What I Do When Building a Web Site Using a Silo Structure For Long Term Rankings

First of BTB I found this very very helpful especially since I am about to start my first Amazon website in the next couple of days I just have a question.

I understand the importance of the power and anchor page but want to ask is it possible to simply turn the category page into a power page? The page gives general information of the category and contains information which will lead to most sales for select product such as Best red widgets of 2015. This will bring most justification into sending link juice towards the category page and at the same time should help the other posts within that category. What do you say?

Thank you

Curious BTB do you ever build a website with something beyond WP to make it a little more Silo / SEO friendly? Such as Joomla, Drupal, or maybe even just a custom website.

Also I know this technically might not line up with the thread perfectly, but what exactly do you do in order to choose the sub categories? More keyword research or market research? This is one of the biggest things that I have been struggling with.

I want to really provide visitors with something that they will benefit from and enjoy, but at the same time want to create a website that can generate a good income. Just have been struggling to figure out exactly what it is that I am doing that is different and is going to benefit them. I would much rather grow a business that will be successful and proud of than some gimmicky scheme website to make a quick buck.

Thus far I have tried to select niches that I have an interest in (although I do get concerned I went too big or too small), I have been doing research in competitors websites to see what they bring to the table as well as what the niche forums more popular questions are. I started to make a website a few months back, but school ate my life up (did get a 4.0 though!) and I found myself writing articles that were informative and definitely had voice, but maybe no different then what they could find on a wikipedia page. So I am now starting it over and going to try a different approach where instead of trying to just bang out large amounts of articles without a real plan. I am drawing up a blueprint similar to the one in your original post.

Thanks so much BTB for all of your informative methods on building an authority site. I have taken all of this information aboard one of my sites and slowly implement to the rest of them starting with the silo structure and then building great content for each along with a power page.

Hopefully I can do this correctly and make a great passive income!

@basstrackerboats
I've been reading a lot about silos lately and here is my question:

How can you SILO site if you are using main menu? (main-navigation). I found several threads, where people say that main menu should be replaced with dynamic sidebar menu, because with main menu each post/page links to other posts/pages, so it actually mess up whole silo structure. Like if you have your top silos in main-menu "cats", "dogs", "birds" etc and you open random post in "cats" silo, it will automatically link to "dogs" silo and "birds" silo via main menu.

Do you use some kind of a dynamic main menu where you show different posts/pages for different silos? Or you are no so strict and it's normal that posts from one silo link to another main silo?

yes i would like to now know people are doing this, i have a few sites i want to resilo, and the only options i have found are widget rules plugins
(too long since you have to assign pages for each sub section)

Or the plugin that arganrecords uses, which shows as blank when you get to the bottom root page. (apart from that it looks simple and good)
(https://members.networkempire.com/downloads/siloplugindownload/)

There doesn't seem to be much other options to do this. I'm personally kind of loathed to have to use a plugin that can easily be unsupported, as it is kind of niche the idea of siloing. Not many people are looking to use it. Why oh why does wordpress not just steal joomlas menu system?

I was just wondering exactly how to implement the silo structure as i'm building my first sites. On the home page i have the main menu with links to my main pages, for example if my site was about vehicles these main pages would be cars, aeroplanes, bike each with a few pictures abd around 3000 words. Then i have links on those page to another group of pages of a smaller group we'll say these are the brands of the cars. would it be better to have all the brands and models on these 2nd level pages and have the posts link off those pages, or could i have just the brand then link to the models and then have each of those model pages contain links to posts. the first option wouldn't look as good but stays true to the 3 level rule. But id much prefer to do the second way but thats 4 levels. Would it make much of a difference in terms of seo?

Hi BTB!

Great and knowledgeable thread!

I've got one question:

Hi!

I wonder how deep should I make one silo row? 4,5,6 or more supporting posts/pages?


Thanks!

BrokeJoke said:

Hey BTB!

Thank you so much for you amazing post. My mind has been absolutely blown and the deep I dig the more intrigued I am with silos. There is on thing I am having trouble wrapping my head around. If you have a site that necessitates sub-categories, do you make a "Power Page" for each sub-category? If so, how do the sub-categories and their associated "sub-power pages" connect to the main category and power pages? Do you include subcategories in the main navigation menu?

Would it work like this?
View attachment 67334

Also, how do you deal with leaks? With all these categories and sub categories I could easily see there be a lot of interlinking automatically occurring between distinct silos simply because of the structure word press uses.

You are the man. Seriously. I am going back through all of your posts and to say the insight you provide is valuable is a HUGE understatement. People like you are what makes the affiliate dream seem achievable to guys like me.

Thank you again

Click to expand...

will someone comment on this one ? is this still works ?

Hey, can some one clarify, what should i put into root/main page ? Post descriptions ?

artuurs said:

@BassTrackerBoats
I've been reading a lot about silos lately and here is my question:

How can you SILO site if you are using main menu? (main-navigation). I found several threads, where people say that main menu should be replaced with dynamic sidebar menu, because with main menu each post/page links to other posts/pages, so it actually mess up whole silo structure. Like if you have your top silos in main-menu "cats", "dogs", "birds" etc and you open random post in "cats" silo, it will automatically link to "dogs" silo and "birds" silo via main menu.

Do you use some kind of a dynamic main menu where you show different posts/pages for different silos? Or you are no so strict and it's normal that posts from one silo link to another main silo?

Click to expand...

I would love to have @BassTrackerBoats input on this concern. The silo in the OP is pretty clear but yet doesn't show how the manu impact or not this structure.
Also, it doesn't show the way of the links. for example, fors the post link to the anchor page, the power page, both, or the other way around?


Thanks in advance.

good pst. thanks for sharing. keep updating it.

@BassTrackerBoats

Just had a quick and probably very very stupid question (getting my head around silo structure today). Do you set your homepage as a parent to your power pages?

Holzr said:

@BassTrackerBoats

Just had a quick and probably very very stupid question (getting my head around silo structure today). Do you set your homepage as a parent to your power pages?

Click to expand...

Speaking for myself. I think if BTB set his homepage as static page, it is going to act as a parent page to the power page.
Btw, that is how I set my site when i want to silo it. A fitness site I silo-ed in this manner is still ranking for years without much backlinks and no new content.

What I do is use the Homepage as parent page, use post pages as power page and then posts as child.

T2tkid said:

Speaking for myself. I think if BTB set his homepage as static page, it is going to act as a parent page to the power page.
Btw, that is how I set my site when i want to silo it. A fitness site I silo-ed in this manner is still ranking for years without much backlinks and no new content.

What I do is use the Homepage as parent page, use post pages as power page and then posts as child.

Click to expand...

Great thanks. I'm just trying to figure out/clean my permalinks.

EDIT: I have a static page for my homepage. When I go to edit the permalink for another page, with the parent as the homepage lets call this page xyz, it's showing the homepage title but I don't want it to show anything if you get what I am saying. So I would like the permalink to be www.SITENAME.com/pageXYZ Do you know how to fix this @T2tkid

Are you saying the title of the homepage appears on page xyz? Instead of the one used for xyz? If that is what you mean, then you can use yoast seo plugin to correct it. The settings are available on google.

T2tkid said:

Are you saying the title of the homepage appears on page xyz? Instead of the one used for xyz? If that is what you mean, then you can use yoast seo plugin to correct it. The settings are available on google.

Click to expand...

Don't worry fixed it now downloaded a permalink editor and everything's good now. It's only that i wanted to tidy up my URL . Say i have a page 3 levels in instead of .Com/homepagetitle/topic title/page title i cut it down to make it neater.

BassTrackerBoats said:

I add content over time as opposed to all at once

Click to expand...

I was about to make this very mistake.

Thanks for the guide, Greg! (I think this guide deserves a small bump as it's full of gems)