The Ultimate Guide to SEO Siloing - Dominate Google in 2018

j0n1508 said:

Don't you mind to update this SILOING guide buddy?

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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

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splishsplash said:

Very soon.

Everything's changed since Sep 2019 when the very first BERT rolled out. It changed even more with May 5 and Dec 4.

Siloing is no longer what it was once.

I'm going to be writing a new guide explaining what's changed and why siloing is far less effective now, and what you need to do in 2021 to dominate.

Stay tuned.

I don't write very often, because I only write after, usually MONTHS of research and testing. When I wrote my first silo guide it was after applying everything and getting an absolutely killer site that ranked faster than anything I'd seen.

But I'm now ready to write the 2021 guide about what will replace siloing as the dominant way to structure your site in 2021.

Click to expand...

splishsplash said:

Very soon.

Everything's changed since Sep 2019 when the very first BERT rolled out. It changed even more with May 5 and Dec 4.

Siloing is no longer what it was once.

I'm going to be writing a new guide explaining what's changed and why siloing is far less effective now, and what you need to do in 2021 to dominate.

Stay tuned.

I don't write very often, because I only write after, usually MONTHS of research and testing. When I wrote my first silo guide it was after applying everything and getting an absolutely killer site that ranked faster than anything I'd seen.

But I'm now ready to write the 2021 guide about what will replace siloing as the dominant way to structure your site in 2021.

Click to expand...

j0n1508 said:

Click to expand...

splishsplash said:

Very soon.

Everything's changed since Sep 2019 when the very first BERT rolled out. It changed even more with May 5 and Dec 4.

Siloing is no longer what it was once.

I'm going to be writing a new guide explaining what's changed and why siloing is far less effective now, and what you need to do in 2021 to dominate.

Stay tuned.

I don't write very often, because I only write after, usually MONTHS of research and testing. When I wrote my first silo guide it was after applying everything and getting an absolutely killer site that ranked faster than anything I'd seen.

But I'm now ready to write the 2021 guide about what will replace siloing as the dominant way to structure your site in 2021.

Click to expand...

splishsplash said:

Very soon.

Everything's changed since Sep 2019 when the very first BERT rolled out. It changed even more with May 5 and Dec 4.

Siloing is no longer what it was once.

I'm going to be writing a new guide explaining what's changed and why siloing is far less effective now, and what you need to do in 2021 to dominate.

Stay tuned.

I don't write very often, because I only write after, usually MONTHS of research and testing. When I wrote my first silo guide it was after applying everything and getting an absolutely killer site that ranked faster than anything I'd seen.

But I'm now ready to write the 2021 guide about what will replace siloing as the dominant way to structure your site in 2021.

Click to expand...

splishsplash said:

Ill write one tomorrow

Click to expand...

splishsplash said:

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.

Click to expand...