SILO interlinking questions - help me SEO Gods

Hello,

Here to ask about on-page interlinking to create topical clusters for Daddy G to catch up on.

I've been following guides here, and from other SEO blogs as well - about SILO structure
I get it - I understand how to implement it and will be doing this for my site as well.

The question would be - should I focus ONLY on interlinking between pages and posts per SILO?
or is interlinking to other SILO good as well?

For example:
/Cats/cat-breeds
/Cats/cute-muderfukin-kittens/
/Cats/dumbass-pussy

I get that it would be wise to interlink those under the Cats SILO

but would it be good if I interlink also to:
/Vets/
/Vets/Monkey-doctor-vet

Or just stay within the SILO - I wonder if linking outside the structure may confuse Google Crawlers?

Any help would be appreciated - I love you

Thanks,
Josh Saga

Interlink as much as you can naturally. No drawbacks even if you nearly stuff your content. Best example are Vice articles (and most newspapers)

You can interlink with other silos as well, think about all the travel or gadgets sites going from the best bars in Berlin to the best hotels or attractions in the city. The amazing features of the new X-phone to some cool silicone cases.

Just link to important and related things, your cats category with your monkey vet may not be the most optimal.

Its better to link to direct page rather than catagory or tags. As crawler not able to decide the contents as it keep changed

Remember the austin rhynoplasty site?

They ranked #1 with zero content (it was all lorem ipsum) and chaos for internal linking.

It's not about content or internal links. All you need is human signals that Google can trace back to actual logged in accounts.

Thank you everyone!

bartosimpsonio said:

It's not about content or internal links. All you need is human signals that Google can trace back to actual logged in accounts.

Click to expand...

Thanks Bart,

Here to ask how do you create human signals that Google can trace?

I have been trying to build such site structure "hub-and-spice model" all the time. ( I am also not an SEO expert. )
So in my XP, it will not help your pages ranking so much.
Just think interlink as backlinks - backlinks from pages of less related topic will not help your page ranking so much.
Also I can say that those "outlinks" wouldn't confuse Google, but if your links were too complex, then authority transfers between interlinks will be weakened, and the silo model will produce less effect.

Josh Saga said:

Thank you everyone!


Thanks Bart,

Here to ask how do you create human signals that Google can trace?

Click to expand...

Sorry @bartosimpsonio I agree user metrics are a factor in the top 10, but SILO's are too. I had a keyword stuck at #1, I added 5 pieces of supporting content, strictly silod them, all pointing to the #1 page, and within 3 days it shot up to #1 and held. It's still #1 now after 3 months.



I see this as a heavily weighted ranking factor too.

Google wants to know two things, are you an expert? Do users like your content?

Expert? This is determined multiple ways, such as

outbound linking, because experts link to other experts, this has been shown to be true time and time again
topical clustering, because the more you write on a topic, the higher the chance that you are more knowledgeable than others in that topic.

Do users like your content better than others in the top 10?

User metrics.

Now with interlinking, I've been testing this for a few month. I've decided to stick with strict siloing as it provides the best in terms of rankings for my site. Not sure if this is overall in SEO, but for my site specifically it works the best.

@Josh Saga interlinking is primarily used for two reasons, to tell google which are your more important pages, and to pass juice over to those most important pages. The reason we write informational supporting content pointing towards money content, is because information content is more likely to pick up backlinks. And if you have them all pointed at your money page, whenever they do pick up a backlink, it will pass the juice automatically to your money page. It's a passive way of ranking money pages long term. But also if you have 10 pieces of content all pointing to your money page, google will see your money page as the most important page in the topic and give it some weight. The more interlinks you do per page, the more diluted their effects become. I usually do 1-2 links per page, 1 link to the money page, and another to a different supporting article. I then link from my money page to only 1 supporting article. I've found this to be the best practice for me, I tried not linking from my money page, but my rankings didn't like it too much.

I'd suggest coming up with a strategy like this, implementing it, seeing the results, then adjusting it and seeing the results to come up with a solid way to use in future.

There are multiple factors, depending on the niche. The longer the tail and the lower the competence the less elements needed to keep consistency.

bartosimpsonio said:

and chaos for internal linking.

Click to expand...

But as far as I'm aware, even chaos for internal linking is great. Just interlink for the sake of doing it. See it as "free link juice" that doesn't leak any juice at all.

Dark Sky said:

Sorry @bartosimpsonio I agree user metrics are a factor in the top 10, but SILO's are too. I had a keyword stuck at #1, I added 5 pieces of supporting content, strictly silod them, all pointing to the #1 page, and within 3 days it shot up to #1 and held. It's still #1 now after 3 months.

View attachment 162216

I see this as a heavily weighted ranking factor too.

Google wants to know two things, are you an expert? Do users like your content?

Expert? This is determined multiple ways, such as

outbound linking, because experts link to other experts, this has been shown to be true time and time again
topical clustering, because the more you write on a topic, the higher the chance that you are more knowledgeable than others in that topic.

Do users like your content better than others in the top 10?

User metrics.

Now with interlinking, I've been testing this for a few month. I've decided to stick with strict siloing as it provides the best in terms of rankings for my site. Not sure if this is overall in SEO, but for my site specifically it works the best.

@Josh Saga interlinking is primarily used for two reasons, to tell google which are your more important pages, and to pass juice over to those most important pages. The reason we write informational supporting content pointing towards money content, is because information content is more likely to pick up backlinks. And if you have them all pointed at your money page, whenever they do pick up a backlink, it will pass the juice automatically to your money page. It's a passive way of ranking money pages long term. But also if you have 10 pieces of content all pointing to your money page, google will see your money page as the most important page in the topic and give it some weight. The more interlinks you do per page, the more diluted their effects become. I usually do 1-2 links per page, 1 link to the money page, and another to a different supporting article. I then link from my money page to only 1 supporting article. I've found this to be the best practice for me, I tried not linking from my money page, but my rankings didn't like it too much.

I'd suggest coming up with a strategy like this, implementing it, seeing the results, then adjusting it and seeing the results to come up with a solid way to use in future.

Click to expand...

Sir Dear Sir - I am so grateful for this help - If I know you and where you live I would 100% hire a hooker to give you a blowjob

My last question would be - is it alright if I interlink to other articles/pages from another silo? Or just keep the links within my silo to boost my money site's topical relevance?

Josh Saga said:

I would 100% hire a hooker to give you a blowjob

Click to expand...

look at wikipedia, thats the most random interlinking website, myself thinking i tend to just keep it in silo, but i know i have broken this rule,
cause i felt it was helpful sometimes.

Josh Saga said:

Sir Dear Sir - I am so grateful for this help - If I know you and where you live I would 100% hire a hooker to give you a blowjob

My last question would be - is it alright if I interlink to other articles/pages from another silo? Or just keep the links within my silo to boost my money site's topical relevance?

Click to expand...

Haha no worries

I haven't actually tested this yet, at the moment I'm strict so all my silos are truly isolated from others.

However, logically speaking, it should benefit you to link to other SILO's, as long as it makes sense.

So if I'm writing an article about car engines, and my silo is car engines, and within that article I start talking about car transmissions because they are somewhat linked to car engines, and I have a car transmissions silo, then I'm going to link between the two within that context.

Now the reason I haven't done this yet, is because with my testing, I'm moving from strict to lenient, so I can see the effects of different changes to my strategy. And this is the next on the list for me to test.

I started with lenient interlinking prior, and my rankings absolutely tanked. Like dropped of the map. My traffic went from 20 clicks a day to about 1-2. This was when I literally just interlinked anything and everything. My take from this, was interlinking was weighted heavily as a ranking factor, and I confused the fk out of google, and my rankings reflected that.

What can you take from all this? Get all your silos isolated, wait for the rankings to settle, and then test. If you think "should I do this?" well try it, and see if your rankings go down, if they go down, then avoid it.

Unless you test, all your SEO knowledge will be "He said, she said"

My best advice to anyone in SEO is test, test, test. Because only then will you build up a solid foundation of what does work, and what doesn't. This is how the biggest SEO agencies thrive, they don't play a game of luck with google. They know exactly what works and what doesn't. And they replicate that across to their clients sites.

slarkpol said:

I have been trying to build such site structure "hub-and-spice model" all the time. ( I am also not an SEO expert. )
So in my XP, it will not help your pages ranking so much.
Just think interlink as backlinks - backlinks from pages of less related topic will not help your page ranking so much.
Also I can say that those "outlinks" wouldn't confuse Google, but if your links were too complex, then authority transfers between interlinks will be weakened, and the silo model will produce less effect.

Click to expand...

This.

There's reason niche focused site rank better than multi niche one.

SirLouen said:

But as far as I'm aware, even chaos for internal linking is great. Just interlink for the sake of doing it. See it as "free link juice" that doesn't leak any juice at all.

Click to expand...

It's like @Dark Sky 's example - if you need an extra bump at the top this might help.

Josh Saga said:

Here to ask how do you create human signals that Google can trace?

Click to expand...

That's probably what all the skunkworks Black Hat projects are up to right now.

If I knew how I'd never spill the beans for Google to see.

Dark Sky said:

Sorry @bartosimpsonio I agree user metrics are a factor in the top 10, but SILO's are too. I had a keyword stuck at #1, I added 5 pieces of supporting content, strictly silod them, all pointing to the #1 page, and within 3 days it shot up to #1 and held. It's still #1 now after 3 months.

View attachment 162216

I see this as a heavily weighted ranking factor too.

Google wants to know two things, are you an expert? Do users like your content?

Expert? This is determined multiple ways, such as

outbound linking, because experts link to other experts, this has been shown to be true time and time again
topical clustering, because the more you write on a topic, the higher the chance that you are more knowledgeable than others in that topic.

Do users like your content better than others in the top 10?

User metrics.

Now with interlinking, I've been testing this for a few month. I've decided to stick with strict siloing as it provides the best in terms of rankings for my site. Not sure if this is overall in SEO, but for my site specifically it works the best.

@Josh Saga interlinking is primarily used for two reasons, to tell google which are your more important pages, and to pass juice over to those most important pages. The reason we write informational supporting content pointing towards money content, is because information content is more likely to pick up backlinks. And if you have them all pointed at your money page, whenever they do pick up a backlink, it will pass the juice automatically to your money page. It's a passive way of ranking money pages long term. But also if you have 10 pieces of content all pointing to your money page, google will see your money page as the most important page in the topic and give it some weight. The more interlinks you do per page, the more diluted their effects become. I usually do 1-2 links per page, 1 link to the money page, and another to a different supporting article. I then link from my money page to only 1 supporting article. I've found this to be the best practice for me, I tried not linking from my money page, but my rankings didn't like it too much.

I'd suggest coming up with a strategy like this, implementing it, seeing the results, then adjusting it and seeing the results to come up with a solid way to use in future.

Click to expand...

Please help me, Suppose I am targeting "Best laptops for students" so what will be the supporting content for this topic?

I don’t focus on Silo for my clients I aim to link every page to each other even if they’re in different niche, results surprisingly they work very well, I go generic texts and at times exact so you can test and try it

Mr Positive said:

I don’t focus on Silo for my clients I aim to link every page to each other even if they’re in different niche, results surprisingly they work very well, I go generic texts and at times exact so you can test and try it

Click to expand...

What if pages are not ranking highly, can I still link them?

Josh Saga said:

Hello,

Here to ask about on-page interlinking to create topical clusters for Daddy G to catch up on.

I've been following guides here, and from other SEO blogs as well - about SILO structure
I get it - I understand how to implement it and will be doing this for my site as well.

The question would be - should I focus ONLY on interlinking between pages and posts per SILO?
or is interlinking to other SILO good as well?

For example:
/Cats/cat-breeds
/Cats/cute-muderfukin-kittens/
/Cats/dumbass-pussy

I get that it would be wise to interlink those under the Cats SILO

but would it be good if I interlink also to:
/Vets/
/Vets/Monkey-doctor-vet

Or just stay within the SILO - I wonder if linking outside the structure may confuse Google Crawlers?

Any help would be appreciated - I love you

Thanks,
Josh Saga

Click to expand...

Think of a user, and interlink your website.
This is how Silo works. Silo guidelines with Google are discovered based on the users mindset.

I do work with Silo. But my strategy is bit different.
We do interlink the targeted pages between the blogs/content pages.
Increasing the importance of our targeted page between other website pages.

myfault said:

Please help me, Suppose I am targeting "Best laptops for students" so what will be the supporting content for this topic?

Click to expand...

So the two topics for that target are "laptops" and "students"

Now writing a supporting article about students, is not very relevant to your users. Yes they may be students, but they are looking for laptops.

So writing supporting article for "laptops" topic is more relevant, such as "The different things to look out for in a laptop"

But then if you did a supporting article that contained both laptops and students, this gives even more relevancy, such as "What laptops do students normally buy" and "Which laptop hardware is best for students"

However, keep in mind that you want to rank supporting articles, you want them to get #1 for a decent vol keyword cluster. No point writing an article to not get traffic.

So sometimes it can be hard to find a decent keyword cluster for multiple topics.

So sometimes I resort to just writing supporting articles for "laptops" which is lower strength relevancy but still relevant and will bring traffic in.

In essence, I prioritise higher traffic over higher relevancy, but I make sure a supporting article is still relevant and can get traffic. These are my requirements for picking which supporting articles to write.

Mr Positive said:

I don’t focus on Silo for my clients I aim to link every page to each other even if they’re in different niche, results surprisingly they work very well, I go generic texts and at times exact so you can test and try it

Click to expand...

That's interesting, I've seen some very negative effects from doing this in my niche, very negative indeed to the point I had to delete every internal link on my site, and then the negative effects vanished. Especially when I went generic text.

Have you tried exact anchors 100% for a client with strict silos? This provided me the best results out of all my testing so far.