The Ultimate Guide to SEO Siloing - Dominate Google in 2018

Introduction

Back in march last year(2016) I wrote a super guide to creating amazon review sites, and as part of that guide I had an entire chapter on siloing.

I had a lot of success with the way I used to silo, but I never quite reached that crazy level of success that was always promised from siloing.

This always bothered me. Deep down I knew there was *something* I was missing. I just wasn't happy with the way I was doing it. Everything I read online confirmed the way I was doing it was correct, but this wasn't good enough for me.

So early this year, I decided enough was enough. I was going to set aside 2 weeks to research and rip apart everything I could to figure out how the heck you silo properly.

I started by re-reading Bruce Clay's famous guide to siloing. It's highly theoretical and doesn't really explain implementation very well, but it was a start.

Then, a few days into my research. EUREKA! I HAD IT! I actually had it! I cracked the code.

9 months after launching that first site silo'd properly. Here's the results.. These screenshots speak for themselves. No more do I feel like there's something missing. I absolutely have nailed it, and I have decided, after much contemplate and inner debate, that I'm going to share it with the world. Although this kind of information is incredibly rare and just not shared outside of tight inner circles, I've decided that the potential downsides of more people knowing about this are outweighed by the upsides. I strongly believe that sharing creates more opportunities and it's my mission in life to bring success and excitement to the world through business, and this is perfectly in line with that. So, please enjoy this information. Implement it, succeed with it and be happy in life. I will be available to answer questions in the thread, so you're all welcome to ask away, but don't PM me with questions, as I want to everyone to benefit so keep them public. If you want to just reach out and say hello, by all means drop me a message, but keep the questions in public. Thanks!

( If the mods would like me to prove ownership of this the site in the screenshot below I'm happy to do that. A couple of my clients have seen it too, so I'm sure someone will vouch for it being real. )





What is Siloing
Siloing is creating a structure that allows the google bot to very easily understand what your website is about. At its core it's about building huge topical relevancy in dozens and dozens of small areas, which in turn, build topical relevancy for the larger area.

Ie, if you're selling laptops, you want to build topical relevancy in every area that google considers related to laptops. Brands, types, different processors, different screen sizes, repairs, guides.

Why Everyone Else is Wrong about How to Silo
The way everyone else, including the way I used to teach siloing is just plain wrong.

They also over-complicate things drastically.

Most guides will just talk about creating parent pages and support articles. Mostly having your parent page being the higher volume keyword and the support being longtails. This isn't really how to do it to get the best results.

The way to actually silo properly is fairly simple.

My Siloing Method Explained
The way to silo is to actually use category pages. Your category pages should be the parent topics, not the topics with the most search results.

For example, laptops

mysite.com/laptops

You have a title like "Laptops for Sale"

Your H1 would be "The Latest Laptops & Buyer Guides"

Always have your title/h1 different so you can grab more keywords and don't over-optimize.

Next, you have 100-300 words of unique content about laptops. Within that content you link to 2-3 internal pages. Either internal silos, or important internal pages WITHIN the silo.

Next, very simply, you just have ALL your pages within laptops listed.

You want to display the latest 20 to google, and use ajax to let users display more. Don't use /page-2 type stuff. If you have a huge site, yes, too many products will be displayed, but you can use ajax to let users sort the laptops, and you'll have sub-silos so people can narrow in on the type of laptop they want.

The most important thing is that google can see the latest 20 laptops you add.

Now, let's say you now have multiple sub-silos

yoursite.com/laptops/hp
yoursite.com/laptops/dell

and so on.

You have the same setup on each of these. Your content at the top, the 2-3 links and all the hp/dell articles inside each silo.

So if you have an HP laptop article or product, it'll appear as yoursite.com/laptops/hp/some-hp-laptop.html, so it's physically silo'd inside laptops/hp, BUT, the article/product its self will appear in yoursite.com/laptops *AND* yoursite.com/laptops/hp

For an ecommerce site with a lot of ways to sort, you don't want to create multiple silos for each type. Pick one main physical silo, you can use ajax to sort by type/size/specs etc on the category page.

You pick the best way to categorize, which for laptops imo would be by brand.

For an informational based site you have your articles/reviews/content all within the category page, and for an ecommerce site you'd have 2 sections, one called Products at the top, and below that you can have another called Guides/Helpful Articles/Information or whatever is relevant, where you can add in extra content to the silo, which can be further silo'd.

So continuing with this example.

ALL laptop guides will appear within yousite.com/laptops, but you can create silos like:

laptops/repairs
laptops/buyers-guides
laptops/comparisons
laptops/performance-tests
laptops/reviews

then have content like

laptops/repairs/how-to-factory-reset-a-dell-laptop, and in this you can even link off to laptops/dell.

laptops/comparisons/dell-vs-hp-whos-best-in-2017

laptops/performance-tests/hp-envy-x360-benchmarked-and-tested

laptops/reviews/hp-envy-x360

And again in each sub-silo you have your 100-300 words of unique content, and all the content displayed in the category page(which is what your silo should be).


Your homepage should generally contain links to the silos/sub-silos of your site, and this can just be in the form of having a giant silo. Say 500-1000 words of content at the top, with all the latest articles appearing on the page. For an ecommerce site you wouldn't have all the latest products appear here, since that's a bit iffy, but for an informational site you would just have the latest 20 articles appear. What that does is make sure that juice goes from the homepage to new articles.

So with this structure, mysite.com/laptops/reviews/hp-envy-x360 gets juice from mysite.com/laptops/reviews, mysite.com/laptops and mysite.com/

laptops/reviews gets relevancy for laptop reviews, and laptops/ gets relevancy for everything related to laptops, and the homepage gets relevancy for *everything* on the entire site.

Simple, clean and it works.

I also like to link out to each sub-silo on each silo.

So on mysite.com at the bottom of the page I'll have a tree structure linking to all the sub-silo pages. This is useful for the user, and for google.

On mysite.com/laptops, I'll have a tree structure linking to reviews, comparisons, repairs, performance-tests and all the brands if I'm an ecommerce site.

The more you fill out each silo, the better they'll rank. You can then backlink the silos, the money pages, the product pages and the support articles.

With the support articles just link back to either parent silos, grandparent silos, other support articles or money articles/products.

When building support articles to rank a money article, make sure you include the keyword in your support article's title.

Ie, you want to rank for "best small laptops", then write some support articles like "Why the Dell Blah is a Great small laptop"

"Top 13 Reasons Why Small Laptops are Amazing" and so on.

Then link back with an LSI/long partial anchor, such as "our guide to getting the best small laptop"

I'm going to leave it there. How to silo properly does not require a mammoth 10,000 word article. It's a very very simple concept that does not need to be over-complicated.

Now go and make lots of $$ on Google, guys. Any questions, post in the thread and I'll be happy to help!


Cheers,
Tom

just read about siloing on a facebook note
went to bhw and found this thread
great, this is my route for onsite seo

so the permalink need to set to category base? xx,com/category/subcategory/post.html ?

Should I use category or pages to do this on WordPress?

Thanks for the share!

sick info... so would you say Bruce Clay is on par with he preaches?

splishsplash said:

Introduction

Back in march last year(2016) I wrote a super guide to creating amazon review sites, and as part of that guide I had an entire chapter on siloing.

I had a lot of success with the way I used to silo, but I never quite reached that crazy level of success that was always promised from siloing.

This always bothered me. Deep down I knew there was *something* I was missing. I just wasn't happy with the way I was doing it. Everything I read online confirmed the way I was doing it was correct, but this wasn't good enough for me.

So early this year, I decided enough was enough. I was going to set aside 2 weeks to research and rip apart everything I could to figure out how the heck you silo properly.

I started by re-reading Bruce Clay's famous guide to siloing. It's highly theoretical and doesn't really explain implementation very well, but it was a start.

Then, a few days into my research. EUREKA! I HAD IT! I actually had it! I cracked the code.

9 months after launching that first site silo'd properly. Here's the results.. These screenshots speak for themselves. No more do I feel like there's something missing. I absolutely have nailed it, and I have decided, after much contemplate and inner debate, that I'm going to share it with the world. Although this kind of information is incredibly rare and just not shared outside of tight inner circles, I've decided that the potential downsides of more people knowing about this are outweighed by the upsides. I strongly believe that sharing creates more opportunities and it's my mission in life to bring success and excitement to the world through business, and this is perfectly in line with that. So, please enjoy this information. Implement it, succeed with it and be happy in life. I will be available to answer questions in the thread, so you're all welcome to ask away, but don't PM me with questions, as I want to everyone to benefit so keep them public. If you want to just reach out and say hello, by all means drop me a message, but keep the questions in public. Thanks!

( If the mods would like me to prove ownership of this the site in the screenshot below I'm happy to do that. A couple of my clients have seen it too, so I'm sure someone will vouch for it being real. )

What is Siloing
Siloing is creating a structure that allows the google bot to very easily understand what your website is about. At its core it's about building huge topical relevancy in dozens and dozens of small areas, which in turn, build topical relevancy for the larger area.

Ie, if you're selling laptops, you want to build topical relevancy in every area that google considers related to laptops. Brands, types, different processors, different screen sizes, repairs, guides.

Why Everyone Else is Wrong about How to Silo
The way everyone else, including the way I used to teach siloing is just plain wrong.

They also over-complicate things drastically.

Most guides will just talk about creating parent pages and support articles. Mostly having your parent page being the higher volume keyword and the support being longtails. This isn't really how to do it to get the best results.

The way to actually silo properly is fairly simple.

My Siloing Method Explained
The way to silo is to actually use category pages. Your category pages should be the parent topics, not the topics with the most search results.

For example, laptops

mysite.com/laptops

You have a title like "Laptops for Sale"

Your H1 would be "The Latest Laptops & Buyer Guides"

Always have your title/h1 different so you can grab more keywords and don't over-optimize.

Next, you have 100-300 words of unique content about laptops. Within that content you link to 2-3 internal pages. Either internal silos, or important internal pages WITHIN the silo.

Next, very simply, you just have ALL your pages within laptops listed.

You want to display the latest 20 to google, and use ajax to let users display more. Don't use /page-2 type stuff. If you have a huge site, yes, too many products will be displayed, but you can use ajax to let users sort the laptops, and you'll have sub-silos so people can narrow in on the type of laptop they want.

The most important thing is that google can see the latest 20 laptops you add.

Now, let's say you now have multiple sub-silos

yoursite.com/laptops/hp
yoursite.com/laptops/dell

and so on.

You have the same setup on each of these. Your content at the top, the 2-3 links and all the hp/dell articles inside each silo.

So if you have an HP laptop article or product, it'll appear as yoursite.com/laptops/hp/some-hp-laptop.html, so it's physically silo'd inside laptops/hp, BUT, the article/product its self will appear in yoursite.com/laptops *AND* yoursite.com/laptops/hp

For an ecommerce site with a lot of ways to sort, you don't want to create multiple silos for each type. Pick one main physical silo, you can use ajax to sort by type/size/specs etc on the category page.

You pick the best way to categorize, which for laptops imo would be by brand.

For an informational based site you have your articles/reviews/content all within the category page, and for an ecommerce site you'd have 2 sections, one called Products at the top, and below that you can have another called Guides/Helpful Articles/Information or whatever is relevant, where you can add in extra content to the silo, which can be further silo'd.

So continuing with this example.

ALL laptop guides will appear within yousite.com/laptops, but you can create silos like:

laptops/repairs
laptops/buyers-guides
laptops/comparisons
laptops/performance-tests
laptops/reviews

then have content like

laptops/repairs/how-to-factory-reset-a-dell-laptop, and in this you can even link off to laptops/dell.

laptops/comparisons/dell-vs-hp-whos-best-in-2017

laptops/performance-tests/hp-envy-x360-benchmarked-and-tested

laptops/reviews/hp-envy-x360

And again in each sub-silo you have your 100-300 words of unique content, and all the content displayed in the category page(which is what your silo should be).


Your homepage should generally contain links to the silos/sub-silos of your site, and this can just be in the form of having a giant silo. Say 500-1000 words of content at the top, with all the latest articles appearing on the page. For an ecommerce site you wouldn't have all the latest products appear here, since that's a bit iffy, but for an informational site you would just have the latest 20 articles appear. What that does is make sure that juice goes from the homepage to new articles.

So with this structure, mysite.com/laptops/reviews/hp-envy-x360 gets juice from mysite.com/laptops/reviews, mysite.com/laptops and mysite.com/

laptops/reviews gets relevancy for laptop reviews, and laptops/ gets relevancy for everything related to laptops, and the homepage gets relevancy for *everything* on the entire site.

Simple, clean and it works.

I also like to link out to each sub-silo on each silo.

So on mysite.com at the bottom of the page I'll have a tree structure linking to all the sub-silo pages. This is useful for the user, and for google.

On mysite.com/laptops, I'll have a tree structure linking to reviews, comparisons, repairs, performance-tests and all the brands if I'm an ecommerce site.

The more you fill out each silo, the better they'll rank. You can then backlink the silos, the money pages, the product pages and the support articles.

With the support articles just link back to either parent silos, grandparent silos, other support articles or money articles/products.

When building support articles to rank a money article, make sure you include the keyword in your support article's title.

Ie, you want to rank for "best small laptops", then write some support articles like "Why the Dell Blah is a Great small laptop"

"Top 13 Reasons Why Small Laptops are Amazing" and so on.

Then link back with an LSI/long partial anchor, such as "our guide to getting the best small laptop"

I'm going to leave it there. How to silo properly does not require a mammoth 10,000 word article. It's a very very simple concept that does not need to be over-complicated.

Now go and make lots of $$ on Google, guys. Any questions, post in the thread and I'll be happy to help!


Cheers,
Tom

Click to expand...

i like the idea but wouldnt a internal link to another laptop with the name/ keyword laptop in it , be considred as dup content?

or does that get let of becouse it a new page and new article?.

what the lsi in this instance %

buy the way all seo do this it normal , to me this is like your exsplianing how to configure links and folders properly with out dup , it all seo friendly links ...

for begineers fantastic write up...

Thank you for the clear and simple breakdown of this technique. I am currently building the structure of a new site. Hope this will help

Awesome guide, I know the site and I can confirm it actually works for him.

Rains said:

so the permalink need to set to category base? xx,com/category/subcategory/post.html ?

Click to expand...

Brithos10 said:

Should I use category or pages to do this on WordPress?

Thanks for the share!

Click to expand...

You use the category function within wordpress to 'label' each post, but I don't use the actual category pages.

I create manual category pages, and use a plugin to manually display posts in the categories I want. The technical implementation of siloing does require a bit more wordpress know-how to make this work. Wordpress will not do this easily out the box.

redarrow said:

i like the idea but wouldnt a internal link to another laptop with the name/ keyword laptop in it , be considred as dup content?

or does that get let of becouse it a new page and new article?.

what the lsi in this instance %

buy the way all seo do this it normal , to me this is like your exsplianing how to configure links and folders properly with out dup , it all seo friendly links ...

for begineers fantastic write up...

Click to expand...

Dup content? No, having a keyword in the title of more than 1 article is not dup content.

I don't know what you mean by % of lsi.

The way I do all this SEO is normal? A beginner write-up? If you think that, then you don't understand this *at all*.

I see dozens of new sites every day from members here, and I've yet to see just ONE single site that's been silo'd even remotely close to this. This has nothing to do with configuring links and "folders" properly. This isn't about just creating categories on your site and putting posts in them. That is NOT siloing. Re-read the guide and try to understand how to do this properly and you'll see that this is an incredibly sophisticated way to setup your site architecture.

can you explain more about this part
"
You use the category function within wordpress to 'label' each post, but I don't use the actual category pages.

I create manual category pages, and use a plugin to manually display posts in the categories I want."
is that means u dont use wp category default? and what kind of plugin you use to display categories. thx

splishsplash said:

The way I do all this SEO is normal? A beginner write-up? If you think that, then you don't understand this *at all*.

Click to expand...

Disregard his posts. He's posting crap like this everywhere without adding ANY value to the forums.
Here he fails to understand the difference between "detecting" and "spoofing".
Here he tells me this: "your degree of programming knowolage is far little then me knowing"
Claims to be making 20k a month but complains about IM being expensive because his monthly bills amount to some $150 or so.
Doesn't want to (CAN'T?) pay for a plugin he needs.

This is a broke guy pretending to be a know-it-all. What a joke.

Great write-up, @splishsplash. I've saved it for later reading.

Rains said:

can you explain more about this part
"
You use the category function within wordpress to 'label' each post, but I don't use the actual category pages.

I create manual category pages, and use a plugin to manually display posts in the categories I want."
is that means u dont use wp category default? and what kind of plugin you use to display categories. thx

Click to expand...

Yes, so you create pages, then you use a plugin like

https://wordpress.org/plugins/list-category-posts/

So if you have a post in laptops/hp, then you add that post to the laptops category and the hp category, and on your laptops and hp manual category page, you're using the plugin to show all posts from those categories.

Great write up Tom. I had someone ask me the other day for advice on silo structure, here's their answer

Nice guide, really enjoyed reading it.
However I have one small question: How would you implement this if the site is a niche specific lead gen site. Like I don't have that much categories to add, my site is way to specific and It can't get more specific .

I've never been disappointed by any of your guides/threads. I created a special folder for you on my work pc. I'm saving this for later reading.

aadelmalik said:

Nice guide, really enjoyed reading it.
However I have one small question: How would you implement this if the site is a niche specific lead gen site. Like I don't have that much categories to add, my site is way to specific and It can't get more specific .

Click to expand...

In general smaller sites don't work so well, but, for a lead gen there's not much option.

I actually have an interest in lead generation sites, so feel free to pm your site and I'll take a look and give you specific advice.

This is the exact way how I made websites back in 1993.
Especially the HTML part

Wow. Great write. up. Now bare with me as it try to break this down.

Questions so my on my Main page I am going to have about 300 words of content
plus
If I display my last 20 laptops, and Each of those articles titles are 5 words long.= for a total of 100.

My main page will have about 400 words of content?

P.S. Sorry Hope you dont mind me asking these very basic questions.


"Your H1 would be "The Latest Laptops & Buyer Guides"

Always have your title/h1 different so you can grab more keywords and don't over-optimize.

Next, you have 100-300 words of unique content about laptops. Within that content you link to 2-3 internal pages. Either internal silos, or important internal pages WITHIN the silo.

Next, very simply, you just have ALL your pages within laptops listed.

You want to display the latest 20 to google, and use ajax to let users display more. Don't use /page-2 type stuff. If you have a huge site, yes, too many products will be displayed, but you can use ajax to let users sort the laptops, and you'll have sub-silos so people can narrow in on the type of laptop they want."

guys. let me make it easier for you. just look at wikipedia or some old 1998 style xoom or geocities sites. you will get "silo" .

darulez said:

guys. let me make it easier for you. just look at wikipedia or some old 1998 style xoom or geocities sites. you will get "silo" .

Click to expand...

Why the fuck do you have a peado as your home page?