you ever tried replicating a niche site you have in many other languages with emds on the language they belong too?

Just get like a guy from it country to double check the replicated sites and see if they make sense?

Also anither question would be

Isnt it better to have ahuge akita inu covering all the stuff related to them than writing many articles about each thing?

If so how would you write on the page for akita inu and what would you do in the smaller articles.

There is a guy in my country (Spanish Speaking) who does what you say but in each broad silo page he writes a lot of content about it and the with what he calls cluster (Gallery images linking to subsilos) he adds them to the post naturally when he talks about each subspecies.

It is avesexoticas.org if you wanna take a look btw

 

[Dark Sky]

Also anither question would be

Isnt it better to have ahuge akita inu covering all the stuff related to them than writing many articles about each thing?

If so how would you write on the page for akita inu and what would you do in the smaller articles.

There is a guy in my country (Spanish Speaking) who does what you say but in each broad silo page he writes a lot of content about it and the with what he calls cluster (Gallery images linking to subsilos) he adds them to the post naturally when he talks about each subspecies.

It is avesexoticas.org if you wanna take a look btw

No, the point of the silo is to establish a topical relevance in a broad topic. Focusing on an L3 would be pointless in terms of profiting. Maybe you'll rank better for just Akita stuff, but it would not be as profitable, which would not make sense as an affiliate.

You want to grab as many keywords as possible from google, so you want google to consider you an expert on a broad topic to give you a broad range of possible keywords to rank for.

 

[ranga]

One more doubt.

The linkbuilding will mostly be concentrated on the MoneyPosts but these are not linking to other posts, so how is link juice flowing to other moneyposts.

 

[splishsplash]

From my understanding, you have listed L1's articles in L1 page with using a post categories plugin, and also have links to L2 and L3, but you aren't listed L2's articles and L3's articles in L1 page right? So L2's articles and L3's articles are listed in L2 and L3 page respectively. Is my understanding correct?

No, L1 will list L1, L2 and L3 articles.

Thank you for the quick answere, Tom!

I have a few more questions on the topic of siloing:

1. Article distribution
Is there a preferred distribution of articles in a structure of silos and subsilos? Let's assume there are 50 articles in one topic which have to be distributed over L1 and several L2. Does it make a difference on how many articles are in L2 in comparison to the subsilos? Is it for example ok to have 30 articles in L1 and only around 5 articles in the L2s of this silo?

2. Menu vs. Submenu
Another one which bothers me is the navigation: at the moment I have it say "blog" in the top navigation and the links to the silos are in the dropdown menu under "blog". Is this fine or should the L1 silos all be displayed in the main menu?

3. Silos rank for keywords
I have several silos rank for Importamt keywords. You put such an emphasis on the point that they should not do this. But I dont quite get whats wrong with them ranking for my money keywords. Could you clarify that one for me?

4. Virtual vs. physical silo
You destinguish between virtual and physical silo. What is the really important thing: following the correct url structure or setting it all up in a way that articles are interlinking in the described way so that articles are child elements of silo pages? Or the combination of both?

1. No. Don't over-think things. The more unique article ideas in each silo, the more topical relevance you build. There's no magic numbers.

2. No, you don't want any blog. Each L1 silo should be an item in the primary menu.

3. Your monitors silo shouldn't rank for "best monitors". It should rank for monitors. If it's ranking for review keywords, then google considers a page with a tiny amount of text and links to other articles a better fit than a 2000+ word 'best monitors 2019' article dedicated to the topic. That's not good..

4. Article interlinking isn't that important. The virtual silo means you're linking to the articles from the silo pages. Cat articles linked from cat silo. Physical is the url structure. Use both.

What is better for the main page? Just the domain.com or let's say domain.com/rankings & domain.com/forum

A main page. Those aren't main pages, they're sub pages.

A question, I changed a url of one of my old guides, once changed I checked - it was indexed instantly, something that never happened before. Why is that? Is it because I focused on silo for the url or is it because google recognised that it is my old content?

Because google crawl your site a lot and it's a 301, so they picked it up straight away.

Have you ever tried replicating a niche site you have in many other languages with emds on the language they belong too?

Just get like a guy from it country to double check the replicated sites and see if they make sense?

emds don't work well. Have a look and see how many emds are on page 1 in 2019. I also don't work with small sites, so emds are useless for me. I don't build sites less than a million words of content. It's easier to build a million word site, than it is 20 50k word sites. MUCH easier. But you have to know how to do proper site architecture and picking the right articles otherwise you'll end up with a thin content

Also anither question would be

Isnt it better to have ahuge akita inu covering all the stuff related to them than writing many articles about each thing?

If so how would you write on the page for akita inu and what would you do in the smaller articles.

There is a guy in my country (Spanish Speaking) who does what you say but in each broad silo page he writes a lot of content about it and the with what he calls cluster (Gallery images linking to subsilos) he adds them to the post naturally when he talks about each subspecies.

It is avesexoticas.org if you wanna take a look btw

Everything about akitas? Probably not. You don't want to segment too much, but having everything in 1 article isn't good for a user.

If I want to learn about "Akita Health Conditions" I don't want to scroll down a 10k word article with info on grooming, training and diet.

No, the point of the silo is to establish a topical relevance in a broad topic. Focusing on an L3 would be pointless in terms of profiting. Maybe you'll rank better for just Akita stuff, but it would not be as profitable, which would not make sense as an affiliate.

You want to grab as many keywords as possible from google, so you want google to consider you an expert on a broad topic to give you a broad range of possible keywords to rank for.

Yes, exactly. The point of the L3's is to increase topical relevance for L2's, which in turn increase for L1's, then everything in the L1 will rank easily and quickly.

One more doubt.

The linkbuilding will mostly be concentrated on the MoneyPosts but these are not linking to other posts, so how is link juice flowing to other moneyposts.

Why would you concentrate mostly on money posts? I link heavily to the homepage.

 

[rioyee]

Will L2 list L3 articles too?

 

[splishsplash]

Will L2 list L3 articles too?

Yes. L2 will list L2 and L3 articles and L3 will list L3 articles only.

 

[rioyee]

Thanks for the reply Tom. Can you shed some light on how to do ajax filter for blog posts like how it does in Ecommerce product filter?

 

[assaultclass]

What article length do you recommend?

 

[neo]

Excellent for the thread Tom.

Question:
Can you silo a site that has example.com/post-name/ as URL of the posts?

 

[adam11soccer]

Question about using h2 and h3 in articles. I see a lot of people suggesting to use headings with relevant kw topics. It seems like my pages actually rank better without sub headings because the content is focused on a single term.

What have you found works best for you when using headings? Thanks for taking the time.

 

[_Venom_]

Hello with the Wordpress categories this happens.

In the permalink section I entered this custom field: /% category% /% postname% /

Now I create the categories L1, L2, and L3 (article)

Now name namedomain.com/L1 the page exists

While name namedomain.com/L1/L2 tells me that the page does not exist, while there is the page namedomain.com/category/L1/L2

is it right to create SILO in this way?

 

[rokot]

Thanks for your guides, they're awesome
I have some question because I don't get it completely.

Let's say I have a website with sports equipment guides: sport.com
I creat such SILO for example:

• Gym (L1)
  • Barbells (L2)
    • Olympic (L3)
    • Curling (L3)
    • ..

• Martial Arts (L1)
  • Boxing (L2)
    • Gloves (L3)
    • Headgear (L3)
    • Shoes (L3)
    • ...

So I need to create Categories in Wordpress:

1. sport.com/gym
2. sport.com/gym/barbells
3. sport.com/gym/barbells/olypmic

Also I need the same Pages:

1. sport.com/gym
2. sport.com/gym/barbells
3. sport.com/gym/barbells/olypmic

When I add post ("best olympic barbells 2019", for example), should I add it in each Category "Gym -> Barbells -> Olympic" (physically put checkmarks on each category in admin panel) or just in one "Olympic"? ("Olympic" has parent category "Barbells")
And what URL my post should have:
sport.com/best-olympic-barbells/ or sport.com/gym/barbells/olypmic/best-olympic-barbells/

What URL structure I should put in "Settings -> Permalinks" in Wordpress: sport.com/%postname%/ or smth else?

Thank you in advance!

 

[ElCamino]

Hi Tom,

thank your for your clearifiyng answers!

I got a couple more questions:

Change of silo name/url
Let's assume I made a mistake in the naming of an L1 silo. I named it directly after a product rather than the general topic because the product is more or less a synonym of the topic. For example: the silo is called "pampers" and not "diapers". Would you change the name of the silo and automatically related with it the url of several articles which are already published in the silo? The reason for the planned change is the existens of an article which shall rank for "pampers" (to stay in the example). Now the silo and the article could cannibalize each other.

Sitelinks in the serps
I don't know if you are an expert on this topic too, but do or does anybody have experience with sitelinks? Is there a way to trigger certain headings of an article to become sitelinks in the serps? A table of contents (like wikipedia does) works wonders for sitelinks to show up in the first place. But how can I trigger specific headings?

 

[rokot]

One more question
Let's assume that I have such structure
L1 - Training
L2 - In the gym
L2 - At home
L3 - Exercises for arms

Should I make such structure or it's better to put body part higher in SILO structure like this:
L1 - Training
L2 - Arms
L3 - At home
L3 - In the gym

Thanks!

 

[topakins]

1) Why do you say we have to build all silo when planning the website? Why can't I add a L1 later?

For example, for:

AnimalHolo.com/Dogs
AnimalHolo.com/Cats
AnimalHolo.com/Birds

Can't I add later (after several months): AnimalHolo.com/Reptiles?

2) Talking about unique content and assuming I have a tech silo on my site, can I have articles like the following under the same silo:

Best Hoverboard in 2019
Best Hoverboard for kids
Best Hoverboard for Elderly People
Best Hoverboard under $100
Best Cheap Hoverboard in 2019

OR I should just create one big pillar article for all these topics?