some gurus advise moving posts to pages to set up the silo properly.
those gurus have no idea what they're talking about because both the posts and the pages can rank just fine, it only matters how you use them (blog posts are better for content pages, of course, but the pages are OK for ecommerce and services in general). Again, it depends on a case by case basis...
looking at an overall best way to do this.
there's no overall best way, there's just what's best for your specific case
the difference is that you can't post on a category page.
it used to be like this many eons ago, but I think nowadays it's possible.
I mean, back in the day when I cared about Wordpress my favorite WP theme used to be Weaver Xtreme (ugly looking, I know, but it's what I got used to and - with enough time and dedication - you can make absolutely gorgeous and well-optimized sites with that theme)
But anyway, even 10-ish years ago when I first found that theme (and I stuck with it because it's been the best free pro theme that I found back then) it had options for turning every page into a content page by inserting content widgets straight into pages. I think I've even created a site around these widgets specifically, and it turned out great. I don't remember why I needed (or maybe wanted?) to do this, but I remember that I did
And that was 10 years ago, probably nowadays you can do literally anything you can dream of with a Wordpress site, which brings me back to my initial response: page or post, it doesn't really matter...
My Idea
My Categories as children pages, then sub-categories as grandchildren
- Replicate it exactly in WP Pages
- 301 redirect the categories and subs to corresponding WP Pages
- Set the Categories to INDEX
- Use breadcrumbs to display the Categories
- Write a long post on those pages to link to ALL the posts in their corresponding categories and subcategories
- Follow the Silo proper interlinking structure.
- Build links to the category/page
I've no idea what you're trying to do here... but that's probably because I don't know your categories, keywords, etc... Once I know those I might be able to say whether or not your idea is good, but for now it looks too complicated for my poor brain to comprehend
Also...
Set the Categories to INDEX
why only the categories?? Absolutely EVERY content page (article, video, even image galleries if they're important to your visitors) should be indexable. So, why make only the categories indexable? I don't get it...
Follow the Silo proper interlinking structure.
there is no proper interlinking structure. You interlink all of the pages that are related to each other, which - if your site's structure (silo) is done right - this would mean all of the pages within each topical cluster
I will have the categories/pages in the Menu, and subcategories/pages in the footer.
and when your site grows and you'll have 20 categories and 150 subcategories are you still going to have them all in the footer? Can't you see how stupidly ugly (and even slow performing on some resource-intensive browsers like Chrome) your site will look at that point?
Perfection - more often than not - is simple. So, keep things simple, logical, and beautiful, and you'll reap better rewards than if you over-complicated things unnecessarily just to please google (which is what I assume you are trying to do, but without realizing that you're actually not pleasing them at all, you're just pissing both google and your visitors off)
This way, every page can be accessed with 2 clicks away from the homepage.
quick and easy accessibility is great, and you should aim for it when siloing your site. But not at the expense of aesthetics and performance
What do you think about this?
I don't like it... although, like I said, I'm not sure what you're trying to do, and I don't know which keywords / topics you're after and this is a big deal because it's the topics that are dictating how your site will be structured.
If this is a normal blog, siloing the site site is pretty easy: find 3-10 BIG topics (usually 1-word, 2-word, or 3-word long, broad topics with 1000s of monthly searches each) and about 5-15 sub-topics for each one of the 3-10 big topics that you're going to provide these topics with supporting content, and interlink each topic with its own subtopics for extra relevancy and SEO value.
But if your site is ecommerce, or provide local services (roofing, lawn mowing, etc) your site's structure will almost always be different and dependent on what your site's goal is (lead gen, presentation / portfolio, etc)
Is there anything I'm missing here?
I don't know, because I don't know your keywords / topics and what you're trying to achieve (make blog, sell products, generate leads, etc)
Or is this only good on paper?
even on paper it looks ugly
