Tom Belfort's AMA about SEO/Siloing/PBNs/Link Building 2019+

how did u manage to display thumbnails for pages?
I use the plugin "Post Tags and Categories for Pages". Then you can use Tag or Catagory for Page.

Finally, there are a lot of Plugins, there are lots of ways to display relevant pages according to your tactics. You can group pages by Tag, by Catagory, or by parent page ...


There are many other problems that you have to find solutions to. For example, you must configure the Breadcrumbs format for the best.
- Please search: "site:vinagamemobile.com" to view Breadcrumbs of my website.
 
Awesome AMA! I've gone through half of it over a gallon of coffee, and now I'm working on implementing it on a brand new website I am working on.

I'm struggling to get the permalink structure to work correctly. I created the following post categories:
L1 -- Kitchen
L2 -- Coffeemachines
L2 -- Cookware
L3 -- Frying pans
L4 -- Pots
I've set the slug to the same as the name of the category, and the parent category to the corresponding category in the above level.

I've then created pages with the following permalinks. I assigned the parent category same as the categories
/kitchen/coffeemachines
/kitchen/cookware
/kitchen/cookware/fryingpans
/kitchen/cookware/pots

I created 5 posts for coffeemachines, and they work well. The url looks like this:
/kitchen/coffeemachines/perculators
/kitchen/coffeemachines/espressomachines
/kitchen/coffeemachines/coffeemakers
/kitchen/coffeemachines/french-press

However, for the posts in the frying-pans category, /kitchen doesn't show, so it's just /cookware/fryingpans/teflonpan I've made sure to assign "kitchen" correctly in the permalink of the posts, however when I press "Regenerate permalink" and refresh the edit page, the "kitchen" is gone.


I also have an issue in which the content I add to the pages doesn't get shown. Instead I get sent to the category-archive for that specific category.
 
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Awesome AMA! I've gone through half of it over a gallon of coffee, and now I'm working on implementing it on a brand new website I am working on.

I'm struggling to get the permalink structure to work correctly. I created the following post categories:
L1 -- Kitchen
L2 -- Coffeemachines
L2 -- Cookware
L3 -- Frying pans
L4 -- Pots
I've set the slug to the same as the name of the category, and the parent category to the corresponding category in the above level.

I've then created pages with the following permalinks. I assigned the parent category same as the categories
/kitchen/coffeemachines
/kitchen/cookware
/kitchen/cookware/fryingpans
/kitchen/cookware/pots

I created 5 posts for coffeemachines, and they work well. The url looks like this:
/kitchen/coffeemachines/perculators
/kitchen/coffeemachines/espressomachines
/kitchen/coffeemachines/coffeemakers
/kitchen/coffeemachines/french-press

However, for the posts in the frying-pans category, /kitchen doesn't show, so it's just /cookware/fryingpans/teflonpan I've made sure to assign "kitchen" correctly in the permalink of the posts, however when I press "Regenerate permalink" and refresh the edit page, the "kitchen" is gone.


I also have an issue in which the content I add to the pages doesn't get shown. Instead I get sent to the category-archive for that specific category.
I wish I cold still edit this.

I assume the problem comes from my category-page and and pages having the same url. I tried changing the category-page and then doing redirects but this leads to the breadcrumb not working properly. How should the url/slugs be named for the categories/pages? I followed along in this post: https://www.blackhatworld.com/seo/tom-belforts-ama-about-seo-siloing-pbns-link-building-2019.1151635/#post-12358498 but I can't get it to work properly.
 
I wish I cold still edit this.

I assume the problem comes from my category-page and and pages having the same url. I tried changing the category-page and then doing redirects but this leads to the breadcrumb not working properly. How should the url/slugs be named for the categories/pages? I followed along in this post: https://www.blackhatworld.com/seo/t...bns-link-building-2019.1151635/#post-12358498 but I can't get it to work properly.
Try this:
1, Setting -> Permalink: Custom Structure: /% category% /% postname% /
2, Yoast Seo -> Advanced -> Permalink. In the item
Strip the category base (usually / category /) from the category URL: Please select "Keep".
 
Try this:
1, Setting -> Permalink: Custom Structure: /% category% /% postname% /
2, Yoast Seo -> Advanced -> Permalink. In the item
Strip the category base (usually / category /) from the category URL: Please select "Keep".
Alright, I got all of my urls to look good with this method. The breadcrumbs are still leading to the /category page though. I assume that's not the way it should be set up?
 
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Alright, I got all of my urls to look good with this method. The breadcrumbs are still leading to the /category page though. I assume that's not the way it should be set up?
The problem with BreadCrumb, you have to deal with it. Nothing is ready-to-eat.
Otherwise do it my way. Follow the OP's way and use Custom Permalink Plugin.
 
The problem with BreadCrumb, you have to deal with it. Nothing is ready-to-eat.
Otherwise do it my way. Follow the OP's way and use Custom Permalink Plugin.
Am I missing something here? For me neither of the methods work. Like at all.

Your method makes the breadcrumb work bad, which is not good for SEO. OP:s method makes it so that the url of the category and the post is the same, and then the category is shown over the post. If I change the category-url to something else as proposed here: https://www.blackhatworld.com/seo/the-ultimate-guide-to-seo-siloing-dominate-google-in-2018.985967/page-17?fbclid=IwAR0YDgPKnDxhMAzGEl89cX198l5Ih-hhvSZDYidPnf8pr8tNzFmXI6mHprU#post-11084674 well.... the breadcrumbs don't work anymore. From what I understand they are an important tool establishing a virtual silo.
 
The problem with BreadCrumb, you have to deal with it. Nothing is ready-to-eat.
Otherwise do it my way. Follow the OP's way and use Custom Permalink Plugin.
Think of ways to solve the problem you are having. Rather than mechanically applying what is instructed.
- Do it my way or follow the OP's way, you're almost there. Just a little bit more.
- Solve the problem yourself without being taught your own way.


See demo 2 versions:
- Silo 2018, 100% Page: vinagamemobile.com
- Silo 2019, user Page and Post: You may have seen it, so I corrected it.. I don't want to go public right now
 
I don't know why so many people have issues to understand this guide, which is genius, and like all genius stuff, is dead simple.
Do you know E=mc² ? It's so simple, yet it has so deep implications in our lives and it changed forever our understanding about the world.
Let me explain what I understood from @splishsplash and what I know already.

What do I know for sure?

Wordpress "should" have a category page, which contains a description and a list of all posts in that category. However, not every theme out there supports that setup or maybe it does, but not the way you like it.
Many e-commerce themes have this feature, other e-commerce platforms have this (I am sure about Prestashop but probably all do).

Keep this in mind for a minute and let's move on to what Tom said.

Basically, the key point in siloing is to split your main topic in subtopics, in such way that Google can crawl and understand you website easily.

My addition to help you with that, ask yourself "What type of..?"
Taking from his example:

Main topic:
  1. Animals

What type of animals?
1.Cats
What type of cats?
1.1 Siamese
1.2 Persian
2. Dogs
What type of dogs?
2.1 Akita
2.2 Bulldog
2.3 Chihuahua

Ok, if you want, you can add more just by asking this question, hope you got the point. No "reviews", no "guides" as you can't answer to "What type of dog?" with "review".
It's more complex than that, depending on the topic, but this is for starters, to understand this stuff more easily.
LE. I think you need to know how narrow a subtopic can be. If you can't write at least 10-15 unique articles in a subcategory, is not worth narrowing down and whatever you will write should belong to parent.
Example:
Siamese Cats
One could write a few articles about them
Siamese Cats in San Francisco
This is an article, maybe (just maybe) 2, you can't have much content on this topic to split it in 10-15 articles.
That's a good rule of thumb, i guess.

Now, coming back to technical stuff, you need to make these topics and subtopics as categories and subcategories in your WordPress.
First, what I'd do, i would go to settings/permalinks and change what's there with:
Code:
/%category%/%postname%/
Probably not quite necessary, but I'm sure it worked in my case.
Make category "animal", then "dogs" and "cats", both with parent "animal" (aka subcategory)
Then you create more, the subtopics above become categories (subcategories actually, with their respective parents setup).

Coming back to what I said first, you need to have category pages, listing the posts in that category.

From Tom's guide, you don't need to rely on WordPress's ability to do it.
So, install the permalink customizer plugin and some other to list posts on pages.
Now, without doing anything else, add pages for every topic and subtopic, just like you did for categories. The same setup for parent pages is valid also here.
Add page "Animals" , no parent, add short description as instructed in guide.
Add page "Dogs", parent "Animals", add short description...
And so on.

Issues.
If you setup everything as above, you shouldn't have any. But if you have, it's most likely with permalink structure. When you create pages, look at the permalink box and verify everything is ok, you can type in there and change it if the plugin didn't pick it up correctly.

It's done. Your urls should look like this now
site.com/animals/dogs/akita/review-akita
Your menus should be set to reflect this tree structure as well.
That's all

i understand up to this. but what about page vs category page?

Page slug looks like domain.com/animan/cat
category slug also looks like domain.com/anmal/cat

when i write something in animal page and cat page and plublish it. After viewing it nothing shows cause wordpress automaticaloy category page and page about animal and cats are hidden..
 
i understand up to this. but what about page vs category page?

Page slug looks like domain.com/animan/cat
category slug also looks like domain.com/anmal/cat

when i write something in animal page and cat page and plublish it. After viewing it nothing shows cause wordpress automaticaloy category page and page about animal and cats are hidden..
Think of ways to solve the problem you are having. Rather than mechanically applying what is instructed.
- Do it my way or follow the OP's way, you're almost there. Just a little bit more.
- Solve the problem yourself without being taught your own way.


See demo 2 versions:
- Silo 2018, 100% Page: vinagamemobile.com
- Silo 2019, user Page and Post: You may have seen it, so I corrected it.. I don't want to go public right now
Alright so I got it to work by converting all post to pages. Thanks for helping me out

The guide clearly states that you can use posts though: https://www.blackhatworld.com/seo/tom-belforts-ama-about-seo-siloing-pbns-link-building-2019.1151635/?fbclid=IwAR3aTgmhZGXmjhAewFE-f6A_SUUf88ktOswjKUvSTwcal8aX0y9sOPEYqWo#post-12358498
This would be awesome for me since I could more easily structure everything in the backend, where every silo-page is a page, and every review/article is a post. Either way - I'm happy I got it working.
 
If I'm looking to rank content on my shopify site to drive SEO, how do I effectively use SILOing? From what I understand, I cannot create pages on a root page and can only do so in blogs (name.com/blog/idea). Even then, I can't write a intro on the /idea page where the blogs will live.

Do you have any insight on how to accomplish this? Is there a way to do this on shopify or is my only hope to create an affiliate website on WP using SILO and point to my e-commerce store?

Thank you for the help :)
 
One option could be hosting a blog on a subdomain?

blog.name.com

If I do that, I should easily be able to do the SILOing right? Would a subdomain be an issue for SEO?
 
Let say I have an app and I want to target high volume, high competitive keyword. In order to show on page one, I created domain which is using that keyword. In that website, I created few articles that is relevant to the keyword and I put 1 landing page for people to click and direct them to my money site or playstore. Is this blackhat method, and will the moneysite and playstore will get penalized by google?
 
One option could be hosting a blog on a subdomain?

blog.name.com

If I do that, I should easily be able to do the SILOing right? Would a subdomain be an issue for SEO?

A subdomain is treated by google like any other domain. That is, if your main domain has authority it will not translate to a subdomain. In other words subdomain starts from 0 power position.
 
I understand the concept of silos, and thanks to them, I believe I rank on Google with my affiliate and information based websites.
But now, I would like to use it on my new e-commerce project, and I would like to use informational articles on e-commerce stores to get an edge over my competition. I just have no idea how to use silo for my informative articles.
Let's say I have website.com/kitchen/knife

Where would my article be about buying a knife guide or how to sharpen knife's land?
Website.com/kitchen/knife/how to pick the right one
Website.com/kitchen/knife/how-to-sharpen
Or somewhere else? Also, what would be the URL of the articles category, since on I'm the website.vom/kitchen or /kitchen/knife would be product categories?
 
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