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
Don't have a silo called guides. The latter.
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?
No, your categories are accessed internally only by the plugin that you use on the pages to list posts in that category. Your silos are pages you create, not wordpress category pages.
Are you a relative to Jordan Belfort (Wolf of Wall Street)?
All wolves are related.
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
Wait 1-2 weeks. Don't be in a hurry. Keep things natural. SEO is a slow game. Enjoy your daily work. Don't aim for super fast results.
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...
It takes a long time to get good at anything.
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
Social media has almost no role in ranking. < 5% influence on ranking.
One more question. I should place a post in multiple categoires (for L2, L3 silos), am I right?
your L1a/L2d/L3f/article-name should be in L1a L2d and L3f category.
It can also be in another L2/L3, like L2b, but try to avoid that unless it really makes sense.
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
I don't really like a silo named "performance test". Just laptops/dell is fine. You don't need to go silo-crazy.
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
You need to 301 redirect all your old pages to the new ones. Google 301 redirect wordpress
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
mysite.com/memes/animal
mysite.com/memes/wholesome
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.
$1k/mo is a fair budget.
I already asked this question in another thread but didn't get an answer to that yet. What is your opinion on that?
If your homepage is ranking and getting good traffic, then definitely don't remove content or move content around.
If i have a site with L1 = Animals Topic? What can be another L1 Topic?
As example, can i use Household for another L1?
Haha..
You're taking the example a bit too far. It's not that important. The answer isn't a technical one. It can be anything you want depending on your L0 silo(your site).
It probably wouldn't be household. That's a strange mix.
It could be insects, dinosaurs..
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
Pages for the silos, posts or pages for the child nodes.
I tested it on one of my sites, a newer site, but immediately after implementing my traffic went down and it kept going down, after a week I restored the site back from one of my earlier backup and the traffic has started going up again.
I am now saying this method is bad. I am just saying that either I did not implement it right (which I tried to do best and even buzzed the OP here multiple times to clear my doubts) or I waited too less or something went wrong due to implementation or Google was liking my earlier site structure.
All in all its been an experience and I learnt not to tinker with structure of a site which is increasing in traffic / impressions unless one hits a plateau.
Below is my ss of Webmaster Tools
First, you almost certainly did something, or several things wrong.
In general, 1 week isn't enough time, but that is a steep declining gradient.
However, I don't recommend changing the structure of a growing website unless you *really* know what you're doing. To be honest even I wouldn't do that. I would recommend some on-page changes like titles/h1's if I didn't like them, but not permalink changes.
A site that's declining or isn't growing is another matter.
If your site is growing then it is fine. Job done. It's like you're gaining muscle at the gym on your current plan. Why would you try another plan? Keep doing it until it stops growing.
If it's not broken don't fix it.
Out of personal curiosity, you're welcome to pm me the site and tell me the changes you made and I'll give you my opinion. I like to see cases that cause either positive or negative changes. It's the best way to increase knowledge.
Thanks for AMA.
I am new in blackhatword.
Can you tell me how to rank in google any post with in 30min ( Black hat SEO).
How to rank FORUM post just in 20min fo google 1 page?
Plz help me.
Why are you in such a rush?
Don't know if you answered this about eCommerce SEO:
- Does showing associated categories and tags for a product harm your SEO for the given product as it is stuffing the page?
- I'm thinking about deindexing some of the products that get 0 search traffic as I fear they are competing with each other and because of that none of them can go on page 1. Would that be advisable?
1. Nope, it doesn't.
2. Deindexing products doesn't sound like a healthy strategy. I would need to analyse your site closer to answer this though.
Hi Tom,
Absolutely helpful thread, so thanks for it.
I have a question regarding silo. If my site is travel niche related, would you recommend doing the siloing even tho there's been positive incline for the last 10 months of doing SEO?
Thanks in advance!
If it's on a positive incline, don't touch it. Keep doing what you're doing.
I'm planning to buy some PBN backlinks for my website.
If I buy service PBN link on BHW, I should choose services have less client?
because if services have many clients purchased. there will have a lot of outbound link and have no power,
Am I right?
Anything over 10 OBL isn't recommended in 2019+
I am in local niche and want to target keyword like "xxxxxx in city name"
So is the pbn network which is global can affect my site negatively?
Wouldnt google find it wierd to see a global site voting for small local niche business which serves only to city specific locals in INDIA
Thanks in advance.
No, global links aren't weird and won't hurt your site.
Hi Tom, thank you very much for the amazing learning resources here!
How do you apply siloing when locations and multiple categories come into the game?
Let's say you have ...
- POI-categories like
---- supermarkets
---- restaurants
---- ...
-- in different location levels like
---- country level,
---- state level
---- neighbourhood level
---- city level
1.) How about language folders, do they break the structure?
example.com/language/....
2.) How would you order the folders? location <> category or category <> location
example.com/language/location-levels/poi-categories
or
example.com/language/poi-categories/location-levels
3.) What about adding an intent? like delivery or onsite after the language folder?
4.) How to keep a flat site structure without bursting the silo structure?
like combining "city-district"
example.com/en/uk/greater-london-city-of-london/supermarkets
Sorry for the hypothetical examples, maybe they aren't the best.
5.) I know you mentioned that you don't offer services any more but can you recommend an expert for detailed questions?
Overthinking the detail questions again and again without experienced consultation doesn't bring me further.
It's nearly impossible to find a professional with lot's of experience in this kind of topic
6.) Can you also recommend existing pages with a good location url siloing structure?
Thanks in advance!
This is hard stuff. I would normally sit down and spend several days analysing the niche and talking to the client to come up with a solution to this. I can't answer it here in the thread because there isn't just 1 simple answer. Every case is different.
The best I can do is offer some guidelines. You have to silo based on what people are searching for. If the bulk of the searches are by location, then you silo by location. If they're by category, then silo by category. You can still have locations within the categories, or categories within the locations.
Me again.
Okay, I read the whole thread, some things became clear, others not much.
However, I'm anxious as I just started my second ecommerce site (I'm still a small dawg but got an idea).
How would you advise me:
1. My main categories are about 10 but they cover the whole niche. They all include the same keyword and a variation to it, if you get my thought. Don't think about the example I'm about to give you to illustrate what I mean - say my niche is cats, all the keywords are cat food, cat toys, cat shoes.
This thread is about information based websites and following your advice would be unadvisable to create the categories with repetitive terms - like cat-food, cat-toys, cat-shoes. However, all my competiors on page one are the same for all these terms but with the exact match url. So I guess with eCommerce this rule is invalid and I can go with mentioning the "main keyword" in all categories with products.
2. This leads to point two. My first eCommerce site is local and competition isn't very high. I'm ranking all product categories on page one or two. Should I still go with SEO focus with the new site?
3. Can I put tags in my menu for easier navigation? This wouldn't surely harm my SEO?
Thanks!
I'm not sure what you're asking when you say "should I still go with SEO focus for the new site?"
Don't put tags in the menu, no. That's messy. Core categories for your ecommerce site. Tags should only be used to filter down on the silo(product category) pages. Like site.com/home-appliances/washing-machines?price=under-100. You don't have "washing machines under $100" in your menu.. That would be super spammy
are you still taking on clients? I would be interested in a consultation...
Yeah, I take on clients for various projects depending on how busy I am at the time and what the work is. You're welcome to add me on skype: thomas.belfort.me to discuss your needs.
I have a site with over 130 posts, but there are in way to many different niches to create silo right know. But I have 2-3 topics for which I am thinking I would create page. Where I would write 500 words about that topic and linked out to all 5-10 articles in that niche and the link will be the same as title of that article.
And this page would have link in menu on homepage. Do you think it would give me some seo boost?
I would also like to redo this site on expired domain with proper silo. Do tou think it is ok to have in some niches only L1 and L2 and in some even l3? And do I understand it right that the money articles are child posts whoch are in last level, right?
No, don't link to 5-10 articles from a 500 word article with the same anchor text
1-2 internal links and 2-4 external links is what I'd expect from a 500 word article. You can get penguin'd from internal links you know.
Don't use expired domains. Use aged domains only. And stay away from anything under $500 for a money site. Ideally you want $1k+ for a money site otherwise it's just not worth it.
