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

[Mr. Grinder]

kindly tell me the secret sauce how to rank in 1 month

 

[nazhaRu]

First and foremost, Thank you for opening such a thread to help newbies answer their questions.
Actually, I do have one question and is about Silo structure.

I am linking each blog post with another one,
each blog post contains around 2-3 links to a related post.
And each blog post has a link to money page using natural anchors (keywords which I am trying to Rank the money page for (current ranking is #10)

The question is, is this a good Silo structure? should I reduce the number of internal linking within a blog post? what

Thank you so much!

 

[ptcidol]

expired domain still work? Do you wait before link out expired domain to moneysite?

 

[splishsplash]

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?

There's plenty of plugins. Just search wordpress plugins for it.

What article length do you recommend?

1000-1500 words for search vol 50-200

1500-5000+ for 200-1000+

I don't target many beyond 1000. Harder to rank and there's just so many 200-1000's. You can invest $30k and get a $20k-$30k/mo site targeting 200-1000 vol main keywords. No need for higher.

Excellent for the thread Tom.

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

Just change the url structure and 301 the old urls.

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.

You don't want pages focused on a single term. This is so incredibly dated. Google is NOT ranking pages based on terms, but rather searcher intent. Read up on TFIDF and you'll understand why I say this is so dated.

Your h2's and h3's shouldn't be keyword focused, but natural.

So your 'best toaster' article would have things like

Our Top 10 Picks

What we like about it

Buyers Guide

Some feature vs another feature

etc etc

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?

It's not the permalink section you need to edit.

I've written enough above about how to do it. I don't have time to repeat it all, sorry. I've written over 10k words on this already. Have you read everything 2-3x including the plugin documentation?

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!

Is this an ecommerce or review site? It looks like a review site, in which case, this is not how you silo a review site. You don't want to go that specific gym/barbells/olympic. You're only going to have a couple of review articles in here.

Gym/weights
Gym/Clothing
Martial Arts/boxing
Nutrition/muscle-building
Nutrition/weight-loss

etc

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?

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!

No body parts See above. Stick with actual topics.

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?

1. Yes you can add later. It's better to do it all at the start. If you're engineering something you don't decide to add something in later. You design it then implement it.

2. Yes, you can have those in a tech silo.

But, if you're going to have Best hoverboard for X, do NOT create a best hoverboard in 2019. Choose one or the other. And best cheap will compete with best under $100.

kindly tell me the secret sauce how to rank in 1 month

Google ads for search.

First and foremost, Thank you for opening such a thread to help newbies answer their questions.
Actually, I do have one question and is about Silo structure.

I am linking each blog post with another one,
each blog post contains around 2-3 links to a related post.
And each blog post has a link to money page using natural anchors (keywords which I am trying to Rank the money page for (current ranking is #10)

The question is, is this a good Silo structure? should I reduce the number of internal linking within a blog post? what

Thank you so much!

That's not a silo structure. See the 10k+ words I wrote above for details and https://www.blackhatworld.com/seo/the-ultimate-guide-to-seo-siloing-dominate-google-in-2018.985967/ and https://www.blackhatworld.com/seo/h...ilos-full-amazon-example.828483/#post-8726224

expired domain still work? Do you wait before link out expired domain to moneysite?

Yes, please see https://www.blackhatworld.com/seo/a...-expired-domains.1090579/page-3#post-12393265

 

[assaultclass]

1000-1500 words for search vol 50-200

1500-5000+ for 200-1000+

I don't target many beyond 1000. Harder to rank and there's just so many 200-1000's. You can invest $30k and get a $20k-$30k/mo site targeting 200-1000 vol main keywords. No need for higher.

Whoa, and yesterday I was wondering why I was writing 8,000 words for a 7K monthly search keyword thinking it was too much. Thanks.

 

[bArAsc]

let's say my silo structure looks like this:

• mysite.com/gaming/monitors/hp
• mysite.com/gaming/monitors/dell

where should I add guide articles for monitors? on:

• mysite.com/gaming/monitors/guides/best-monitors-2019
  
• mysite.com/gaming/monitors/guides/best-g-sync-monitors

or directly on

• mysite.com/gaming/monitors/best-monitors-2019
• mysite.com/gaming/monitors/best-g-sync-monitors

 

[BBQ Steve]

Hello,

Awesome post, i'm excited to give it a go!

My question is...

When you say this. - 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.

Can this process be re-created using a Custom Field, or event a Post Tag or is it important to have the posts tagged in Categories?

My point being, if I create a Category & Parent category for my posts, and then create pages that house those categories, in the same way, won't I then have a duplicate category url structure e.g. dog/breed/hound for my categories and a page URL structure that is the same?

 

[steroidjoe]

Are you a relative to Jordan Belfort (Wolf of Wall Street)?

 

[edmonleung]

Hi splishsplash,

For building 2 tiers link strategy, do I have to wait for the next day to build tier 2 links ? Can I build immediately after successfully created tier 1 link ?

Thank You

 

[rokot]

Is this an ecommerce or review site? It looks like a review site, in which case, this is not how you silo a review site. You don't want to go that specific gym/barbells/olympic. You're only going to have a couple of review articles in here.

Gym/weights
Gym/Clothing
Martial Arts/boxing
Nutrition/muscle-building
Nutrition/weight-loss

Thank you! And what about part with UR structure? I can't get it how my permalinks should look like...

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?

 

[roberto dumas]

This is GOLD... 24K...!
Thxs splishsplash.. But it seems to me the more I know the less I understand.. Turn out to be SO COMPLICATED without a VISUAL LAYOUT
BTW
Wake me up Before U Go-Go...

 

[CrazyBuddy]

Thanks for sharing awesome info.

Can you please let us know about role of social media in rankings.

Can an affiliate site rank without having decent social shares and social popularity

 

[rokot]

There's plenty of plugins. Just search wordpress plugins for it.

One more question. I should place a post in multiple categoires (for L2, L3 silos), am I right?

 

[TooCorny]

One more question. I should place a post in multiple categoires (for L2, L3 silos), am I right?

If you have /laptops/dell/
And then laptops/performance-test/Dell-v11

You can assign that article to Dell and Performance Test categories

If I am wrong please correct me @splishsplash

 

[kiver]

hello iam very happy about BHW opening such a thread
i have some kind of a problem
so about 7 month ago i started to build a website and i made a lot of articles and alot of links not backlinks

but i figured that the theme i was building was meant for i want to build

so i bought a whole a new script and deleted the whole website and replaced with te script i bought

and iam almost finish with the database and starting to build the daily articles and stuff etc...
for the day after tomorrow i hope...

i know i missed up big as iam still new to this
i tried to delete some broken and old links from google but still there a lot to go through

so my question is how to fix my problem with the search engines and delete the broken links and replace with the new website links is there a way out or its hopless and i lost everything ?!!
sorry for my long paragraph i tried to explain as much as i could so you can help me
and please if you need any more information go ahead and ask me and thanks in advance for your help

 

[Learning SEO]

my website

mysite.com/funny animal-memes/animal memes

mysite.com/funny animal-memes/wholesome memes

what to do with this please can some one guide me or i can share my website so they can guide me what to do with it

thank you

 

[lalgsw]

This is an incredible thread. Spent the last 30-45 minutes reading through. So much gold. Thanks!

I set up a site with a similar silo structure via your silo guide. The site has a lot of homepage links already, but planning on following your strategy of building to mostly homepage, and then to silos, and then to pages as this is a site I care a lot about with all branded and generic anchors as you've recommended.

You suggested having a budget for linkbuilding. If I want to spend to get 1 link a day for the 20-30 links per month you recommended, how would you go about doing it? How much money should I plan to spend per month? I can carve out $1k a month if needed. I want high quality, low risk links.

I've currently been doing my own guestpost outreach, sending 100-200 emails a month, getting 1-7 links depending on the results. It's a bit hard for me to scale this up well.

 

[liquidspirit]

I have a question about the Homepage. When I started my current project I was writing a long article and didn't touch it for a while. Then I decided to continue with this project and the website was already ranking for a few really good keywords. That's why I left the text there and didn't change it.

My website is growing pretty fast right now, but 1/4 of the monthly traffic comes through my website. I want to shorten the text to around 200-300 words by splitting the topic in different blog posts because I'm afraid to loose these rankings . One of them is a kw with 4000 estimated visitors and I rank there in 2nd place.

Do you think that's the right way to get rid of the long text on my homepage (3000 words) without loosing a crucial amount of traffic?

Thank you very much

I already asked this question in another thread but didn't get an answer to that yet. What is your opinion on that?

 

[con1337]

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

If i have a site with L1 = Animals Topic? What can be another L1 Topic?

As example, can i use Household for another L1?

 

[Huynh Huu Ai]

Do you think it is better for SILO to use pages in WP or change the post URL format for new websites. We will develop them in a strong model