Would you consider a book that is without any table of contents and consisting of randomly arranged chapters a properly optimised book? The answer is an obvious no! The same logic applies to websites as well. A good website needs to consist of structured content in such a way that it should look clear and relevant to both the visitors as well as the search engine. This is why SEO means a lot more than just putting together a bunch of words in your posts and pages.
One of the best methods to organize your website well is called Siloing. In this article, we are going to explore what silos are and why they help SEO.
What Is A Silo Structure?
Silo is a verb used to separate something from the others in a structure. As an SEO technique, Silo means to group content that are related to each other in an organised manner on the website. It takes up a lot of hard work in order to come up with a website design that will link and group everything in an organised manner. It is all about categorising content according to its theme or topic. Mentioned below is a simple silo structure…
www.yourwebsite.com – this is your home page
www.yourwebsite.com/topic1 (SILO)
www.yourwebsite.com/topic1/subtopic1
www.yourwebsite.com/topic1/subtopic2
www.yourwebsite.com/topic2
www.yourwebsite.com/topic2/subtopic1
www.yourwebsite.com/topic2/subtopic2
www.yourwebsite.com/topic3
www.yourwebsite.com/topic3/subtopic1
www.yourwebsite.com/topic3/subtopic2
If you organize all your pages in such a manner, you will make it clear to the search engines the keywords and topics you are targeting in any given group or silo. You will find this similar to tree structures where the node present at the top is the root.
Types of Siloing
- Physical Siloing
This type of siloing implies that you can save structure the theme or the topic in subfolders on your website. Every subfolder will specifically focus on one category. However, it can have subfolders for different types of items. For instance, this URL:
www.yourwebsite.com/electronics/laptops/macbookpro-2015.html
By simply looking at this URL, you will be able to tell that the page is about MacBook Pro 2015. If you take a look from left to right, you will also notice that it reveals two specific categories namely ‘electronics’ and ‘laptops’.
In order to create physical silos, you will have to create a directory structure for the website depending on the focus on topics.
- Virtual Siloing
Virtual siloing is a little different. It will use internal links from the website in order to connect group related pages together. When a search engine crawls your website, it will end up following the links. This is why you can organize your content using virtual siloing only.
With virtual siloing, you will be able to have hyperlinks that connect pages to the relevant topic. Using this, you will basically be able to enrich the content theme structure that adds more relevance to your website.
SEO Benefits of Using Silo Structure
Organising your silos can help your website to a great extent. Search engines will prefer your website over other websites on similar topics due to the fact that it is able to understand your content more clearly and can spot the keywords you are targeting better. The link between various topics and pages will keep your content more relevant and focused.
In The End, A good silo is a combination of both physical siloing as well as virtual siloing. Every item present inside a physical sub-directory will interlink with other items in that subdirectory making the concept of siloing extremely effective.
Video Source – Mike Beckler
If there’s anything you think I’ve missed – talk to me in the comments below!
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