SEO 2020 FORUM

[Ahri22]

Hi Charles,

If we start our sites according to The Plan, but want to use a directory type silo structure (which would use folders for each silo), should we start our sites by, choosing for our first five article pages the landing pages for each silo, and therefore placing each one in its own directory?

At the moment, my sites built according to the plan don't have folders or anything, they're just articles, which I've linked together in the structure you suggest in the Plan. Howevr, for my site to grow into one which uses a siloing structure and themes, I would think it would be better to start with this in mind.

So initially, I'd have my index page (say I was doing a site on pets) and the first five articles I'd create (which would later become the landing pages for each silo) would be: cats dogs fish rodents and reptiles (for example)
My pages would be: www.thepetsite.com/index.php with links to: www.thepetsite.com/cats/all_about_cats.php, www.thepetsite.com/dogs/all_about_dogs.php etc.

And these pages would all link to each other (but only temporarily - because you wouldn't want them to link together after the site has been developed) in order for indexing ONLY. Once the site is fully indexed (for those pages).

Now, I guess I'm a little confused about what happens next (If, for example, you only want to focus on those five themes) your next pages, might be lower down in the silo structure, but according to the plan structure, for indexing, you're still going from article to article...

It would seem to make sense to go (in the cat theme) from www.thepetsite.cats/cats/all_about_cats.php (your landing page) to www.thepetsite.cats/cats/cat_care_and_feeding.php rather than from one of the other landing pages (ie the dogs one) to the next article which is about cats. However, this may not follow The Plan structure of linking one article to the next to the next...

Does any of that make sense???

I'm still trying to integrate the idea of The Plan into the idea of siloing (which makes perfect sense). It's just the progression, I suppose, between your initial site which you've structured for full indexing, and your eventual site where you won't have your cat articles linked directly to your dog articles or vice versa.

Thanks
Fiona

[glenny]

Great questions Fiona, exactly what I was thinking. After reading the document I am having some confusion about how to integrate "the plan" and siloing.

Look foward to Charles and Russels answers

Glenn

[Charles Heflin]

The Plan outlines a very simple silo structure based on a theme. This was done in an effort to prime you for more complex silo web design structures.

Silo-ing can become very confusing if you don't understand the basic concept from a very elementary level which is what The Plan is designed to do.

Let's use Fiona's pets site for an example.

In The Plan you build a 5 - 10 page site about pets.

Index Page = A general landing page about 5 different pet (silos) that links to the top of each of the 5 silos:
Page 2 would be the top of silo 1 (dogs)
Page 3 would be the top of silo 2 (cats)
Page 4 would be the top of silo 3 (fish)
Page 5 would be the top of silo 4 (rodents)
page 6 would be the top of silo 5 (reptiles)

They link sequentially at first without a menu to establish the theme "pets" with the search engines.

You will want to push each sub-theme (dogs,cats,fish,rodents,reptiles) into their own folder if you haven't done so already. Leave your initial pages in place but change the links on your index page to reflect a new directory structure that will get picked up on the next search engine crawl.

yoursite.com/dogs/dog-index.html (silo top)
yoursite.com/cats/cat-index.html (silo top)
yoursite.com/fish/fish-index.html (silo top)
yoursite.com/rodents/rodents-index.html (silo top)
yoursite.com/reptiles/reptiles-index.html (silo top)

Now the top of each silo would become like the main index page but for the theme of the folder. For example:

yoursite.com/dogs/dog-index.html (silo top)

This page would be the top of the silo or index page for the theme dogs and you would write a general index page that covers the theme of dogs linking to internal sub-silos like:

Dog Training
Canine Obedience
Dog Food
Dog Beds
Canine Health

You would set up a similar directory structure as discussed before:

yoursite.com/dogs/dog-training/dog-training-index.html
yoursite.com/dogs/canine-obedience/canine-obedience-index.html
yoursite.com/dogs/dog-food/dog-food-index.html
yoursite.com/dogs/dog-beds/dog-beds-index.html
yoursite.com/dogs/canine-health/canine-health-index.html

Depending on how broad your niche is you may have to continue drilling into deeper and deeper sub-niches (sub-silos) to establish the skeleton structure (blueprint) of your site.

Where to place articles and which articles to write will become obvious based on your site's structure.

The theme pets is extremely broad and in essence could encompass several websites all into one. You could have an individual site for dogs, cats, fish, rodents and reptiles and go after those markets one at a time or you could theme your site about pets and build for all of those themes at once.

There is no right and wrong way to attack a market. The theme of pets could take the place of 30 or 40 websites by building a good silo directory structure.

According to The Plan you could have centered your site around dog training (only) for example and each of your 5 - 10 pages would be about different aspects of the theme dog training. In this case your site would be one single silo rather than an eventual split across 5 different silos.

I hope I'm making sense here

The Plan is very, very basic just to get people in tune with the concept of structure without too much confusion.

As you drill down into silos and sub-silos, you will eventually get to the point where you are linking from one article to the next as in The Plan.

For example, say we settle into the sub-silo "dog beds":

yoursite.com/dogs/dog-beds/dog-bed-index.html

Dog bed article 1 --> Dog bed article 2 --> Dog bed article 3 --> etc...

Once you are indexed and begin integrating your user navigation menus, the menus and sub menus, etc. will act to link everything together. I teach sequential linking with "varying anchor text" to get you in the habit of practicing good internal linking which will enhance your themes in the eyes of the search engines.

The reason The Plan teaches sequential linking is to give you the basic concept of not cross linking out of your topic and give you the practice of internal anchor text linking to enhance your theme.

You don't want a "dog bed" article linking out to an article on "reptile food" as this will bleed out your theme on "dog beds".

The Plan is overly basic, don't over analyze it as this will tend to overcomplecate your advanced understanding.

I hope I have cleared this up a bit. These are great questions and it is my goal to ensure that it is understood thoroughly.

Please continue this discussion


- Charles

[Ahri22]

Hi Charles,

Thanks for the clarification! I think what I'll do now is start my sites with the silos in place (in the form of folders and folder landing pages), that way there will be no need to move particular pages into folders, rather they're actually in folders to begin with, and thus are indexed in their final format.

If that makes sense!

It's all starting to come together...I think!

Cheers
Fiona

[jmacleod]

[themezoom]

Hi guys!

(sigh)

I know it must be incredibly confusing to get so much information all at once.

First of all, lets all take a deep breath. (gasp).

It sounds to me like it will be necessary to form a mastermind group.

Although I am willing to answer basic questions, I need to speak with Charles about the best way to deal with this forum. My time is a bit limited, and yet I want you all to LEARN the different ways of applying this technique, especailly the "skip tier" silo method . . . which is my favorite.

Because of my time limitations, let me speak with Charles about a conference call that we can record in order to help educate others.

ARE YOU GOING A MILE WIDE AND AN INCH DEEP, OR ARE YOU GOING IN INCH DEEP AND A MILE WIDE??????

WHAT ARE YOU SELLING?


Respectfully,

Russell Wright

[businessguy]

I am going to be quoting from Charles post to see if I can understand the file structure and how many layers deep it can go.

The following seems to be the normal Plan model.

[Ahri22]

[jeremy]

Hi all,

Nice post.

It seems where we are now, we should start
our sites from the Plan II, and have a blank
page for our folder.

Then the Master Plan we should be able to build
from there no matter which silo design comes next.

Is it neccessary to name the top of each silo index.html,
I don't see the teeth site doing that.

Jeremy

[Ahri22]