Having a proper website structure that will organize your content in a way it makes sense is something you should have from day one. However, it is never too late to make the right changes. There are many different types of structures, but today we will talk about SEO website Silo architecture and structure.
What Is a Silo Structure?
Silo structure allows you to organize your content strategically and connect it through internal linking. Whatever your industry might be, your website is probably home to a variety of different products or services, and all that content should be organized logically. Many websites use just the flat structure, where every page is placed in the root folder, but that’s actually not a proper site structure.
When siloing, you’re basically working on your website architecture, and there is a certain hierarchy that usually goes like this:
- The website,
- A parent page that serves as a general introduction to a specific topic. The main silo page can have numerous child pages.
- Child page – blogs, supporting articles, and other relevant content. The child page can have only one parent page.
To be able to call it a silo structure, these pages need to be internally linked to one another to form a navigation path and let that link juice flow. So you’re isolating and grouping different pieces of related content, which creates a clear website structure and eases the user experience.
How Do You Build an SEO Silo Structure?
So, how do you apply silo to your content and site architecture? If you’re about to start from scratch with content creation, that’s easy, but if you already have a lot of website content, you have a lot of work ahead of you. It all needs to be revised and divided into suitable categories. In an ideal case scenario, this is how SEO siloing should look in 4 steps.
- Determine the niche of your website – first things first, you have to have a clear idea of what your website is for and which services are you offering since those will be your starting points and main silos. Each service should get its own page, which basically acts as a folder. Everything that doesn’t fit can go into the “about us” page, for example.
- Organize your content accordingly – once you have your main categories, arrange all existing and future content accordingly. This should also be visible in the URL structure. Every new blog post should be grouped with related pages, and besides the main keyword phrase, their URL should contain the title of the parent page.
- Internal link game – although many focus primarily on external linking in their content strategy, internal linking is a powerful thing that shouldn’t be neglected. Sure external links are great for topical authority, but internal linking shows search engines that your content is coherent. The visitors will also love it because you’ll navigate them through your website in a logical way that allows them to find important information.
- Add new content to each silo – SEO siloing never ends. As long as you’re producing and uploading new content, you have to keep it connected within that silo. That’s why your content strategy and keyword research should be well planned, months in advance if possible, so you can leave anchor text with the relevant keyword in the text and then just add a link when that blog goes live.
Soft Vs. Hard Silo
Interlinking related pages is known as the “soft silo,” while implementing siloing into the directory structure of your site is the “hard silo.” Hard siloing means that you’ll apply the hierarchy system to your sitemap, URL structure, and folder structure. Although it is not mandatory to do both, it is recommended.
Hard siloing is an extra step, but it could be super helpful for the visitors of your website, especially if you have a more complex structure and a lot of content, it eases navigation.
Why Is a Silo Structure Important for SEO?
Siloing is an SEO technique with a focus on organizing related content. Such organization of site structure is not only great for users but also for search engines that crawl, index, and rank your site, and it might result in higher search results. Internal linking contributes to your domain authority and page rank. When all pages within a silo are interlinked, page rank flows between them.
How Do You Implement One?
To create a good content silo structure, you need to do a lot of keyword research and content planning to ensure all pages within one silo can be interlinked. That also means that occasionally you might have to go through the published content and add links to new blogs.
Anchor text is an important factor here. You shouldn’t always use the exact same anchor text for a certain page because that could be a red flag for search engines. Anchor text should vary slightly while still staying close enough to the original keyword.
How AI Can Help You Create a Silo Structure?
Creating a website silo structure can be time-consuming and challenging, especially for websites with a large number of pages. This is where artificial intelligence (AI) can help.
AI-powered writing tools can assist in creating content for website silos more quickly and efficiently than traditional methods.
These tools can analyze existing content on the website and identify gaps in the topical map. They can then generate content ideas for the missing topics, making it easier to create a complete website silo structure. Businesses can use AI to create website silos to save time and resources while improving their SEO rankings.
With AI-powered content creation tools like Writesonic or Rytr, businesses can quickly create a full topical map for their website, making it easier for search engines to crawl and index their site. In conclusion, AI can be a valuable tool for businesses looking to create an effective website silo structure.
By allowing them to write content quicker and complete a full topical map, AI-powered content creation tools can help businesses improve their SEO rankings and drive more traffic to their website.
What Are Some Problems of Using a Silo Structure?
So once you’ve organized your content into several silos, you might start wondering why it is wrong to interlink between silos. You will probably have a blog page that can be linked to content from two different silos. However, if you do that, then you no longer have a strict silo structure, it is just a classic pyramid architecture.
This is something many SEO experts disagree on. Some believe that as long as it makes sense in terms of context, there is no reason why you should not do it. However, others claim that’s not siloing.
Want to Improve Your Website’s Structure? Siloing Is the Best Way to Do So
Whether you like it or not, siloing is a very logical way of structuring your site, but whether you stick to the original version and keep the link juice within each silo, or decide to mix it up a little bit, is up to you just don’t do any too exotic mixtures. One thing is sure, the search engine will reward you for doing it.
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