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

[Aizik]

Looking to create location pages for rehab facilities (to rank our GMB).

Should it be:

/locations/state/county/city

or

/locations/city

I might be overthinking this...

 

[ranga]

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.

It wasn't a very old or high traffic site, but a newish site, just wanted to get on page done before I started promoting.

I agree that 1 week is not a good enough time to get the effect and it takes some time to Google to readjust to the changed permalinks, but after looking at the drop I decided to restore earlier backup, just to be safe.

I would have sent you the site link, but its now reverted to earlier structure and is back to the same impression which it was before I changed. So there is no benefit in you having a look at the site now.

 

[Mark Watson]

Hey Tom, one more question. How would you approach with Silo audit for any site? What would be a checklist to determine whether it is needed and why?

 

[Dark Sky]

Aye creating a checklist with everything including h2, would be good.

 

[Epicster]

I have a website in gaming niche, 8.6k Organic keywords and doing good. DR 30.

How should i follow the backlinks process now.

I have started buying guest posts for now. Should i look into building my own PBN or go for more authoritative links?

 

[fullwall3t]

I have a question, if I finally understand properly your silo structure.
In this thread: https://www.blackhatworld.com/seo/this-2-year-old-affiliate-site-is-making-so-much-money-through-amazon.1161297/
Everyone is talking about how good silo structure this website has. ( bestofmachinery.com/ )
But from what you have posted here I am not sure that this is the proper way to do this.

Thanks for the reply in advance. I beleive this will help a lot more members here to grasp the concept of proper silo.

 

[topakins]

I deleted permalink customized to fix the issue. I can only assume it was conflicting with another permalink plugin or something integrated onto the theme to deal with permalinks. Try deleting it and reloading the post.

I'm stuck here and I've tried so many things but I can have the desired url structure. If you delete the Permalink Customizer plugin, how did you get the url structure in A1?

 

[splishsplash]

I'm stuck here and I've tried so many things but I can have the desired url structure. If you delete the Permalink Customizer plugin, how did you get the url structure in A1?

I don't know why people are having trouble with this. I've never had any difficulties. It works.

Make sure you are editing the right thing. It's "Current URI" under "Permalink Manager".

 

[topakins]

I don't know why people are having trouble with this. I've never had any difficulties. It works.

Make sure you are editing the right thing. It's "Current URI" under "Permalink Manager".

Thank you. I appreciate your sparing time out of your busy schedule to pop in here to attend to these 'small' issues

 

[1Enigma]

I have my pages on my topbar set to show my related posts. I use a shortcode and categories to do this. Should I still post the post links below the shortcode?

 

[topakins]

I don't know why people are having trouble with this. I've never had any difficulties. It works.

Make sure you are editing the right thing. It's "Current URI" under "Permalink Manager".

This is my wp new post page, permalink is not showing on the right side as it should:

edit: it was showing before but it just disappeared. I even had to re-install wordpress but it's not showing anymore.

edit: When you use Permalink Customizer, what do you set the default wp permalink manager to?

 

[Aizik]

This is my wp new post page, permalink is not showing on the right side as it should:

You can find it on the "add title" section after you add one.

 

[topakins]

You can find it on the "add title" section after you add one.

Thanks. I can see it now after adding the article. But the url is not showing under the silo. It's just mysite/post

 

[Aizik]

Thanks. I can see it now after adding the article. But the url is not showing under the silo. It's just mysite/post

Thats bc you need to put it under a parent page, or add a category plugin that Tom mentioned in his post.

 

[topakins]

Thats bc you need to put it under a parent page, or add a category plugin that Tom mentioned in his post.

Oh thanks. I've gone through the whole thread like 5 times. That means I still have more readings to do. I created this dummy wordpress site to test this out before implementing on my real site.

 

[splishsplash]

Oh thanks. I've gone through the whole thread like 5 times. That means I still have more readings to do. I created this dummy wordpress site to test this out before implementing on my real site.

Just pm me the url, wp admin and password, lol.

 

[splishsplash]

Use the plugin "Permalink Manager Lite". It seems to be less problematic.

 

[Dark Sky]

I don't know why people are having trouble with this. I've never had any difficulties. It works.

Make sure you are editing the right thing. It's "Current URI" under "Permalink Manager".

I had same issue mate, took me 30 mins to figure out. Its basically multiple permalink plugins conflicting eachover which breaks it. It's not obvious, but people are reading your guide, downloading the permalink customizer you use, and then it conflicts with one they had previously, and they do not realise it.

 

[Rains]

This is my wp new post page, permalink is not showing on the right side as it should:

edit: it was showing before but it just disappeared. I even had to re-install wordpress but it's not showing anymore.

edit: When you use Permalink Customizer, what do you set the default wp permalink manager to?

I had same issue mate, took me 30 mins to figure out. Its basically multiple permalink plugins conflicting eachover which breaks it. It's not obvious, but people are reading your guide, downloading the permalink customizer you use, and then it conflicts with one they had previously, and they do not realise it.

took me a whole day to do a trial error about this permalink customizer, and i cant edit the permalink in guttenberg (the permalink section is gray and i cant click it to edit the permalink) so i need to change to classic editor and its good.
btw can someone clarify what im doing is right or not. here is what i do :
- Change the setting->permalink to /%category%/%postname%/ (so i can show the /L1/L2/post , and set in seo plugin to not strip the /category/)
- Create L1 parent + L2 child category and create the page with the same word L1 parent / L2 child (the theme i used prioritize showing the category page when i access domain.com/L1/L2 not the page, so i also change the theme)
- write 100 word on L1 page and im using "list category post" plugin to display all post in L1 category, also give link to L2 in the bottom of page?
- write 100 word on L2 page and display all post in L2 category,should i link back to L1?
- interlink every post in the same category
is it good?

btw if i only create 2 level link silo is it good (domain.com/L1/L2/post)?
my niche is general so i dont want too deep about silo since i need more content if i go too deep, for example i only create /Technology/Laptop/ArticleisHere is it okay? is there a different about 2 level silo and 3 level silo?

Thx for the guide, i hope it will bring a positive result.

 

[shrug33]

Thanks for making this guide, really appreciate it.

Your ecommerce silo example that accommodates multiple products makes sense, but how would your strategy change with a site that only has one product category with two or three versions?

Let's say I only sell three laptops: MacBook, MacBook Pro, and MacBook Air. According to your strategy I would structure the site to:
mysite.com/laptops/macbook
mysite.com/laptops/macbook-pro
mysite.com/laptops/macbook-air

It's tempting to put most of the content inside the /laptops/ subfolder, but to me it would defeat the purpose of silo structure that you advocate. If the site only sells laptops, what other subfolders would you create? Would you place them in the root directory or in /laptops/?