Best Platform For A Silo Based Authority Site

[mannygut]

Whats the best platform to build my silo site on? Wordpress just leaks to much, would Joomla or drupal work?

 

[IceHD]

Custom made php script that is made for silo.
All other will leak out. In 3 hours I did a small one that suits its purpose for a test.

 

[mannygut]

Any tips on where to start coding the php script?

 

[Schvamp]

I've never worked with Joomla or Drupal. But I don't see why wordpress wouldn't be able to do this for you.
WP is an open source CMS and has nothing to do with your "leak". If anything, blame the theme creator of the theme you're using.
Custom themes are the best, no matter what niche you're in.

 

[mannygut]

I've never worked with Joomla or Drupal. But I don't see why wordpress wouldn't be able to do this for you.
WP is an open source CMS and has nothing to do with your "leak". If anything, blame the theme creator of the theme you're using.
Custom themes are the best, no matter what niche you're in.

I mean leak as in the page rank juice leaks out by external links wordpress might have. Thanks for the reply

 

[W1tty]

Joomla sometimes even better suited than wordpress. Very simple and popular.

 

[SEO Power]

I mean leak as in the page rank juice leaks out by external links wordpress might have. Thanks for the reply

Go with WordPress notwithstanding. Link juice doesn't leak out through any external links on WordPress because WordPress doesn't have any unless you add the links yourself.

The only external links you might find on new WordPress installations are links in the meta widget and in the footer of your theme and those links can be removed.

So, +1 for WordPress.

 

[theacewriter]

Hi,

I am using wordpress only.

Thanks.

 

[grax1]

Wordpress is just fine for learning, if you are beginner it's better to go with WP than don't try at all because you wouldn't be able to develop custom cms yourself.

 

[splishsplash]

Go with WordPress notwithstanding. Link juice doesn't leak out through any external links on WordPress because WordPress doesn't have any unless you add the links yourself.

The only external links you might find on new WordPress installations are links in the meta widget and in the footer of your theme and those links can be removed.

So, +1 for WordPress.

That has nothing to do with silos. It's extremely difficult to create a real silo and there are no public wordpress plugins that allow you to create one.

I know of almost no one who actually understands seo siloing. Most people think they do, but they don't. Study bruce clay's siloing guide.

 

[splishsplash]

Go with WordPress notwithstanding. Link juice doesn't leak out through any external links on WordPress because WordPress doesn't have any unless you add the links yourself.

The only external links you might find on new WordPress installations are links in the meta widget and in the footer of your theme and those links can be removed.

So, +1 for WordPress.

Siloing has nothing to do with conserving page rank. That's called page rank sculpting and it's an outdated technique.

Siloing is about creating super strong pockets of relevancy on your site that blow your competitors out the water. It's the ultimate on-page tactic. It super charges your on-page seo and on-page seo is relevancy. SEO is about 2 things. On-page(Relevancy) and off-page(link juice). Off-page also includes relevancy though. The anchor text of the link, the content surrounding the link, the overall content of the page the link is on, and then to a lesser extent the overall content of the web site.

 

[cashmoney404]

That has nothing to do with silos. It's extremely difficult to create a real silo and there are no public wordpress plugins that allow you to create one.

Difficult how? Whats leaking juice? Use pages instead of posts, that takes care of 90% of your issues. Then you can use widget logic plugin to show/hide relevant or non relevant links.

 

[splishsplash]

Difficult how? Whats leaking juice? Use pages instead of posts, that takes care of 90% of your issues. Then you can use widget logic plugin to show/hide relevant or non relevant links.

You don't understand what an seo silo is if you think all you have to do is use pages instead of posts.

If you have an animal site about cats, dogs and hamsters, and within each of those categories you have 5 articles about 5 types of cats, 5 types of dogs and 5 types of hamsters then when you're on a hamster article you don't want ANY links to anything except other hamster articles or your hamster category page. You don't even want a link to the homepage.

homepage links to cat/dog/hamster category pages. cat page links to cat articles and home page, and cat articles link to other cat articles and cat category page.

That's an seo silo and creating pages instead of posts doesn't help you achieve this.

You also have the fundamental user interface problem. How do you maintain the integrity of your themes, keeping all relevancy tight, while at the same time allowing your users to fully and easily navigate your site.

I know how to do it, but it's not something I'm going to share openly since it's too lucrative, and besides, it's very hard to implement technically. You need fairly sophisticated technical abilities.

 

[natsirtdm]

you can make any platform work, it just requires customization. pick the cms you are most familiar with.

 

[Total Noob]

I disagree with splishnsplash. Creating a silo is relatively easy, but you can't do it right from the dashboard. You're going to have to customize your theme by editing the raw PHP files.

Homepage links to each category. Each category has a couple of posts related to the category.

Posts in each category link to the other posts in that category, the category page, and the home page.

Posts do not link to posts in other categories. Posts do not link to other category pages. Categories do not link to other categories.

The end result is hubs of relevant information linking to each other, their parent category page, and the homepage. If you interlink within categories, then it's completely useless.

If you do it correctly, search engines will be able to easily tell which part of your website is about what. And all of your sites will pass around relevant juice... all of the silos will boost the index, which will pass down relevant juice to each category. The categories aren't related to each other, but the homepage is related to each category.

Let's take the animal example...

Homepage: animals

Categories: cats, dogs, and hamsters

Each category has 5 posts within it - dog training, dog food, dog breeds, etc. The page about "dogs" is just a general page with info about dogs.

Dogs do not link to cats in any way. Cats do not link to hamsters, etc.

HOWEVER. They ALL link to the homepage, because each post and category page is relevant to "animals". The homepage takes that juice, makes it relevant, and passes it down to the other categories. The other, completely irrelevant categories are now receiving relevant link juice because it's been cleaned up by the index.

The tough part is making sure that there is no duplicate content anywhere. Make sure you use custom excerpts if you're displaying them anywhere.

You basically can't use any WP plugins to display other posts in the category because I don't know of a single one that does this effectively. You CAN make your own "plugin" out of PHP in the sidebar to display other posts in the category on the sidebar and the category page that the post is on. Another option is interlinking within the article... this is the safest bet. Automatically inserting other posts from the category is asking for trouble. Also overoptimization and too many exact match anchors and all of that.

I haven't made a silo in quite a while, so I'm not sure if there are out-of-the-box solutions. Something tells me that there still isn't. Half of the battle is setting up a silo... it'll take you forever on your first one. There's a lot of maintenance that you need to do, particularly with interlinking the posts in the same category as you add new ones.

Oh, one more thing. You can't use many of the standard WP layouts. Each post can ONLY link to the other posts in the category, the category, and the index. Each category can ONLY link to the index and other posts in the category. This is where customizing the theme comes from.

You know what... now that I type this all out, I guess making a silo is pretty complicated. I actually agree with splishnsplash, but I have never typed this out. I'm not even sure if they're still effective. But the moral of the story is that YES, YOU CAN MAKE WORDPRESS INTO A SILO, you just have to know how to do it. (WordPress doesn't "leak" anything unless you CONFIGURE IT TO LEAK SOMETHING.)

Good luck!

Jared

 

[splishsplash]

And here's an example of one of the few people who does know what a real silo is.

I disagree with splishnsplash. Creating a silo is relatively easy, but you can't do it right from the dashboard. You're going to have to customize your theme by editing the raw PHP files.

Homepage links to each category. Each category has a couple of posts related to the category.

Posts in each category link to the other posts in that category, the category page, and the home page.

Posts do not link to posts in other categories. Posts do not link to other category pages. Categories do not link to other categories.

The end result is hubs of relevant information linking to each other, their parent category page, and the homepage. If you interlink within categories, then it's completely useless.

If you do it correctly, search engines will be able to easily tell which part of your website is about what. And all of your sites will pass around relevant juice... all of the silos will boost the index, which will pass down relevant juice to each category. The categories aren't related to each other, but the homepage is related to each category.

Let's take the animal example...

Homepage: animals

Categories: cats, dogs, and hamsters

Each category has 5 posts within it - dog training, dog food, dog breeds, etc. The page about "dogs" is just a general page with info about dogs.

Dogs do not link to cats in any way. Cats do not link to hamsters, etc.

HOWEVER. They ALL link to the homepage, because each post and category page is relevant to "animals". The homepage takes that juice, makes it relevant, and passes it down to the other categories. The other, completely irrelevant categories are now receiving relevant link juice because it's been cleaned up by the index.

The tough part is making sure that there is no duplicate content anywhere. Make sure you use custom excerpts if you're displaying them anywhere.

You basically can't use any WP plugins to display other posts in the category because I don't know of a single one that does this effectively. You CAN make your own "plugin" out of PHP in the sidebar to display other posts in the category on the sidebar and the category page that the post is on. Another option is interlinking within the article... this is the safest bet. Automatically inserting other posts from the category is asking for trouble. Also overoptimization and too many exact match anchors and all of that.

I haven't made a silo in quite a while, so I'm not sure if there are out-of-the-box solutions. Something tells me that there still isn't. Half of the battle is setting up a silo... it'll take you forever on your first one. There's a lot of maintenance that you need to do, particularly with interlinking the posts in the same category as you add new ones.

Oh, one more thing. You can't use many of the standard WP layouts. Each post can ONLY link to the other posts in the category, the category, and the index. Each category can ONLY link to the index and other posts in the category. This is where customizing the theme comes from.

You know what... now that I type this all out, I guess making a silo is pretty complicated. I actually agree with splishnsplash, but I have never typed this out. I'm not even sure if they're still effective. But the moral of the story is that YES, YOU CAN MAKE WORDPRESS INTO A SILO, you just have to know how to do it. (WordPress doesn't "leak" anything unless you CONFIGURE IT TO LEAK SOMETHING.)

Good luck!

Jared

 

[creditandgolfse]

Building a simple php silo script isn't hard to do for a good programmer that can visualize the workflow.. I did one in a couple hours.. Problem is for those that aren't technical, editing and adding content won't be easy.. I have one php file running my multi paged silo sites with friendly url's and use them for my pbn sites.. Super easy to theme for me.. But I work in code and write custom html easily

Have also did one in Wordpress.. But yes Wordpress requires a theme/plugin to not introduce any leaks like author links, archive links, etc.. Keeping the minimal linking structure as mentioned by Jared above.. Wordpress in nature isn't the problem.. It's the themes introducing leaks .. And people wanting to add plugins like related posts that break the silo feature

a partner and I have created a Wordpress plugin that does three level deep siloing, and the choice of three themes.. It PROVES Wordpress can silo..

Really any cms can silo given the time.. But if you want to take a themeforest theme and make it silo easily in Wordpress then forget it... Those themes leak links like crazy and have so many widgets that break the silo unless you Ajax in content or Iframe content so it's not technically part of the page's source code.. But visually looks like it is part of the page.. But that's more custom work and hacking it into the Wordpress theme by editing the php code

 

[splishsplash]

Building a simple php silo script isn't hard to do for a good programmer that can visualize the workflow.

And running a marathon in under 3 hours isn't hard to do..

for an elite marathon runner.

lol.

Wordpress in nature isn't the problem.. It's the themes introducing leak

I don't think you understand what silos are. Wordpress in nature is entirely the problem. Do you understand that on the cats category page, you can't display a link to the dogs category page? Wordpress by default is going to display the full menu on every page.

As I said, many many people think they understand siloing, but very few do.

 

[umerjutt00]

Why you said it is not possible with wordpress? I have created many silo sites on wordpress and I don't see any problem in it.

 

[IceHD]

The biggest problem with wordpress is that it will link to all the pages from the menu, for index is great, but for a category not really. You can change that using iFrames, or doing some PHP tweaks, but you will have to do it each time Wordpress posts an update.

I know that there were a few plugins that did a somehow perfect silo, but the template needed extra work and not all of them would achieve it.

You can do it with Wordpress, but the initial time that it will take and maintenance time, for me it's not worth it considering the fact that a PHP script can be left alone and replicated for a long time (considering the fact that you set up security for your "admin panel").