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

[raiju]

Wow this is the best silo guide i've read! Amazing thank you! Here are my questions:
say i want to rank for the keyword: golf club. Just like your first website it's only about this and this is the only small niche i want to rank for.
Now i do reviews on certain golf clubs. Would the links look like this?

golfarena.com/golf-club/golfbrand/golfclubname

Now going to your post about one specific sub niche. If i silo out all the brands i would do this.

golfarena.com/golfbrand/golfclubname
golfarena.com/golfbrand/bestgolfclubinbrand <--- pillar supporting article
golfareana.com/golfbrand/comparisonchart

Which would you recommend first or second?

Now let's say i wanted to make the huge 3000 word article just for: best golf club.

How would you go about that? But i really appreciate the support. I've read through all your guides and they're super helpful!

 

[splishsplash]

Wow this is the best silo guide i've read! Amazing thank you! Here are my questions:
say i want to rank for the keyword: golf club. Just like your first website it's only about this and this is the only small niche i want to rank for.
Now i do reviews on certain golf clubs. Would the links look like this?

golfarena.com/golf-club/golfbrand/golfclubname

Now going to your post about one specific sub niche. If i silo out all the brands i would do this.

golfarena.com/golfbrand/golfclubname
golfarena.com/golfbrand/bestgolfclubinbrand <--- pillar supporting article
golfareana.com/golfbrand/comparisonchart

Which would you recommend first or second?

Now let's say i wanted to make the huge 3000 word article just for: best golf club.

How would you go about that? But i really appreciate the support. I've read through all your guides and they're super helpful!

Looks pretty good to me.

You can have a separate article for 'bestgolfclubinbrand' if it actually warrants a 1000+ page article, otherwise you'd have that on your golfbrand page. Remember silos pages aren't just category lists.

golfarena.com/golfbrand should be a 1000 word article talking about that brand, so it's generally an appropriate place to actually talk about the best one in the brand.

 

[Cshark]

Great post, OP. Bookmarked.

 

[raiju]

Just wanted to let you know that your missing one of your images in the post

It says:

I'm following your guide step by step so I could really use that part

 

[splishsplash]

Just wanted to let you know that your missing one of your images in the post

It says:

I'm following your guide step by step so I could really use that part

I can't edit now, but you can just visit http://i.imgur.com/Numj4eV.png to see the image

 

[raiju]

I can't edit now, but you can just visit http://i.imgur.com/Numj4eV.png to see the image

Yeah sorry I'm dumb i realized that haha
So just wondering. For your permalinks structure. In your settings -> permalinks. What do you have it set as? I don't know if it will make a difference since your manually editing them? Right now i just have it as post name.

Do i change it as custom structure? Does it matter? Thanks!

 

[GGonzalez]

That's quite indepth, thanked!

 

[raiju]

So i'm guessing there is no way we can do this with post huh? So basically we just make everything a page.

 

[zoewarrior]

hi SplishSplash

I visited tombeltfort.com and noticed there was no site title and tagline. Did you leave the Site Title and Tagline blank under General Settings?

 

[splishsplash]

Yeah sorry I'm dumb i realized that haha
So just wondering. For your permalinks structure. In your settings -> permalinks. What do you have it set as? I don't know if it will make a difference since your manually editing them? Right now i just have it as post name.

Do i change it as custom structure? Does it matter? Thanks!

Post name is fine for the default yep. And of course you are indeed manually editing them

hi SplishSplash

I visited tombeltfort.com and noticed there was no site title and tagline. Did you leave the Site Title and Tagline blank under General Settings?

It's only a rough example site so people can get the general idea. I'm assuming people can extrapolate

 

[Dioni]

Hey mate, nice share. I have a noob question, and maybe you mention it before but here I am asking it once again.
If I use leaked premium WordPress themes and plugins will that hurt my site?
Thanks for sharing this.

 

[nickcookies]

Awesome post again SplishSplash. My new site is even smaller than your small site, as my niche is a sub-niche of the sub-niche, something like "best blue nose hair trimmer".

My site got this kind of link structures:

MySite.com/reviews/philip-nose-hair-trimmer-model-999
MySite.com/blog/how-to-use-nose-trimmer
MySite.com/news/philip-3-new-nose-trimmer-release-sept-2016

Do u consider this is a silo site and this kind of structure good in seo? Thanks in advance for your suggestion.

 

[splishsplash]

Hey mate, nice share. I have a noob question, and maybe you mention it before but here I am asking it once again.
If I use leaked premium WordPress themes and plugins will that hurt my site?
Thanks for sharing this.

It won't hurt your site, nope, but I wouldn't recommend using pirate stuff for a site. There are plenty of good free themes, and even the premium ones aren't expensive. You don't need a fancy $200 high end CMS for a silo amazon site. Just something clean.

 

[splishsplash]

Awesome post again SplishSplash. My new site is even smaller than your small site, as my niche is a sub-niche of the sub-niche, something like "best blue nose hair trimmer".

My site got this kind of link structures:

MySite.com/reviews/philip-nose-hair-trimmer-model-999
MySite.com/blog/how-to-use-nose-trimmer
MySite.com/news/philip-3-new-nose-trimmer-release-sept-2016

Do u consider this is a silo site and this kind of structure good in seo? Thanks in advance for your suggestion.

For such a small site don't worry about it.

A silo should be minimum 10 pages(and/or sub-silos), preferably 20-25 pages per silo.


You don't build much relevance with 3-5 pages inside a silo.


If you've got say, 3 silos, each with 5 silos, each with 5 pages in them, that's a bit different, so your level 1 silo should have around 25 pages, or it should have 5 sub-silos each with 5 pages or so. The more the better, it's all about building up topical relevance. The more support articles you can put in there and interlink throughout the silo the better you'll do that.

 

[syntaxed]

Thanks for the share. I've read your whole post on this

1. If I am silo-ing my site, how do I add blog section later? Should the url be

mysite.com/best-keyword/blog or mysite.com/blog ?

2. Also, if my domain name already has keywords that I am targeting, is it okay to include it on the page url? example:

hellkitchen.com/kitchen-knife

3. Does the keyword arrangement affect the effectiveness of our on-page SEO? For example, I am targetting "Best Kitchen Knife" but the keyword on the title is set as "The Knife That Suits Your Kitchen Best"

4. I am targetting local audience for my website. The thing is, the keywords that I gathered are mix of english and non-english terms. How do you come around this? Can I insert the non-english keywords in an english article? Or is it even possible to write english article for english keywords and non-english article for the non-english keywords under one silo?

 

[bjobjo]

Thankyou for this. On a 'bricks and mortar' business website, where would you put the about/contact/t&c's pages, any specifics worth thinking about?

How do you feel about linking between all of the articles in a silo (i.e. all of the Braun articles linking to all of the other Braun articles).

 

[raiju]

Just one more question. This is related to pillar articles. How do you set the the url for a pillar article?

Say I'm doing one for best golf clubs. It's a massive 3k word article and my site revolves just around golf clubs. Can you actually silo this???

should i just do. .. golfarena.com/best-golf-clubs <--- This wouldn't be part of a silo.
or golfarena.com/golf-clubs/best-golf-club <--- tis mention it twice so i'm worried about penalty. Thanks!

 

[splishsplash]

Thanks for the share. I've read your whole post on this

1. If I am silo-ing my site, how do I add blog section later? Should the url be

mysite.com/best-keyword/blog or mysite.com/blog ?

2. Also, if my domain name already has keywords that I am targeting, is it okay to include it on the page url? example:

hellkitchen.com/kitchen-knife

3. Does the keyword arrangement affect the effectiveness of our on-page SEO? For example, I am targetting "Best Kitchen Knife" but the keyword on the title is set as "The Knife That Suits Your Kitchen Best"

4. I am targetting local audience for my website. The thing is, the keywords that I gathered are mix of english and non-english terms. How do you come around this? Can I insert the non-english keywords in an english article? Or is it even possible to write english article for english keywords and non-english article for the non-english keywords under one silo?

1. mysite.com/blog

2. In some cases. hellkitchen.com/kitchen-knives/ would be ok if you're listing multiple knives. Not "kitchen-knife" though. My criteria for the URL is just to make it look clean, logical and professional. If it looks good, then it's fine. If it looks stupid, change it.

3. Don't use un-optimized titles like that for your pillar articles. They're fine for support article where you aren't targeting your phrase, but just want to build topical relevance. "The Knife That Suits Your Kitchen Best" is a 3 for relevance for the keyword "best kitchen knife" instead of "Best Kitchen Knife: Our Top 10 Reviews" which is a 1, or "Best Kitchen Knives Reviewed, which is a strong 2.

4. No, don't mix english and non-english. Choose 1 target country and language for your site. If I were doing multiple languages I would use sub-domains, like en.myshavers.com, fr.myshavers.com and let people select the language.

Thankyou for this. 1) On a 'bricks and mortar' business website, where would you put the about/contact/t&c's pages, any specifics worth thinking about?

2) How do you feel about linking between all of the articles in a silo (i.e. all of the Braun articles linking to all of the other Braun articles).

1. In the footer.

2. That's what you do in a silo. All articles will link to all articles through the secondary menu, but you also link to at least 1 other article in the silo contextually. The simplest way to manage it is just a->b->c->d->a, so you every article in the silo has at least 1 contextual link.

Just one more question. This is related to pillar articles. How do you set the the url for a pillar article?

Say I'm doing one for best golf clubs. It's a massive 3k word article and my site revolves just around golf clubs. Can you actually silo this???

should i just do. .. golfarena.com/best-golf-clubs <--- This wouldn't be part of a silo.
or golfarena.com/golf-clubs/best-golf-club <--- tis mention it twice so i'm worried about penalty. Thanks!

Siloing isn't about using multiple keywords in your URL. It's about segmenting your site into logical topics in 2 ways.

1. physical directory siloing, through your url structure
2. virtual siloing, through internal links/menus

Don't over-think it. It's only a way to help google understand the topics of your site. You're just making it easy for their spider.

Golf clubs is one silo. If your entire site is only about golf clubs, then you don't need to do anything. There's only 1 topic.

If I have a box full of cards about golf clubs, then do I need to sort that box out?

What about if the box is full of cards about golf clubs, golf shoes, golf jumpers, golf balls and golfing courses? If the cards are then just mixed up in 1 box it's a mess. I need to sort them into each topic otherwise you won't understand my box. You'll just see a big mix of golf cards.

Re-read the whole thread. Everything is covered.

I've said multiple times you don't ever have urls like that. golfarena.com/clubs is all you need, and that page IS your best golf club page. Your *title* should be Best Golf Clubs, you don't need your url to be golfarena/golf-clubs/more-golf-clubs/lets-have-more-golf-clubs/best-ever-bestest-best-best-best-golf-clubs/best-clubs !

 

[Aero1]

Excellent thread Tom!

One question which - I think - did not get asked yet:

Do you have an article on each page? So here in this case, do you have an article on the "tombelfort.com/electric-shavers/" page?

http://i.imgur.com/q71kk4l.png

 

[splishsplash]

Excellent thread Tom!

One question which - I think - did not get asked yet:

Do you have an article on each page? So here in this case, do you have an article on the "tombelfort.com/electric-shavers/" page?

http://i.imgur.com/q71kk4l.png

Yep, the url is something sensible like electric-shavers, but the page title will be an article depending on the site.

So in this case we've actually got a silo that's going to contain beard trimmers, nose-hair trimmers etc. So you can't just have a "best" page.

Your page title will be something like "Electric Shaver Reviews"

You'd then have an information page with a sub-section for each of your sub-silos, which is mens electric shavers, nose hair trimmers etc. Couple paragraphs on each. Just a general encompassing article.

Then on your electric-shavers/mens-electric-razors, the title for that will be your "Best Electric Shaver Reviews 2016", that's your money page targeting things like 'best shaver'(which is people looking for a mens electric shaver consequently)

Remember this example here is one for a big luxury site where you'll have things like tombelfort.com/luxury-soaps and tombelfort.com/moisturiser-creams or whatever as silos along side electric-shavers

And again, going deeper down into electric-shavers/mens-electric-razors/braun, that will be a "Braun Reviews" page, with general braun information, maybe talking about things like braun vs philips. Or you could just call it "Best Braun Shavers" if you like.