What I Do When Building a Web Site Using a Silo Structure For Long Term Rankings

[BassTrackerBoats]

just wondering how to add content to category page - the least technical way possible. there are a few plugins, most of which havent been updated for years. and ive found one recently updated but doesnt have a lot of installs or reviews. Ill test it. but was just wondering if theres something im missing.

I do not think there is a legitimate plug in out there as I have looked myself for something so either Shezboy and Haspel have a project they can work on or you need to mess with your php in your files.

Many themes support content though using this section:

 

[GroundUp]

Just to follow up for anyone else. There is a plugin called categorytinymce which shows a wysiwyg editor for the category description. It also allows to input short code here. So you can really do cool stuff. This is doing the job for me.

 

[Signal512]

Fantastic guide BTB. Thanks for putting this out here. I have a site that is in need of restructuring in my opinion before I do much more. Would you mind if I tossed you an email with a couple of questions I have?

 

[methodman90]

I do only go 3 deep as much more than that causes an issue with the search engine bots from what I have experienced.

Maybe I did not explain myself enough. Because you said before that you also do sub categories with larger sites.
IF I mean that the Homepage is the first level, Category is the second, sub-category is the third, posts are the fourth, it's 4 level deep. Right? I repeat, considering the homepage is the first level and posts fourth.

How you go about that?

Also, I really don't understand the difference between power page and anchor page. Both seems to be used for floating topics or to reinforce them. Also, are they just posts or are different like the category page?

 

[plouder]

This is a good guide, exactly what I have been looking for. Just bookmarked it. Will come back with questions if any. Thanks.

 

[welly_59]

Could someone please explain to me how I put content into my category pages?

I have homepage as a static page with an article on. Then I have created categories and posted articles in those categories. Excerpts from my articles are showing up on the category page but I have no idea how to put content there which is not from the articles

 

[BassTrackerBoats]

IF I mean that the Homepage is the first level, Category is the second, sub-category is the third, posts are the fourth, it's 4 level deep. Right? I repeat, considering the homepage is the first level and posts fourth.

How you go about that?

That would be four levels deep but your interlinking, sidebars and menu bars does not make it a 4 step to get to the posts.

Also, I really don't understand the difference between power page and anchor page. Both seems to be used for floating topics or to reinforce them. Also, are they just posts or are different like the category page?

The benefits of both pages are to be giving the category page more power from them linking to it.

The terms power and anchor are not so much based on how they function but more to when I add them to the silo sites as the power is built early in the game and is backlinked early and anchor is a later addition. They are a little different in terms of keyword aggression though, as explained earlier, and I like to make that distinction when I build them.

I had to name them something so that my crew knows what I was talking about when we are putting sites s together and the way they are set up in the process those terms made sense to me.

Adding the anchor page at the end with the aggressive KWs in there does a wonderful job as a finishing touch to a category in terms of some nice juice.

Of course, you backlink all of those pages as you would any other page on your site.

Could someone please explain to me how I put content into my category pages?

I have homepage as a static page with an article on. Then I have created categories and posted articles in those categories. Excerpts from my articles are showing up on the category page but I have no idea how to put content there which is not from the articles

Here is an image of where you add category content in WP.

The added content does not show in every theme though so you either have to do a little php magic or add in a plugin. Above, someone share the plugin categorytinymice is helpful but that is not supported with every theme either as I have tried that in the past.

 

[manolo12399]

so for a big site with many articles, would be root page>category>sub-category>power-page>post, category and subcategory link also to the power page and post?

thanks

 

[Gambel]

When I setup powerpages and set categoryposts as their child I cant seem to get to the parent page itself. It automatically opens up the categorypost. I believe I saw an image of how you set it up like that and on the categorypost(pages) There is a block of the description and under summary of posts. Am I on the right track?

And do you remove the "categories archives" on the top of categorie pages? I have looked up several ways to remove it but want to know how you fix it. The same for category description is not showing rich text and is just a wall of text? Lastly your take on Parent theme vs Child theme.

I got the wordpress basics down to setup a site and learned php basics. Just enough so I can setup sites. But as you can see Im running into obstacles. I decided to do everything manually and not opt for outsourcing at this stage, so I can learn the whole process A to Z and combat difficulties. Thinking it will benefit me long-term.

Its a lot of questions but Im very eager to learn and Im sure many other are too and will benefit from these. The amount of gratitude put into words is not enough but here goes one more

Thank you for all the value you provide.

 

[BrokeJoke]

Hey BTB!

Thank you so much for you amazing post. My mind has been absolutely blown and the deep I dig the more intrigued I am with silos. There is on thing I am having trouble wrapping my head around. If you have a site that necessitates sub-categories, do you make a "Power Page" for each sub-category? If so, how do the sub-categories and their associated "sub-power pages" connect to the main category and power pages? Do you include subcategories in the main navigation menu?

Would it work like this?


Also, how do you deal with leaks? With all these categories and sub categories I could easily see there be a lot of interlinking automatically occurring between distinct silos simply because of the structure word press uses.

You are the man. Seriously. I am going back through all of your posts and to say the insight you provide is valuable is a HUGE understatement. People like you are what makes the affiliate dream seem achievable to guys like me.

Thank you again

 

[iBrazilian]

Gred, I've got a question..

In my site I've two categories..

vegan recipes and store

In vegan recipes I will write recipes of course and sometimes I will need to direct an user to an item from the store that is another category so that they can buy it.

Now, will that break my silo structure or is there anyway I can bypass that since you shouldn't interlink posts between categories? If I include the rel="nofollow" in the link, will that save me silo effect?

Thank you for your time.

 

[blackice6666]

Hey BTB!

Thank you so much for you amazing post. My mind has been absolutely blown and the deep I dig the more intrigued I am with silos. There is on thing I am having trouble wrapping my head around. If you have a site that necessitates sub-categories, do you make a "Power Page" for each sub-category? If so, how do the sub-categories and their associated "sub-power pages" connect to the main category and power pages? Do you include subcategories in the main navigation menu?

Would it work like this?
View attachment 67334

Also, how do you deal with leaks? With all these categories and sub categories I could easily see there be a lot of interlinking automatically occurring between distinct silos simply because of the structure word press uses.

You are the man. Seriously. I am going back through all of your posts and to say the insight you provide is valuable is a HUGE understatement. People like you are what makes the affiliate dream seem achievable to guys like me.

Thank you again

I also have the same question.

 

[BassTrackerBoats]

There is on thing I am having trouble wrapping my head around. If you have a site that necessitates sub-categories, do you make a "Power Page" for each sub-category?

Yes I do.If so, how do the sub-categories and their associated "sub-power pages" connect to the main category and power pages? Do you include subcategories in the main navigation menu?

You want to do your best to not make the site look sloppy when you are building out and you still need it to be easily navigable by the bots so I typically use the menu bar for my categories and the related sub categories and the sidebar for the pages that are supporting them.

Also, how do you deal with leaks? With all these categories and sub categories I could easily see there be a lot of interlinking automatically occurring between distinct silos simply because of the structure word press uses.

Some interlinking with subcategories is not bad as they relate. Think of this like the old linkwheel that Lemonarian devised way back in the day and I revised once link wheels were "caught" by Google and came up with the Linkpushing process.

A massive link wheel type structure on a site is a normal thing and each post/page that relates to the others is a good thing. Using unrelated pages and posts may work as well but long term I see that as a fail as I believe that at some point it will be see as gaming the system as opposed to good on site.

You want related posts/pages to interlink with other posts and pages for this to be effective long term so bear that in mind as you are building out.

In my site I've two categories..

vegan recipes and store

In vegan recipes I will write recipes of course and sometimes I will need to direct an user to an item from the store that is another category so that they can buy it.

Now, will that break my silo structure or is there anyway I can bypass that since you shouldn't interlink posts between categories? If I include the rel="nofollow" in the link, will that save me silo effect?

I would probably no follow those but, that is a guess, as I have not built an ecommerce site using this structure as you are describing. My ecommerce sites are set up so that if they are buying the product it goes direct to CJ, Amazon, etc as opposed to another page on the site so I really do not have the experienced knowledge to answer that properly.

I really hate to be one of those guys that says, "Do things this way" when I only have theoretical knowledge on a subject and not experience knowledge. I think they do more harm than good as they are only building themselves up as opposed to giving someone something they have tested.

 

[naskootbg]

I made a simple HTML site with 180 pages with similar structure. Just interlinked the anchor pages in link wheel, because the niche allow this. It was very hard job, but week after I lunch it it was on page 2 for all products I advertise. It was 8 months ago. The bad news are that it never get ranked for the main niche keyword. I don not create any backlinks, because this is for test - just some social posts/shares.

 

[BassTrackerBoats]

I made a simple HTML site with 180 pages with similar structure. Just interlinked the anchor pages in link wheel, because the niche allow this. It was very hard job, but week after I lunch it it was on page 2 for all products I advertise. It was 8 months ago. The bad news are that it never get ranked for the main niche keyword. I don not create any backlinks, because this is for test - just some social posts/shares.

Nice test, Naskootbg... why don't you try the same thing but with backlinks too and see what happens?

I'd be interested, as well as others I am sure, to hear of the outcome.

 

[harrydino]

Just incase anyone here can help, i have been looking for a way to eliminate the 'category' in my permalink structure...rather than have a category+category name i want to modify it to show only category name..
already used /%category%/%postname%/

 

[tzampas]

Hey basstrackersboats

I just started a new site on a generic niche (the domain is something like car.tips) and I will be using the siloing technique.
My sites up to now where the review-type, this one will be monetized via adsense and amazon links. So I have a few questions if you don't mind

1) Are you using a specific adsense plug in or you manually insert adsense in each post?
2) Can you suggest me or pm 1-2 of your favorite themes
3) Are you using the default post editor for writing those 2-3 k walls of text or a plug in?

Thanks and I also wanted to say I love you. I have made quite a tons of money thanks to that classic google alerts post.

 

[lmaestro]

How the heck did you put your Power "Page" in a Category?? (If im interpreting your silo diagram correctly that is)
I thought only Posts can be put inside a Category

 

[frankwyatt77777]

Have to run so got the pdf, version of this post:

 

[lmaestro]

How the heck did you put your Power "Page" in a Category?? (If im interpreting your silo diagram correctly that is)
I thought only Posts can be put inside a Category

Anyone can clarify?