[How-To] Guide to Building SEO Silos: Full Amazon Example

[splishsplash]

Thanks for sharing, have a better understanding now!! I would like to ask, if my pages do not have supporting articles, but I created another page with all articles. E.G. example.com/articles/best-shaver then link it to the shaver page.

Is this OK? Thanks

No, that's not siloing. You're linking from a best shaver section within an article section, to a best shaver section.

There's no reason to do that. Put your articles in example.com/best-shaver

 

[blackice6666]

Thanx for this great guide splishsplash!

I have been thinking for something quite a long time but never tested it and i thought maybe you have some more information if this method can work or not.

So lets say we have a site like the structure you pointed out for a big site. "mens luxury products" and you have this sub niches: "Shaving", "Luxury Soaps", "Luxury Clothes"

Do you think that you can benefit if you nofollow your internal links on the top menu:

1. Home Page -> All menu links are do follow.
2. All articles that fall under the Shaving sub-niche -> Shaving menu link is do follow, and all other top menu links are nofollow.
3. All articles under "Luxury Soap" -> Luxury Soaps is Do-Follow, all other menu links are no-follow.

I dont know if you get my idea, but somehow i think this might make sense because if you get a high related backlink on one article to the "Shaving" subniche it will pass its relevant link juice just to the "Shaving" sub-niche and not to the not related "Luxury Soaps" and "Luxury Clothes".

I might be terribly wrong here, but i just want to hear your opinion, or somebody else opinion if they ever tried this.

 

[splishsplash]

Thanx for this great guide splishsplash!

I have been thinking for something quite a long time but never tested it and i thought maybe you have some more information if this method can work or not.

So lets say we have a site like the structure you pointed out for a big site. "mens luxury products" and you have this sub niches: "Shaving", "Luxury Soaps", "Luxury Clothes"

Do you think that you can benefit if you nofollow your internal links on the top menu:

1. Home Page -> All menu links are do follow.
2. All articles that fall under the Shaving sub-niche -> Shaving menu link is do follow, and all other top menu links are nofollow.
3. All articles under "Luxury Soap" -> Luxury Soaps is Do-Follow, all other menu links are no-follow.

I dont know if you get my idea, but somehow i think this might make sense because if you get a high related backlink on one article to the "Shaving" subniche it will pass its relevant link juice just to the "Shaving" sub-niche and not to the not related "Luxury Soaps" and "Luxury Clothes".

I might be terribly wrong here, but i just want to hear your opinion, or somebody else opinion if they ever tried this.

That's an old technique called page rank sculpting and it hasn't worked for a long time, if it ever did work.

This is how nofollow works:


page1(10 points of link juice)

Page1->page2(5 points)
page1->page3(5 points)

(In reality it passes variable amount of PR/link juice, which is actually dependent on relevance. This is actually another reason why siloing is good because you pass more link juice between pages.)

Now, let's say you use a nofollow here and do this:

page1->page2(5 points)
page1->page3(0 points) You don't pass any extr...not updated, that's why I talk about PR here)

 

[blackice6666]

Thank you very much for the detailed explanation!

 

[thesmashge]

One of the nice finds i came across in this forum. Anybody can share how Siloing their site helped in better rankings?

 

[Nonamep]

That's a really well and detailed guide. Good Job slpishslpash.


What do you think about creating a website with multiple pillar articles and adding supporting articles for every pillar article.


Like this:

tombelfort.com - this will be the homepage where will be displayed 5 static pillar articles (for example).

first pillar article: tombelfort.com/best-electric-shavers-for-men
supporting articles:
tombelfort.com/best-electric-shavers-for-men/product-review1
tombelfort.com/best-electric-shavers-for-men/product-review2

second pillar article: tombelfort.com/best-electric-shavers-for-women
supporting articles:
tombelfort.com/best-electric-shavers-for-women/product-review1
tombelfort.com/best-electric-shavers-for-women/product-review2

third pillar article: tombelfort.com/electric-shavers-tips
supporting articles:
tombelfort.com/electric-shavers-tips/how-to-shave-hair
tombelfort.com/electric-shavers-tips/how-to-speed-your-shaving-process


Then we will have 3 pillar articles (with 3 silos) with the main keywords we want to aim and some supporting articles for each pillar article. In this way, we will build links only to the pillar articles.

Isn't better for the link juice passed to have more silos for every main keyword we aim like this structure?

In this way, the main keywords (pillar articles) will be very close to the fundation of site (the homepage)


What do you think about this?

 

[splishsplash]

That's a really well and detailed guide. Good Job slpishslpash.


What do you think about creating a website with multiple pillar articles and adding supporting articles for every pillar article.


Like this:

tombelfort.com - this will be the homepage where will be displayed 5 static pillar articles (for example).

first pillar article: tombelfort.com/best-electric-shavers-for-men
supporting articles:
tombelfort.com/best-electric-shavers-for-men/product-review1
tombelfort.com/best-electric-shavers-for-men/product-review2

second pillar article: tombelfort.com/best-electric-shavers-for-women
supporting articles:
tombelfort.com/best-electric-shavers-for-women/product-review1
tombelfort.com/best-electric-shavers-for-women/product-review2

third pillar article: tombelfort.com/electric-shavers-tips
supporting articles:
tombelfort.com/electric-shavers-tips/how-to-shave-hair
tombelfort.com/electric-shavers-tips/how-to-speed-your-shaving-process


Then we will have 3 pillar articles (with 3 silos) with the main keywords we want to aim and some supporting articles for each pillar article. In this way, we will build links only to the pillar articles.

Isn't better for the link juice passed to have more silos for every main keyword we aim like this structure?

In this way, the main keywords (pillar articles) will be very close to the fundation of site (the homepage)


What do you think about this?

That's not a good structure.

First of all, I know this is only an example, but remember, don't have spammy looking stuff in the url like "best-electric-shavers". That's fine for the title and/or h1, but for your urls keep it clean and topical, like "mens-shavers/blah" or "electric-shavers/blah"

Siloing is about topical relevance, not keyword relevance. Never create a silo for one keyword You shouldn't even create an article for one keyword let alone an entire silo.

A 3000 word "best electric shavers for 2016" type article will rank for 100's of keywords. 200-900 and that's without siloing.


You silo based on logical topics.

Animals

Dogs | Cats

Breeds, puppies | Breeds, Kittens

German Shepherd, Border Colie | Training Your Puppy, Teaching Your Puppy Tricks || Siamese, Burmese | Litter Training Your Cute Kitty | Why Kitties Are Better Than Puppies --


So you'll have

animalsite.com/dogs/breeds/german-shepherd/some-article

animalsite.com/cats/kittens/litter-training-your-cute-kitty

That looks nice. It's logical. It's easy to navigate and it builds topical relevance in sub-areas, which each build up relevance in the parent area.

You would not do this :

Animals

Best Way to Train Dogs | Best Way to Train Kittens

Supporting dog articles | supporting cat articles


That's awful and it'll look like

animalsite.com/best-way-to-train-dogs/

animalsite.com/best-way-to-train-dogs/teaching-your-puppy-tricks

You aren't building any topical relevance anywhere like that.

'best shavers for women' is not a topic. At best you're building topical relevance as a review site.

You're sort of building topical relevance for womens shavers, but, when you have another silo side by side with electric-shaver-tips you just end up with a big mix of topics and repeated content. Google doesn't like repeated content. It will only choose one page on your site for groups of keywords.

You wouldn't try to rank site.com/best-electric-shavers" and "site.com/shavers-for-men", which is almost what you're doing. I wouldn't even have a page for womens shavers the way you've done it.

In this example best electric shavers for women only has 600 searches a month, so either putting it in your main best shavers article, or just creating a "best electric shavers for women" article within the silo.

All your money pages don't have to be pillar pages.

But, let's say electric shavers for women is big, and gets 2000-3000 searches+ with lots of 500-1000 LSI's

You could do

electric shavers

womens | mens

site.com/electric-shavers/mens
site.com/electric-shavers/womens

with the actual pillar article title being "Best Electric Shaver for Men|Women"

The reason I don't like best in the url is because it makes your supporting articles look spammy

site.com/electric-shavers/best-for-men/how-to-clean-your-shaver

looks awful

site.com/electric-shavers/mens/how-to-clean-your-shaver

looks good.


So in summary.

DO NOT SILO KEYWORDS OR KEYWORD GROUPS!

Siloing is for TOPICS only.

 

[Nonamep]

And then what do you think about doing:

site.com/electric-shavers-mens
and
site.com/electric-shavers-womens

What do you think about doing like this without doing a special page for site.com/electric-shavers?

I want to say that will be easier to build links to
site.com/electric-shavers-mens and site.com/electric-shavers-womens + these pages will be more closer to the homepage.

What I want to say doing exactly what you said but without making a Pillar page for "electric shavers" in this way we will have 2 silos not only one.

If you would try to rank for the main pillar articles like you said you will build links to site.com/electric-shavers or to the site.com/electric-shavers-womens and site.com/electric-shavers-mens.

By the way, these keywords are just an example, I will aim higher volume keywords for every silos, so "electric-shavers-womens" and "electric-shaves-mens" it's just an example and let's say that these have a high monthly searches.

 

[splishsplash]

Well, that isn't siloing. If you feel it's a better approach than siloing then do it.

Being close to the homepage doesn't mean much unless you're only building links to the homepage.

I personally don't see how it's any more difficult to build links to site.com/electric-shavers/womens than it is site.com/electric-shavers-womens

And then what do you think about doing:

site.com/electric-shavers-mens
and
site.com/electric-shavers-womens

What do you think about doing like this without doing a special page for site.com/electric-shavers?

I want to say that will be easier to build links to
site.com/electric-shavers-mens and site.com/electric-shavers-womens + these pages will be more closer to the homepage.

What I want to say doing exactly what you said but without making a Pillar page for "electric shavers" in this way we will have 2 silos not only one.

If you would try to rank for the main pillar articles like you said you will build links to site.com/electric-shavers or to the site.com/electric-shavers-womens and site.com/electric-shavers-mens.

By the way, these keywords are just an example, I will aim higher volume keywords for every silos, so "electric-shavers-womens" and "electric-shaves-mens" it's just an example and let's say that these have a high monthly searches.

 

[Valkurm]

Your title can be "Best Electric Shavers for Men"

and your h1 can be "Electric Razor Reviews 2016"

On Wordpress, isn't the title automatically your H1 ?
Or do you modify the structure in order to have something like that :

Title (no h1)
blablabla intro
h1
content
h2
content
h3
some more content
h3
some more content
h3
some more content
h2
content
etc..

 

[splishsplash]

On Wordpress, isn't the title automatically your H1 ?
Or do you modify the structure in order to have something like that :

Title (no h1)
blablabla intro
h1
content
h2
content
h3
some more content
h3
some more content
h3
some more content
h2
content
etc..

See: http://tombelfort.com/electric-shavers/mens-electric-razors/braun/

title = "Braun Shaver Reviews"

H1 = "Braun Electric Shavers"


I generally don't do this for every page. I only do it for big articles where I'll have something like this

"Best Electric Shaver Reviews - Your Complete Razor Shopping Guide for 2016" as my H1. That's too long for a title.

But sometimes I'll have "Best Electric Shavers" as title and "Electric Razor Reviews" as h1. It's probably better tbh. I've not tested the impact of one vs the other. It'll make a good test actually to see.

 

[Jumbuck1976]

This is absolute gold and a great accompaniment to PHP Built and his guide to authority sites.

 

[Nonamep]

In your opinion and based on your experience/research what do you think:

an url structured like this: site.com/electric-shavers/mens/how-to-clean-your-shaver has a better impact in rankings than a url like this site.com/how-to-clean-your-shaver? We assume that every url from this example is interlinked in the same way and it's in a silo structure, the only difference is the URL format.


Thanks again

 

[T2tkid]

I highly recommend everyone to silo structure your sites.

I remember the first time I did it, I was amazed at how much my rankings went up. Its crazy.

This^
I remembered reading a lot and then I have the courage to actually put what I have been reading to practice. My new site was ranking within 1 month and All my websites are now SILO-ed.

 

[splishsplash]

In your opinion and based on your experience/research what do you think:

an url structured like this: site.com/electric-shavers/mens/how-to-clean-your-shaver has a better impact in rankings than a url like this site.com/how-to-clean-your-shaver? We assume that every url from this example is interlinked in the same way and it's in a silo structure, the only difference is the URL format.


Thanks again

It's not that the URL its self is what's ranking you. It's the silo structure.

I just like to keep my URLs looking clean. If you've got 3 levels of silos then your site is going to have 100-150+ articles and for a site that big I want to look clean and credible.

Multiple keywords in the URL *is* bad though.


What you're asking me is if you're still "siloing" but using a "flat url" structure

Well, you wouldn't want to do that. That's ugly.

There are 2 types of siloing. Virtual and physical. "physical" is with directories and virtual is with linking.

Google understands both. It most certainly will understand your site better with a logical structure like /electric-shavers/mens/how-to-clean-your-shaver. A structure like that is a super easy way to figure out what a site is about.

 

[MarkGum]

thank you so much

 

[kolomp]

Very big Thanks for this mate!
This is a very usefull stuff! Im working on silo sites myself but this gives me some new perspective too!

 

[JokerSEO]

Well said OP. I use something similar except for using categories instead of pages then using assigning each post to each category.

Thanks!

 

[Guilly]

That's greta mate. I'l' try to use it on my site
Thanks for Sharing

 

[wblteam]

Thanks for excellent contribution. It will help immensely.