Could This Silo Structure Cause A Penalty?

Hey Guys,
A question to the experts here.
I have a minisite that targets a keyword which has lots of longtails so I've made a 6 level deep silo to try and target each longtail with a dedicated page.
So let's say site my site is chihuahua.com (brand site) and I'm targeting the keyword "dog training" with its longtails like this:

[TABLE="class: outer_border, width: 800"]
[TR]
[TD]Keyword[/TD]
[TD]URL[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]dog training[/TD]
[TD]chihuahua.com/dog-training-review[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]does dog training work[/TD]
[TD]chihuahua.com/does-dog-training-work[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]dog training free guide[/TD]
[TD]chihuahua.com/dog-training-free-guide[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]dog training results[/TD]
[TD]chihuahua.com/dog-training-results[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]buy dog training course[/TD]
[TD]chihuahua.com/buy-dog-training-course[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]dog training tips[/TD]
[TD]chihuahua.com/dog-training-tips[/TD]
[/TR]
[/TABLE]

Would I get penalized for having "dog training" in all of my pages?

I have a site that is built exactly like that and it's got penalized on August 26th.
Could this be the reason? if so, how would you recommend doing it without over optimizing?

Smoker2 said:

Hey Guys,
A question to the experts here.
I have a minisite that targets a keyword which has lots of longtails so I've made a 6 level deep silo to try and target each longtail with a dedicated page.
So let's say site my site is chihuahua.com (brand site) and I'm targeting the keyword "dog training" with its longtails like this:

[TABLE="class: outer_border, width: 800"]
[TR]
[TD]Keyword[/TD]
[TD]URL[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]dog training[/TD]
[TD]chihuahua.com/dog-training-review[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]does dog training work[/TD]
[TD]chihuahua.com/does-dog-training-work[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]dog training free guide[/TD]
[TD]chihuahua.com/dog-training-free-guide[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]dog training results[/TD]
[TD]chihuahua.com/dog-training-results[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]buy dog training course[/TD]
[TD]chihuahua.com/buy-dog-training-course[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]dog training tips[/TD]
[TD]chihuahua.com/dog-training-tips[/TD]
[/TR]
[/TABLE]

Would I get penalized for having "dog training" in all of my pages?

I have a site that is built exactly like that and it's got penalized on August 26th.
Could this be the reason? if so, how would you recommend doing it without over optimizing?

Click to expand...

You've got it all wrong. 7 levels deep? you don't even know what you're talking about. By the way yes, you been surely penalized also for targeting one keyword each article. You must group similar keywords into one long article, and have a proper silo structure, which obviously you don't even know what means.

First of all, this is not proper SILO structure.

Moreover, SILO structure should look like following:


[TABLE="class: cms_table_outer_border, width: 800"]
[TR]
[TD]Keyword

[/TD]
[TD]URL[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]dog training[/TD]
[TD]chihuahua.com/dog-training/[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]does dog training work[/TD]
[TD]chihuahua.com/dog-training/does-dog-training-work/[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]dog training free guide[/TD]
[TD]chihuahua.com/dog-training/dog-training-free-guide/[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]dog training results[/TD]
[TD]chihuahua.com/dog-training/dog-training-results/[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]buy dog training course[/TD]
[TD]chihuahua.com/dog-training/buy-dog-training-course/[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]dog training tips[/TD]
[TD]chihuahua.com/dog-training/dog-training-tips/[/TD]
[/TR]
[/TABLE]

You should have home page and MAIN SILOS (example in this case is "dog training"). This article should be about "dog training", it should link to all SUB SILOS (does dog training work, dog training free guide, dog training results, buy dog training course, dog training tips)

Each of these SUB SILO articles should link to MAIN SILO (dog training)

From article on HOME PAGE you should link to all MAIN SILOS.

This is proper SILO STRUCTURE and this SILO structure works like a charm. It will not get you penalized, Google likes SILO structure, the question is do you use quality and unique content that is SEO optimized, proper keyword density and so on. These things can get you penalized if done wrong, not proper SILO structure.

methodman90,
The whole Idea I've made this was to give each search a different page with exactly what he's looking for.
Every one of these articles is 1000 words long and If I'll combine all of these pages to one mega page I'll have a 6,000 words article, that's not such a great user experience.

peterstern9,
In your silo example the phrase "dog training" shows even twice in the url, isn't that more likely to get penalized?
And yeah, I use only unique and quality content for all the pages, my density is very low around 1% and I barely have keyword rich anchors built to these pages.

No, it will definitely NOT cause penalty. I am doing a lot of sites exactly this way and you should not worry about penalty. This is proper SILO structure.

Just make sure you have quality unique articles with 600+ words, h1 and h2 tag with keyword included, bolded keyword, and keyword density 1-3%. ( please take care about calculating EXACT keyword density; for example: long tail keywords should appear much less in article than 2-word keyword in its article )

This will definitely not penalize you. Maybe you burn your site with bad backlinks?

Smoker2 said:

methodman90,
The whole Idea I've made this was to give each search a different page with exactly what he's looking for.
Every one of these articles is 1000 words long and If I'll combine all of these pages to one mega page I'll have a 6,000 words article, that's not such a great user experience.

Click to expand...

Man but your site has nothing to do with a silo structured site. It's like you're naming an orange, "apple".
Also, its pretty obvious you don't need to put 6 keywords in 1 article, just 3-4. and slim it to 2k words, not add them all up randomly.

Thanks for the feedback peterstern9.
Are you using pages or posts to create the silo?
Also, is it ok to include the keyword in the title and meta description of the SUB SILOs?

As for links I have about 50 press releases linking to my site (brand/url/generic anchors only), basically I did 1 press release and submitted it to 50 sites like SBWire, PRBuzz, MyPRGenie etc...

My site ranked #2 stably for months until August 26 when there was an algo refresh.


Methodman,
Thanks for correcting me, I always thought this was a silo because I was interlinking between all these posts which are related to one another.

Smoker2 said:

Thanks for the feedback peterstern9.
Are you using pages or posts to create the silo?
Also, is it ok to include the keyword in the title and meta description of the SUB SILOs?

As for links I have about 50 press releases linking to my site (brand/url/generic anchors only), basically I did 1 press release and submitted it to 50 sites like SBWire, PRBuzz, MyPRGenie etc...

My site ranked #2 stably for months until August 26 when there was an algo refresh.

Click to expand...

Lol you already were lucky ranking with press relases alone. I did that in 2011.. I suggest you to start looking into buyin quality expired domains in order to make a pbn.

I didn't say these are my only links. I already have a PBN and it's quite powerful, I'm competing for a 6k exact searches term with lots of competition. I used a lot of press releases to pillow my site and I'm just not sure what caused my site to decline. I went from #2 to page 7 overnight.

My main suspects are the press releases which are the majority of my link profile or the site structure.

Whilst there are many different ways to build a silo site, one thing they all must have is "multiple" silos, and a MINIMUM of 5 related articles in each silo

3 silos is probably the minimum that will build enough theme to top rank on Google, 5 silos would be better - I generally have 7 to 13 silos

methodman90 said:

You've got it all wrong. 7 levels deep? you don't even know what you're talking about. By the way yes, you been surely penalized also for targeting one keyword each article. You must group similar keywords into one long article, and have a proper silo structure, which obviously you don't even know what means.

Click to expand...

What's this crap, lol. Since when can you not have the same niche keyword on multiple articles? One mega article? lol.

So I'm creating a site on electric toothbrushes, and I'm only allowed to have electric toothbrush in the title of one mega article otherwise I'll get a penalty? So Google is forcing you to have a bunch of disparate topics on your site?

I've created a web site on playstation 4's and I'll get a penalty for mentioning the ps4 on more than one article? Where do you get this stuff from?

So yeah, no more web sites. We just create one mega article and have all our keywords on it.

You take the prize for noob of the century. Congrats.

peterstern9 said:

Moreover, SILO structure should look like following:


[TABLE="class: cms_table_outer_border, width: 800"]
[TR]
[TD]Keyword

[/TD]
[TD]URL[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]dog training[/TD]
[TD]chihuahua.com/dog-training/[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]does dog training work[/TD]
[TD]chihuahua.com/dog-training/does-dog-training-work/[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]dog training free guide[/TD]
[TD]chihuahua.com/dog-training/dog-training-free-guide/[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]dog training results[/TD]
[TD]chihuahua.com/dog-training/dog-training-results/[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]buy dog training course[/TD]
[TD]chihuahua.com/dog-training/buy-dog-training-course/[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]dog training tips[/TD]
[TD]chihuahua.com/dog-training/dog-training-tips/[/TD]
[/TR]
[/TABLE]

.

Click to expand...

Here's an example of someone who's never actually built a silo site, but has read some articles and misunderstood.

What you're showing there is called directory based siloing and the way you've done it is more likely to result in an onpage penalty.

You would have chihuahua.com/dog-training/Does-it-work
chihuahua.com/dog-training/free-guide
chihuahua.com/dog-training/results
chihuahua.com/dog-training/buy-course
chihuahua.com/dog-training/tips

Your page title and h1 on the other hand would be "Does Dog Training Work", "Free Dog Training Guide", "Dog Training Course - Buy Now" etc

You'd then go easy on "dog training" in the article. Use it only where it comes up naturally and use additional LSI keywords. Types of dogs, obedience, commands, instructions. Anything related to the topic that will strengthen the theme and also bring you in more longtails.

peterstern9 said:

No, it will definitely NOT cause penalty. I am doing a lot of sites exactly this way and you should not worry about penalty. This is proper SILO structure.

Click to expand...

Bruce Clay disagrees.

http://www.bruceclay.com/newsletter/0906/silos.html

Look at the directory structure naming he's using for his peanut butter example.

I havent myself understood silos well, but good suggestions on the thread.