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SEO 2020 FORUM
SEO Training, SEO Tips, SEO Strategy
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sidhale
SEO Red Belt
Joined: 26 Jul 2006
Posts: 94
Location: Midlothian, VA
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 Posted: Mon Jul 31, 2006 8:00 am Post subject: Re: Have I got this silo structure right? |
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Hi Adrian,
You're on the right track.
For physical organization, think of a silo as a folder. | OnlyTopResults wrote: | These 5 topics will be the ones I will add articles to, over time. Is there any disadvantage with putting them into folders before initial submission? e.g.
causes/causes1.html
symptoms/symptoms1.html
treatments/treatments1.html
new-treatments/new-treatments1.html
survival-rates/survival-rates1.html
By doing this I don't need to disturb the structure after initial indexing. Makes sense? |
This makes perfect sense.
I prefer to have an index to the silo (sort of a mini-sitemap), so I build an index.html at the top of the silo that links to each article in the silo. In your structure above, you could add this at any time without disturbing the original structure - so that you would wind up with:
causes/index.html
causes/causes1.html
causes/causes2.html
causes/causes3.html
symptoms/index.html
symptoms/symptoms1.html
symptoms/symptoms2.html
etc.
sid |
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OnlyTopResults
SEO Yellow Belt
Joined: 07 Jul 2006
Posts: 28
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| Posted: Mon Jul 31, 2006 8:41 am Post subject: Re: Have I got this silo structure right? |
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| sidhale wrote: |
I prefer to have an index to the silo (sort of a mini-sitemap), so I build an index.html at the top of the silo that links to each article in the silo. In your structure above, you could add this at any time without disturbing the original structure - so that you would wind up with:
causes/index.html
causes/causes1.html
causes/causes2.html
causes/causes3.html
symptoms/index.html
symptoms/symptoms1.html
symptoms/symptoms2.html
etc.
sid |
YEP - nice little tweak there Sid. As you say, there's no need to add the index pages until the 2nd article is written for each silo and that won't change the indexing of the site one bit. Excellent plan - thanks.
Adrian |
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Charles Heflin
Administrator
Joined: 16 May 2006
Posts: 337
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| Posted: Mon Jul 31, 2006 10:31 am Post subject: Re: Have I got this silo structure right? |
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| OnlyTopResults wrote: | | Charles Heflin wrote: |
Do not focus on PR. The only thing I have seen that PR is good for is the frequency in which the Google spider visits a page and crawls it. Being that your sitemap exists on every page, this shouldn't be a problem.
People tend to put too much focus on PR. A PR2 can easily and frequently does outrank a PR3, 4, 5 and 6... Doesn't seem to be a huge contributing factor in rankings. Rankings is what we are all going after. Cabelas ranks highly for specific keywords despite a PR0. |
Phew! Glad to hear that Charles - seemed to me that pursuing PR 'down' a silo was an impossible task! Using sub-directories with almost no text content which lead to final 'deep' product pages with LOADS of keyword rich content seems like the way to organise a silo. That's certainly the Cabelas model.
| Quote: | In regard to user navigation, you can add navigation from the start as long as your navigation doesn't bleed the theme of your individual pages and silos. This is an issue that confuses many people so you are not alone.
The Master Plan will go into detail about this subject  |
Yes - the idea of a website (however small) with no consistent navigation takes some getting used to!
Final point on this Charles. I can see that the use of folders to organise content will become a key issue. I have completed my 7 page initial site and am about to start Directory submissions, however I would just like to run this past you?
My current breast cancer site structure has homepage/sitemap/contact/privacy pages in the root and real content pages (top of silo pages) which are named:
causes1.html
symptoms1.html
treatments1.html
new-treatments1.html
survival-rates1.html
These 5 topics will be the ones I will add articles to, over time. Is there any disadvantage with putting them into folders before initial submission? e.g.
causes/causes1.html
symptoms/symptoms1.html
treatments/treatments1.html
new-treatments/new-treatments1.html
survival-rates/survival-rates1.html
By doing this I don't need to disturb the structure after initial indexing. Makes sense?
THanks
Adrian |
That makes sense... You are right on track |
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themezoom
Administrator
Joined: 02 Jun 2006
Posts: 53
Location: Wisconsin Dells
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| Posted: Wed Aug 02, 2006 7:39 pm Post subject: the master plan |
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Hi,
Charles and I have been editing the master plan and have made some intense discoveries on how to properly silo a HUGE site.
Hi Adrian,
Good to see you here. I guess the "SEO-GAL" scared us away.
Guys, hang onto your hats, cause Charles has been an absolute madman.
I have been doing silos for awhile, and have never worked on a silo directory structure the size of the portal that Charles, Sue and I are playing with.
Unbelievable!
So after about 4 hours, Sue and I worked it out.
Hang onto your hats folks.
You will need to combine both directory and virtual directory when building portal size sites. Other than that, you will have to wait for the release of the master plan. We will be less and less discussing the more advanced architecture because of its immense value and effort required to diagram the information.
I will say, I am EXTREMELY glad that I found Charles and that he is on the Theme Zoom team. It would hve taken us about 3 months to do what he has done over the last week.
- Russell |
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jcoutts
SEO White Belt
Joined: 02 Aug 2006
Posts: 4
Location: Fetlar, Shetland, Scotland.
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| Posted: Sat Aug 05, 2006 10:04 am Post subject: |
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Hi,
I only discovered this forum about two weeks ago, and I'm finding all this silo thing really exciting. It seems, however, that I "accidentally" have already employed this technique...
About three years ago I was creating sites with Traffic Equalizer. On one site I researched a whole lot of keywords on a broad theme that had several sub-themes. I spent a day or two working out how best to organise the material, and decided on placing each theme in its own folder, or directory.
Each theme was then almost a separate site, but they were all held together by a common index page and sitemap. The overall site had some 4,000 pages in total.
This site did very well. At the height of its performance it was earning over $350 a day, which it sustained for over five months. Of course, after that Google and the rest clamped down heavily on TE sites, and this site suffered with all the rest. But even today it is still earning me around $10 a day, so I'll keep it going, and will continue to until it earns zero.
I often wondered why this site performed so much better than all the other TE sites I created. It wasn't bigger, or better made in any obvious way. The subject matter didn't have a high AdSense payout per click - just average. But it was organised in folders, which were named according to relevant keywords, and I isolated each theme as much as possible in an effort to retain its primary focus.
I've read and re-read the Silo report, and now I know why it did so well. It wasn't a perfect silo'd site, but it was pretty close. Close enough to make a difference, presumably.
That's why I'm so excited about the upcoming launch of The Master Plan, because whatever it involves, I figure I've already gone through doing the steps of at least part of it, albeit "accidentally".
And of course, in the future I won't be using machine generated pages, but pure, self-written content, and that should make a whole lot of difference - that and relevant backlinks and whatever else is needed.
So, thanks for all this wonderful information! That's about all I've got to say - just thanks!
Kind regards,
John. |
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Charles Heflin
Administrator
Joined: 16 May 2006
Posts: 337
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| Posted: Sat Aug 05, 2006 2:52 pm Post subject: |
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Hi John,
Theming a site through folders or virtually (through virtual silos) is how the search engines determine relevance. You will naturally rank higher just by organizing your site even if you did do it by accident.
Glad to have you here 
Charles
| jcoutts wrote: | Hi,
I only discovered this forum about two weeks ago, and I'm finding all this silo thing really exciting. It seems, however, that I "accidentally" have already employed this technique...
About three years ago I was creating sites with Traffic Equalizer. On one site I researched a whole lot of keywords on a broad theme that had several sub-themes. I spent a day or two working out how best to organise the material, and decided on placing each theme in its own folder, or directory.
Each theme was then almost a separate site, but they were all held together by a common index page and sitemap. The overall site had some 4,000 pages in total.
This site did very well. At the height of its performance it was earning over $350 a day, which it sustained for over five months. Of course, after that Google and the rest clamped down heavily on TE sites, and this site suffered with all the rest. But even today it is still earning me around $10 a day, so I'll keep it going, and will continue to until it earns zero.
I often wondered why this site performed so much better than all the other TE sites I created. It wasn't bigger, or better made in any obvious way. The subject matter didn't have a high AdSense payout per click - just average. But it was organised in folders, which were named according to relevant keywords, and I isolated each theme as much as possible in an effort to retain its primary focus.
I've read and re-read the Silo report, and now I know why it did so well. It wasn't a perfect silo'd site, but it was pretty close. Close enough to make a difference, presumably.
That's why I'm so excited about the upcoming launch of The Master Plan, because whatever it involves, I figure I've already gone through doing the steps of at least part of it, albeit "accidentally".
And of course, in the future I won't be using machine generated pages, but pure, self-written content, and that should make a whole lot of difference - that and relevant backlinks and whatever else is needed.
So, thanks for all this wonderful information! That's about all I've got to say - just thanks!
Kind regards,
John. |
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OnlyTopResults
SEO Yellow Belt
Joined: 07 Jul 2006
Posts: 28
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| Posted: Tue Aug 08, 2006 6:05 am Post subject: Re: Have I got this silo structure right? |
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| Charles Heflin wrote: | To avoid un-tidiness you should make sub-silos:
Causes of breast cancer is a different theme than treatments for breast cancer and could have its own sub-silo under the main breast cancer silo to keep things more tidy and organized.
There may be more themes under each sub-theme as well. Think of it as keeping a file system. Keep all related themes grouped into folders and sub-folders and sub-folders of sub-folders, etc.
The point is to keep all related articles in one folder/silo to avoid bleeding your theme off to other topics that the search engines don't consider related.
Articles on causes of breast cancer probably don't belong in the same silo as survival rates for breast cancer. |
So to take that approach so far as reciprocal links is concerned, I should therefore create a separate links page for each silo and match those carefully to inbound link partners? So for example I may have a general links page as usual off the home page, but might also have:
/causes_of_breast_cancer/links.htm
/treatments_for_breast_cancer/links.htm
/survival_rates_for_breast_cancer/links.htm
Am I right? This would also keep the number of links down to a reasonable number of highly targeted link partners.
THanks
Adrian |
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OnlyTopResults
SEO Yellow Belt
Joined: 07 Jul 2006
Posts: 28
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| Posted: Sun Aug 13, 2006 3:16 pm Post subject: Re: Have I got this silo structure right? |
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| OnlyTopResults wrote: |
So to take that approach so far as reciprocal links is concerned, I should therefore create a separate links page for each silo and match those carefully to inbound link partners? So for example I may have a general links page as usual off the home page, but might also have:
/causes_of_breast_cancer/links.htm
/treatments_for_breast_cancer/links.htm
/survival_rates_for_breast_cancer/links.htm
Am I right? This would also keep the number of links down to a reasonable number of highly targeted link partners.
THanks
Adrian |
Well I would welcome feedback on this topic - I see very little reference to reciprocal links made in the Siloing strategy, yet I cannot believe that just links from free directories (often with VERY broad categories) will do the job! Are we to focus on submitting articles with back links as our main link building thrust?
Adrian |
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